Fritz Richard Stern (February 2, 1926-) is an American historian of German history, Jewish history, and historiography. He was born in Breslau, Germany (modern Wrocław, Poland) to a Jewish family. In 1938 his family fled Germany and eventually came to the United States. He was educated at Columbia University where he received his bachelors, masters, and PhD. From 1953 to 1997 he served as a Professor at Columbia, where he attained the rank of University Professor and where he briefly served as provost. He is recognized in the United States and in Germany as an eminent historian.

The focus of much of his work is attempting to track the development of the rise of National Socialism in Germany and its characteristics. Stern has traced the origins of Nazism back to the 19th century völkische movement. In Stern's opinion, the virulently ant-Semitic völkische movement was the result of the "politics of cultural despair" experienced by German intellectuals who were unable to come to grips with modernity. However, Stern rejects the Sonderweg interpretation of German history. In his view, the ideas of the völkische movement were merely a "dark undercurrent" in 19th century German society. In the 1990s, Stern was a leading critic of the American political scientist Daniel Goldhagen, whose book Hitler's Willing Executioners Stern denounced as unscholarly and full of Germanophobia.

Another major area of research for Stern has been the history of the Jewish community in Germany and how the Jewish culture influenced German culture and vice-versa. In Stern’s view, this interaction produced what Stern has often called the “Jewish-German symbiosis”. In Stern’s view, the best example of the “Jewish-German symbiosis” was Albert Einstein.

Among his most notable works are,

• The Politics of Cultural Despair (1963) This was his dissertation which focused on three major figures in the rise of illiberalism, Paul de Lagarde, Julius Langbehn, and Arthur Moeller van den Bruck.

• The Varieties of History: From Voltaire to the Present (1970) A collection of writings from various people, gathered together and edited by Stern, to give a survey of historiography from the eighteenth century to the twentieth.

• Gold and Iron, (1977) A book centered around Gerson Bleichröder, the personal banker and friend of the other subject of the book, Otto von Bismarck. Through the two men Stern tracks the development of the uneasy relationship between Jews and Gentiles in late nineteenth century Germany.

• The Failure of Illiberalism (1973) and Dreams and Delusions (1987) Both books are collections of essays and transcribed speeches concerning nineteenth and twentieth century Germany.

Work

• (editor) The Varieties Of History, From Voltaire To The Present, New York : Meridian Books, 1956, 1960, 1972, 1973, ISBN 039471962X.

• The Politics Of Cultural Despair; A Study In The Rise Of The Germanic Ideology, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1961, 1963.

• co-edited with Leonard Krieger The Responsibility Of Power : Historical Essays In Honor Of Hajo Holborn, London : Macmillan, 1968, 1967

• The Failure Of Illiberalism, London, George Allen & Unwin 1972, ISBN 004943019x.

• Gold and Iron : Bismarck, Bleichroeder, and the Building of the German Empire, New York : Knopf, 1977 ISBN 0394495454.

• Germany 1933 : Fifty Years Later, New York, N.Y. : Leo Baeck Institute, 1983

• Dreams and Delusions : the Drama Of German History, New York : Knopf, 1987 ISBN 0394559959.

• Einstein's German World, Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1999 ISBN 069105939X.

• Fritz Stern : Ansprachen aus Anlass der Verleihung, Frankfurt am Main : Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels e.V. im Verlag der Buchhändler-Vereinigung GmbH, 1999.

External link

• A Fundamental History Lesson by Fritz Stern

1926 births | Living people | American historians | German-Americans | Jewish historians | Jewish American writers | Fascist/Nazi era scholars and writers

Fritz Stern | Fritz Stern | Fritz Stern