Born in Poland and growing up in East Germany, Marcel was always interested in the structure of totalitarian systems and in the genesis and effects of propaganda and product advertisement. Marcel received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison for a dissertation thesis on the fire, blood, and flag motifs in German posters from 1917-1971. Today, his research centers around visual communication in 20th-century Germany as well as on government propaganda towards German-Americans in the United States during World Wars I and II. Originally trained as a high school teacher for German and Russian, Marcel has been teaching German as a second language in all kinds of institutions – high school, university, private language school. Marcel loves teaching German to students as well as offering seminars on cultural topics related to the German-speaking countries.