Mark is a professor of early modern history at the University of Bamberg. His research focusses on the economic, social, urban and cultural history of the early modern period and on the history of North America and the Atlantic world. Mark holds a PhD from the University of Augsburg. He was Feodor Lynen Fellow at Pennsylvania State University in 1999-2000 and a DFG Heisenberg Fellow from 2001-2004. He has been a member of the Academia Europaea since 2022 and is chairman of the Gesellschaft für Globalgeschichte e.V.

Transatlantic Entanglements: Central Europe and North America in the Long Eighteenth Century (c. 1683–1820)

The project deals with the intensifying relations between Central Europe and North America in the 18th century. More than 100,000 Germans and Swiss emigrated to the New World by 1800, and 30,000 German soldiers were deployed in the American War of Independence. By means of transatlantic migration, religious minorities and dissidents from Central Europe were ‘exported’ to North America. Secular networks of merchants, ship-owners and business travellers as well as religious communication and support networks developed. In addition, an independent German-American culture emerged in Pennsylvania.