Each year the German Historical Institute invites
a prominent scholar either from Germany or the United States to give a
lecture on a topic of mutual interest. A commentator also is invited to
address the central themes presented in the lecture.
1987
Bernard Bailyn Harvard University
From Protestant Peasants to Jewish Intellectuals:
The Germans in the Peopling of America
Henrich August Winkler University of Freiburg
Causes and Consequences of the German Catastrophe
1988
Carl N. Degler Stanford University
Culture Versus Biology in the Thought of Franz Boas
and Alfred Kroeber
Commentators: Barbara Duden, Pennsylvania State
University; Marshall Hyatt, Wesleyan University.
1989
Kathleen Neils Conzen University of Chicago
Making Their Own America: Assimilation Theory and
the German Peasant Pioneer
Commentators: Mack Walker, The Johns Hopkins University;
Jörg Nagler, GHI
1990
Erich Angermann University of Cologne
Challenges of Ambiguity: Doing Comparative History
Commentators: Carl N. Degler, Stanford University;
John A. Garraty, Columbia University.
1991
Susan Strasser George Washington University
Waste and Want: The Other Side of Consumption
Commentators: Gunther Barth, University of California
at Berkeley; Wolfganz Erz, University of Wuppertal.
1992
Dirk Hoerder University of Bremen
People on the Move: Migration, Acculturation, and
Ethnic Interaction in Europe and North America
Commentators: Donna R. Gabaccia, University of
North Carolina at Charlotte; James O. Horton, George Washington University.
1993
Stanley N. Katz American Council of Learned Societies
Constitutional Democracy in Central Europe Today:
Some Negative Lessons From the U.S. Experience
Commentators: Donald P. Kommers, University of
Notre Dame; Hartmut Jäckel, Free University of Berlin.
1994
M. Rainer Lepsius University of Heidelberg
United Germany: Nation-Building and Social Integration
Commentators: Seymour Martin Lipset, George Mason
University; Steven Kalberg, Boston University.
1995
Patrick J. Geary UCLA
The German Middle Ages in America
Commentator: Otto Gerhard Oexle, Max Planck Institute
for History, Göttingen.
1996
Eberhard Kolb University of Cologne
Was Hitler's Seizure of Power on January 30, 1933,
Inevitable?
Commentator: Henry A. Turner Jr., Yale University.
1997
Thomas A. Brady Jr. University of California at
Berkeley
The Protestant Reformation in German History
Commentator: Heinz Schilling, Humboldt University,
Berlin.
Recipients of the Alois Mertes stipend are outstanding
scholars with a special interest in the areas to which German foreign-policy
expert Alois Mertes devoted his career: the German question in the context
of German-American relations; the dialog between American Jews and Germans;
Central and South America within the European-North American dialog; European
integration and the Atlantic Alliance; and the ethics of war prevention,
specifically regarding the role of religion in the United States and Germany.
The lectures are sponsored by the Stifterverband für die deutsche
Wissenschaft since 1991.
1991
Michael Wolffsohn University of Munich
German-American-Jewish Themes: The End of the German
Democratic Republic and the "Jewish Connection"
1992
Clayton M. Clemens College of William and Mary
CDU Deutschlandpolitik and Reunification, 1985-1989
1993
Ludger Kühnhardt University of Freiburg
Ideals and Interests in Recent German Foreign Policy
1994
Jeffrey Herf University of Freiburg
East German Communists and the Jewish Question: The
Case of Paul Merker
1995
Wolfgang Krieger University of Munich
The Germans and the Nuclear Question
1996
Melvyn P. Leffler University of Virginia
The Struggle for Germany and the Origins of the Cold
War
1997
Michael Zöller University of Bayreuth
Religion, Americanization, and the Common Man
Spring 1988
March 23
Arthur E. Imhof Free University of Berlin
Consequences of the Increase in Life Expectancy During
the Last Three Centuries
April 5
Ute Frevert University of Bielefeld
Constancy and Change in Gender Relations in Germany,
1880-1930
April 28
M. Rainer Lepsius University of Heidelberg
The Legacy of National Socialism and the Formation
of Political Culture in the Federal Republic of Germany
May 11
Hermann Wellenreuther University of Göttingen
Thoughts on Representation in the Old and New World
in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
June 15
Hermann-Josef Rupieper University of Marburg
The Berlin Blockade-Forty Years Later
Fall 1988
September 22
Jürgen C. Heß Free University of Amsterdam
Theodor Heuss and the Orgins of the Federal Republic,
1945-1949
October 11
Jürgen Kocka University of Bielefeld
Burdens and Opportunities: The Importance of German
History for the Political Culture of the Federal Republic of Germany
October 14
Susanne Miller University of Bonn
Landmarks of Ideological Change: The Case of Social
Democracy in Europe
October 27
Hans Mommsen Ruhr University Bochum
The Directed Pogrom: Intimidation and Terror in Germany
in November 1938
December 14
Karlheinz Schneider Brandeis University
Jewish Self-Emancipation During the Progressive Era-An
Approach in the Sociology of Religion
Spring 1989
February 9
Volker R. Berghahn Brown University
Germany and America-The Industrial Connection, 1918-1970
March 2
Jane Caplan Bryn Mawr College
Profession as Vocation: The Plan of Bureaucracy in
Germany in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
March 16
Deborah Hertz SUNY at Binghamton
The Meaning of Conversion in the German-Jewish Past
April 14
Geoffrey Eley University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
Sammlungspolitik Revisited: Conservatism, Popular
Politics, and the German Right, 1860-1933
May 9
Mack Walker The Johns Hopkins University
The Salzburg Protestant Exiles
June 1
R. Po-chia Hsia University of Massachusetts
Religious and Ethnic Minorities in Sixteenth- and
Seventeenth-Century German Society
Fall 1989
September 14
Michael Geyer University of Chicago
After the Atlantic Divide: Toward Postmodern Theories
of Germany in the United States and the Federal Republic
October 12
Marion Kaplan Queens College CUNY
Gender and Jewish History in Imperial Germany
November 16
Thomas Childers University of Pennsylvania
The Political Mobilization of Women in the Weimar
Republic
November 30
Isabel V. Hull Cornell University
The Retreat of the State From the Regulation of Sexual
Behavior in Eighteenth-Century Germany: Creating the Private Sphere
December 7
Adelheid von Saldern University of Hannover
Ennobling Culture: "Good Taste" and "Good Morals"
in Germany and the United States in the 1920s
December 14
Thomas A. Brady Jr. University of Oregon
Between Town and Countryside: The Common People and
the German Reformation
Spring 1990
January 31
Claudia Koonz Duke University
Collaborators or Victims: Women in the Third Reich
February 14
Rebecca L. Boehling University of Maryland Baltimore
County
From Trümmerfrauen to Hausfrauen: West German
Women, 1945-1955
March 21
Dirk Hoerder University of Bremen
The Image of America: Migrants' Hopes and Expectations
April 24
Richard Bessel The Open University Milton Keynes
"Immorality" and Social Order in Germany After the
First World War
June 5
Jonathan B. Knudsen Wellesley College
Liberalism and Culture in Pre-1848 Berlin
Fall 1990
September 20
Vernon L. Lidtke The Johns Hopkins University
The Quest for an Iconography of Revolution: Politically
Engaged Artists in the Weimar Republic
October 2
Harmut Pogge von Strandmann University College
Oxford
The Liberal Power Monopoly in Imperial Germany's Cities
November 5
David Levering Lewis Rutgers University
W. E. B. DuBois in Germany
December 7
Renate Bridenthal Brooklyn College CUNY
Corporatism and Countrywomen: The German Federation
of Agricultural Housewifes' Associations
December 13
Richard Breitman American University
Hitler and Genghis Khan
Spring 1991
February 7
Roger Chickering University of Oregon
The Nazi Stammtisch: Sociable Tradition and Political
Mobilization in the Weimar Era
February 19
James F. Harris University of Maryland at College
Park
Petitions, Politics, and the People: Revolution in
Bavaria in 1849
March 12
Michael J. Neufeld National Air and Space Museum,
Washington D.C.
Hitler, the V-2, and the Battle for Priority: Weapons
Procurement and the German War Economy, 1939-1943
March 21
Klaus Schwabe Technical University of Aachen
The U.S. and Germany's Integration into the West,
1947-1957
April 9
Mary Nolan New York University
America, Ford, and the German Economy in the 1920s
April 16
Detlef Bald Social Science Institute of the German
Armed Forces Munich
Helmuth von Moltke and the Theory of Deterrence: The
End of a Military Tradition?
Fall 1991
September 26
Gregg O. Kvistad University of Denver
The German State as Institution: Citizens Challenge
Civil Servants
October 11
Sir Michael Howard Yale University
The Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871, in Historical
Perspective
October 21
Horst Dippel University of Kassel
1871 Versus 1789: German Historians and the Ideological
Foundations of Imperial Germany
November 14
Marion F. Deshmukh George Mason University
Painting and Politics in Imperial Germany
November 19
David W. Sabean Cornell University
Flagging Texts: Ritual Gesture in Early Modern Bureaucratic
Prose
December 3
Arno J. Mayer Princeton University
Ideology and Contingency: Violence and Terror in the
Epochs of the French and Russian Revolutions
December 13
John Higham The Johns Hopkins University
The Future of American History
Spring 1992
February 6
Gerald D. Feldman University of California at Berkeley
The Great Disorder: Hyperinflation, Culture, and Society
in Germany, 1922-1923
March 26
Bruce C. Levine University of Cincinnati
German-Americans and the Many Meanings of Freedom,
1840-1870
March 30
Wolfgang J. Helbich Ruhr University, Bochum and
Walter D. Kamphoefner Texas A&M University
Immigrant History by Those Who Made It: German-American
Letters, 1830-1930
May 6
Stephen A. Schuker University of Virginia
John Maynard Keynes, Carl Melchior, and the Sexual
Politics of Reparations
May 13
Susanne Riveles Amnesty International USA
The Double Legacy of German and South-African Colonialism
in Namibia
May 21
Kathryn Olesko Georgetown University
The Culture of Precision in Nineteenth-Century Germany
June 6
Pieter Spierenburg Erasmus University Rotterdam
Four Hundred Years of Imprisonment: What Should Historians
Make of It?
Fall 1992
October 15
H.C. Erik Midelfort University of Virginia
The Sense of Doom in Reformation Germany: Suicide
and the Formation of a Sociological Stereotype
October 27
Robert L. Beisner American University
Fear and Strength: Dean Acheson and the Cold War
November 2
Margaret L. Anderson University of California at
Berkeley
Voter, Junker, Landrat, Priest: Electoral Politics
in Imperial Germany
November 12
Solomon Wank Franklin and Marshall College
The Habsburg Legacy: Dream and Reality
December 7
Geoffrey J. Giles University of Florida
Sex Education in Germany from the Kaiserreich to the
Third Reich
December 14
David Calleo Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International
Studies of the Johns Hopkins University
Friedrich List: The National Political Economy Revisited
Spring 1993
January 27
Peter Hayes Northwestern University
German Big Business and the Persecution of the Jews
February 16
Christopher R. Browning Pacific Lutheran University
The Euphoria of Victory and the Path to Genocide:
Hitler and the Final Solution
March 2
Doris L. Bergen University of Vermont
Christianity, Anti-Semitism, and the Quest for Manly
Religion in the Third Reich
March 10
Atina Grossmann Columbia University
Sex Reform and Social Medicine from Weimar to National
Socialism: The Problem of Continuity
March 25
Jay W. Baird, Miami University Ohio
Lyric Nazism: Heroic Imagery in the Literature of
the Third Reich
April 22
Gerhard L. Weinberg University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill
German Plans for Victory, 1944-1945
June 2
Klemens von Klemperer Smith College
Beyond Luther? Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Resistance
Against National Socialism
Fall 1993
September 15
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese Emory University
What Do We Want for Our Daughters?
September 29
Susan Porter Benson University
of Connecticut
Gender, Breadwinning, and Consumption in Working-Class
Marriages, 1919-1941
October 12
Frank C. Costigliola University of Rhode Island
The Nuclear Family: Gendered Discourses in the Western
Alliance
October 28
Thomas Dublin SUNY at Binghamton
Women Silk Workers Reconstruct Their Lives: An Exercise
in Memory and Oral History
November 11
Alice Kessler-Harris Rutgers University
"Designing Women and Old Fools": Gender in Social
Policy in the 1930s
November 22
Tera W. Hunter University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill
Contesting the New South: The Politics and Culture
of Wage Household Labor in Atlanta, 1861-1920
December 8
Donna R. Gabaccia University of North Carolina
at Charlotte
Immigrant Women Today: Are They Different?
Spring 1994
Two Different Paths to Modernity: Comparative Aspects of German and American History, 1865-1914
March 3
Helmut Smith Vanderbilt University
Multiculturalism and Modernity: Reflections on the
Place of Kultur in the Tradition of German Nationalism, 1870-1914
March 9
Olivier Zunz University of Virginia
What Happened to American Individualism? The Ideological
Crisis of the Gilded Age and Its Consequences for the Twentieth Century
March 16
Kathleen Canning University of Michigan at Ann
Arbor
Social Reform and Sexual Politics: The Making of the
Social Welfare State in Germany After 1871
April 7
Sonya A. Michel University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Gender and the Development of the American Welfare
State in the Progressive Era: Maternalism Reconsidered
May 3
Naomi Lamoreaux Brown University
Government Policy and the Organization of Enterprise
in Germany and the United States, 1870-1914
May 9
Kenneth D. Barkin University of California at Riverside
The Imperial German Economy in Comparative Perspective
May 17
Roger Lotchin University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill
Reclaiming the Reputation of the Gilded Age and Progressive
City: American Urbanization, 1865-1920
May 25
Brian Ladd Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
The Bourgeois City Within the Age of German Urbanization
Fall 1994
New Work in American History
October 5
Thomas J. Knock Southern Methodist University
George McGovern and Food for Peace
October 20
Lawrence M. Friedman Stanford University
Some Thoughts on Crime and Punishment in American
History
October 31
Kathy Peiss University of Massachusetts
Producing a Consumer Culture: Women in the American
Beauty Industry
November 9
Elaine S. Abelson New School for Social Research
Women Forgotten: Homelessness in the Great Depression
November 29
Michael O'Malley George Mason University
Free Markets and the Law of Essential Value
December 15
Jonathan Prude Emory University
When the Other Half Dressed Up: The Meanings of Working-Class
Dandyism in Antebellum America
Spring 1995
50 Years Later: Historians View the Aftermath of World War II
February 16
Elizabeth D. Heineman Bowling Green State University
West German Reflections on Women and the Nazi Era
March 9
Frank Ninkovich St. John's University
What Was the German Problem?
March 22
Jeffry M. Diefendorf University of New Hampshire
Ruins, Reconstruction, and Remembrance
April 20
Eric Weitz St. Olaf College
The "German" in the German Democratic Republic: Soviet
Interests and Weimar Legacies
May 8
Mark Trachtenberg University of Pennsylvania
The Origins of the Cold War: New Light After 50 Years?
May 16
Max Holland, Washington D.C.
A Twentieth Century Encounter: Germany and John J.
McCloy
Fall 1995
The German Welfare State in International Perspective
September 13
Young-Su Hong SUNY at Stony Brook
World War I, Citizenship, and the Welfare State in
Germany
September 28
Katheryn Kish Sklar SUNY at Binghamton
Florence Kelley, German Political Culture, and Social
Welfare, 1880-1930
October 11
Edward D. Berkowitz George Washington University
The History of Social Welfare in America: A Comparative
Analysis
October 26
David F. Crew University of Texas
The Meaning of Welfare in the Weimar Republic
November 8
Allan Mitchell University of California at San
Diego
Reflections on a Spittoon: German and French Approaches
to Welfare Reform in the Late Nineteenth Century
December 7
Peter Baldwin UCLA
The Postwar German Welfare State: Between Restoration
and Reform
Spring 1996
Turning Points in Twentieth-Century German-American History
March 21
Kathleen Neils Conzen University of Chicago
World War I, German-Americans, and the Perils of Pluralism
April 17
Mary Nolan New York University
Americanism and Anti-Americanism in the Weimar Republic
April 24
Robert E. Herzstein University of South Carolina
Two Americans Confront Germany, 1918-1941: Franklin
D. Roosevelt and Henry R. Luce
May 9
Sybil Milton U.S. Holocaust Research Institute,
Washington D.C.
"Damage Control": An Ambivalent German-American Disclosure
About the Holocaust
May 30
Thomas A. Schwartz Vanderbilt University
A Tale of Two Crises: Berlin and the United States
During the Cold War
June 12
Philip Zelikow Harvard University
Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: Issues in
Writing Contemporary History
Fall 1996
September 26
David Clay Large Montana State University
Citizens in Uniform: The Politics of West German Rearmament
October 15
Geoffrey C. Cocks Albion College
Psyche and Swastika: The Göring Institute in
and out of History
October 24
Norman M. Naimark Stanford University
The Soviet Occupation Administration in Germany, 1945-1949
November 7
Alan Steinweis University of Nebraska
German Artists Between Dictatorship and Democracy,
1918-1990
November 21
Paul W. Schroeder University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Prussia and Austria, 1780-1848: Episode or Model?
December 5
Carole Fink Ohio State University
The Weimar Analogy: The History and Political Myth
of the Weimar Republic
Spring 1997
Military and Militarism in German Society
March 13
Gordon A. Craig Stanford University
The Military as a Theme in German History
March 20
Roger Chickering Georgetown University
"Total War": Use and Abuse of a Concept
April 10
Elisabeth Domansky Indiana University
The Militarization of the Social Body in Germany During
World War I
May 15
Gerhard L. Weinberg University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill
Unexplored Questions About the German Military During
World War II
May 28
Peter Paret Institute for Advanced Study Princeton
Field Marshall and Beggar: The Artist Ernst Barlach
in the First World War
June 5
Michael Geyer University of Chicago
Traumatized Citizenship: How the West Germans Came
to Love the Nuclear Bomb, 1949-1964
Fall 1997
October 2
Peter E. Quint University of Maryland School of
Law
Judging the Past: The Prosecution of GDR Border Guards
and Officials
October 16
Belinda Davis Rutgers University
How Wilhelmine Germans Became Citizens of Weimar:
Toward an Alternative Political History of World War I Germany
October 23
Peter Wende GHI London
The Political Philosophy of Nineteenth-Century German
Radicalism
November 5
Donna Harsch Carnegie-Mellon University
Women, Communists, and Abortion in the German Democratic
Republic, 1950-1970
November 20
Günther Heydemann University of Leipzig
Two Dictatorships in Germany, 1933-1989: Problems
and Possibilities of a Comparison
December 11
Harold James Princeton University
What Can Chancellor Kohl Learn from Bismarck? Monetary
and Fiscal Aspects of Unification in Nineteenth-Century Germany