German Migrant Historians in North America: Transatlantic Careers and Scholarship After 1945

The migration experiences, career paths, and scholarship of historians born in Germany who started emigrating to North America in the 1950s have had a unique impact on the transatlantic practice of Central European History. German Migrant Historians in North America analyzes the experiences of this postwar group of scholars, and asks what informed their education and career choices, and what motivated them to emigrate to North America. The contributors reflect on how these migration experiences informed their own research and teaching, and particularly discuss the more general development of the transatlantic exchange between German and American historians in the scholarship on Modern Central European History.

Konrad H. Jarausch is the Lurcy Professor for European Civilization at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 1983 and former director of the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung in Potsdam. The focus of his work has been German and European history. His most recent books include: The Burden of German History: A Transatlantic Life (2023); Embattled Europe: A Progressive Alternative (2021); Broken Lives: How Ordinary Germans Experienced the Twentieth Century (2018); Out of Ashes: A New History of Europe in the Twentieth Century (2015), and Reluctant Accomplice: A Wehrmacht Soldier’s Letters from the Eastern Front (2011).