His broad interests include urban history as well as intellectual, cultural, and political history of Early Modern and Modern Europe. Prof. Mintzker’s dissertation, The Defortification of the German City, 1689-1866 tells the story of the metamorphosis of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German cities from walled to defortified places. In the coming years, Prof. Mintzker plans to turn his dissertation into a book while also beginning to work on a book on one of the most notorious events in eighteenth-century Germany: the trial and execution of Joseph Süss Oppenheimer (“Jud Süss”), in 1730s Stuttgart.