Confronting History: A Memoir

by George L. Mosse, Walter Laqueur (Foreword by)

Overview

Just two weeks before his death in January 1999, George L. Mosse, one of the great American historians, finished writing his memoir, a fascinating and fluent account of a remarkable life that spanned three continents and many of the major events of the twentieth century.             Confronting History describes Mosse's opulent childhood in Weimar Berlin; his exile in Paris and England, including boarding school and study at Cambridge University; his second exile in the U.S. at Haverford, Harvard, Iowa, and Wisconsin; and his extended stays in London and Jerusalem. Mosse discusses being a Jew and his attachment to Israel and Zionism, and he addresses his gayness, his coming out, and his growing scholarly interest in issues of sexuality. This touching memoir—told with the clarity, passion, and verve that entranced thousands of Mosse's students—is guided in part by his belief that "what man is, only history tells" and, most of all, by the importance of finding one's self through the pursuit of truth and through an honest and unflinching analysis of one's place in the context of the times.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299165833
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	09/10/2013
Series:	George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

George L. Mosse (1918–99) was the John C. Bascom Professor of European History and Weinstein-Bascom Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was also the Koebner Professor of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was selected as the first scholar-in-residence at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. He wrote more than two dozen books, including Nationalism and Sexuality, Toward the Final Solution, and Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural, and Social Life in the Third Reich, also published by the University of Wisconsin Press.

Table of Contents

Contents Illustrations Foreword 1 - Introduction: On Native Ground 2 - The Setting 3 - Family Matters 4 - Building Character in Salem 5 - Experiencing Exile 6 - Political Awakenings 7 - Gaining a Foothold 8 - The Iowa Years 9 - Finally Home 10 - Confronting History 11 - Journey to Jerusalem 12 - Excursus: London as Home 13 - The Past as Present

What People are Saying About This

Sander Gilman

George Mosse shaped our understanding of the rise of Fascism, racism, and sexism in the twentieth century as did no other historian.

Editorial Reviews

A richly enjoyable autobiography of the esteemed cultural historian. Mosse (1918-99) was born into a wealthy German-Jewish family in Prussia. Young George grew up in rather grand, if lonely, family houses in Berlin and its environs, and combined the family ethos of hard work with the values of discipline and physical hardship that he learned at Salem, his English-inspired boarding school. He continued his education at Bootham, a Quaker public school in Yorkshire, and attended Cambridge for two years. In America visiting family on the eve of the WWII, he decided to remain in the US rather than risk internment as an enemy alien in Britain. He was admitted to Haverford College and later completed a Ph.D. at Harvard. He taught at the University of Iowa, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He was renowned for his lectures, and routinely attracted over 500 undergraduates to a single course. Mosse produced groundbreaking scholarship establishing that there were intellectual and cultural foundations to Nazism and Fascism. His more recent works concentrated on Jewry, representation, and sexuality in Modern Europe. He trained a generation of scholars and wrote over a dozen books (including The Crisis of German Ideology, Toward the Final Solution, The Nazionalization of the Masses, Nationalism and Sexuality, Germans & Jews, and Fallen Soldiers). With Walter Laqueur, Mosse was the cofounder and coeditor of the Journal of Contemporary History. Mosse concentrates here on his intellectual development and is circumspect about the more personal aspects of his life (such as his homosexuality). While his memoir may not satisfy those looking for a confessionsandsensation, it succeeds admirably in portraying him for what he was—a great scholar and teacher who just happened to be a German, a Jew, and a homosexual. A delightful and illuminating memoir of a man whose piercing insights changed our understanding of Modern Europe. (30 b&w photos, 6 b&w illustrations)

Kirkus Reviews

"A historian who redefined the interpretation of European fascism and Hitler's Germany, and who made decisive contributions to the liberal historiography of modern Europe. [George Mosse] was a man of uncommon intellectual vivacity and a great teacher."--Saul Friedländer, The New Republic

"A delightful and illuminating memoir of a man whose piercing insights changed our understanding of modern Europe."--Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher