Hasso Spode

Who is Hasso Spode?

Hasso Spode is a German historian and sociologist.

After his childhood in East Germany, Hasso Spode flew to West Berlin where he studied philosophy, history, theology and sociology. Today he is professor in Hanover and director of the tourism archive at the Technical University in Berlin The main focus of his research is on historical anthropology and cultural history, but he also works in the field of social and political history. He wrote some 200 articles, mostly in German, and wrote or edited more than a dozen books.

In the 1980s Spode analysed the Nazi leisure time organization “Strength Through Joy” as an important means of social politics in the Third Reich. Meanwhile he is a noted expert in the history and theory of tourism. Further well-known works penned by Spode are on the history and structures of alcohol use and misuse, including the phenomenon of addiction which he regards as a social construction reflecting the need for self-control in modern societies.