Susanne König is no stranger to students and teaching staff at the Faculty of Design. Since March 2026, she has been working there as acting professor of art history since March 2026, teaching the history of art, architecture and design from antiquity to the present day.
Professor König’s research focuses on the production and circulation of knowledge between applied and fine art, on the critique of exhibitions and institutions, and on the history of interconnections between Eastern and Western German art. Whilst her teaching at the Faculty of Architecture and Design covers the full breadth of art, architecture and design history, her research focuses on the period after 1945. Here, she is interested both in regional post-war art and architecture in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and in contemporary international artworks that engage with the events of our time.
The transdisciplinary nature of her work is also reflected in her habilitation thesis, completed in 2022 at the University of Leipzig, on the circulation of knowledge between art and design. At the heart of this is the question of how objects convey knowledge and how this knowledge changes in different historical, artistic and design contexts. Interdisciplinary approaches, theoretical and historical reflection on design, and the view of art as a knowledge-producing practice characterise her understanding of research and teaching.
Another focus of her research is the history of art and design in divided and reunified Germany. As part of an interdisciplinary research project organised by the Saxon State Ministry of Science, Culture and Tourism (SMWK) at the Institute of Art History at the University of Leipzig and at TU Dresden, she investigated, from 2015 to 2016, the intertwined history of the exhibition series ‘documenta’ and the ‘All-German Art Exhibition’, as well as the relationships between design in the Federal Republic of Germany and form design in the GDR. She published the findings of a further research project on art in the former GDR in 2020 in the essay ‘Fritz Eisel’s mosaic *Der Mensch bezwingt den Kosmos* at the Computing Centre in Potsdam’.
In her doctoral thesis at the University of Hamburg, Dr König examined Marcel Broodthaers’ *Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles*. In doing so, she combined art-historical questions with perspectives drawn from contemporary history, cultural and social theory, as well as linguistic theory and philosophy. The thesis was awarded the Jacqueline Nonkels Prize by the King Baudouin Foundation in Belgium.
She has previously held a professorship at the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences and served as a visiting professor at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences and the Paris-Lodron University of Salzburg. In addition, she worked as a research assistant at the University of Leipzig, the University of Paderborn and the University of Siegen. She has held teaching posts at the University of Hamburg, the Berlin University of the Arts, the Bremen University of the Arts, as well as at the University of Rennes and the University of Maine in Le Mans (France). She studied art history and philosophy at the University of Stuttgart, as well as cultural and media management at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin.