George L. Mosse Collection

George L. Mosse was born Gerhard Lachmann-Mosse in Berlin on September 20, 1918 to a well-to-do Jewish family. His grandfather Rudolf Mosse founded the Mosse Publishing House, and published the major liberal newspaper in Germany the Berliner Tageblatt, as well as the Berliner Morgenzeitung, Volkszeitung, and the 8-Uhr Abendblatt. Rudolf Mosse was a pioneer in the business of modern international advertising, and owned several advertisement companies in Europe. George L. Mosse's father, Hans Lachmann, married Felicia Mosse, the only daughter of Rudolf Mosse. They had three children, Rudolf, Hilde and Gerhard (George), who was the youngest. After the death of Rudolf Mosse in 1922 Hans Lachmann-Mosse took over the firm. The Mosse family owned several estates, one of which was Schenkendorf, the family country residence that had a particular significance for George L. Mosse, who often recalled happy childhood memories of time spent at Schenkendorf. The Mosse publishing enterprise was one of the earliest targets of Nazi political harassment both before and after the Nazis came to power in 1933. The family left Germany the day after Hitler was appointed Chancellor, although George L. Mosse, away at school in southern Germany, did not leave until March 31, 1933. The family advertising enterprises located outside Germany-particularly in Switzerland-provided some financial means in their exile.

The educational career of George L. Mosse started at the boarding school Schule Schloß Salem near the Bodensee (Lake Constance), continued in 1934 at the Quaker Bootham school in York, England and in the years 1937-1939 at Cambridge. After George L. Mosse immigrated to the United States in 1939, he attended Haverford College, a Quaker college in Pennsylvania, and received his B.A. degree from the hands of the former president Herbert Hoover at Haverford in 1941. He then pursued his interest in English Protestant history at Harvard, where he studied with the medievalist Charles Howard McIlwain and received the PhD degree in 1946. His dissertation dealt with the struggle for sovereignty between king and Parliament in the early seventeenth century and was published under the title The struggle for sovereignty in England, from the reign of Queen Elizabeth to the Petition of Right in 1950.

In 1944 George L. Mosse joined the Army Specialized Training Program at the State University of Iowa where he lectured for soldiers who were scheduled to take part in the post-war U.S. occupation of Europe. A year later he became a member of the History Department faculty and was assigned to a newly established core course on the history of Western civilization, established just in time for the return of large numbers of veterans from WWII. He became a keen proponent and public advocate of this program and several times publicly defended its importance in the press. He was instrumental in developing its curriculum and helped its implementation at other institutions of higher education. His lectures were well attended and George L. Mosse became a popular teacher and in demand speaker in Iowa and the Midwest.

In 1955 George L. Mosse left the State University of Iowa to take a position as associate professor of European history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he was recruited to build up the European history program. He served on the faculty until his retirement in 1988, first as the first Bascom Professor of European History, and later as the Bascom Weinstein Professor of History and Jewish Studies. In addition, George L. Mosse taught at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem from 1969 to 1985, and held the Koebner Chair between the years 1978 and 1985. Among many other appointments and honors he received in his retirement years was appointment to the A.D. White Professorship-at-Large at Cornell University.

Lecturing and contact with students were very important to George L. Mosse and he traveled and lectured extensively within the United States and abroad from Poland to Australia to South Africa and often in Germany where he embraced the new liberal democratic regime. He enjoyed particular popularity in Italy, where he gave many lectures, interviews to popular magazines, and attended many conferences. George L. Mosse held several visiting professorships, including: Stanford University (1963-1964); Hebrew University (1969-1985); Kaplan Center for Jewish Research, Capetown University (1980); University of Amsterdam (1980); Ecole des Hautes Études, Paris (1986); Cambridge University (1990-1994). In 1994 he was the first Shapiro Senior Scholar in Residence at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

While George L. Mosse's early scholarship focused on the study of English constitutional history, Puritanism, and the Reformation, after his arrival at the University of Wisconsin his interest shifted towards modern German history and the history of Anti-Semitism. In 1964 George L. Mosse's seminal volume The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich was published. This work gave a new perspective on the study of the genesis of Nazism and right-wing movements in general. This book was followed by several others that challenged the conventional approaches to the origins of Nazism and fascism: Nazi Culture (1966), The Nationalization of the Masses (1975), and Toward the Final Solution (1977). His Fallen Soldiers investigated the cult of the war dead in Western Europe during and after the First World War. He was also interested in the history of German-Jewish relations and cultural co-habitation. Anson Rabinbach in his obituary in Aufbau (February 19, 1999) characterized George L. Mosse's German Jews beyond Judaism as his most personal book.

George L. Mosse always paid close attention to popular culture, behaviors and mentalities within a broader European cultural landscape. This became even more apparent when his focus shifted once again. In the 1980s George L. Mosse analyzed the concepts and perceptions of beauty, sexuality, and policies of public and social hygiene, in particular the political implications of perceived deviations from the norms of nineteenth century middle class society. His research resulted in two books, Nationalism and Sexuality (1985) and The Image of Man(1996).

George L. Mosse authored more than twenty-five books, including his autobiography Confronting History (2000). He published a great number of articles in academic journals and contributed to many volumes of essays. He was also a founding editor of the influential Journal of Contemporary History together with Walter Lacquer.

The academic achievements of George L. Mosse were recognized by five honorary doctorates: Doctor of Literature (Litt.D.) from Carthage College (1973); Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion (1987); Doctor of Philosophy honoris causa from Università degli Studi di Camerino (1995); Universität-Gesamthochschule-Siegen (1998); and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1999). He was also awarded the Award for Scholarly Distinction of the American Historical Association, the Leo Baeck Medal, the Premio Aqui Storia, the Premio Prezzolini, and the Goethe Institute's Goethe-Medaille.

After the war the Mosse family attempted to recover their German property, and in the 1950's, they were successful in obtaining restitution of Mosse family properties located in the western sector. However, since most of the real estate was located in the Soviet occupied zone - later the German Democratic Republic - their efforts were only partially successful. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and conditions for the restitution of family properties became more favorable, George L. Mosse was the only living direct heir of the family, although he shared equally restitution with the heirs of his brother Rudolf and the foundation set up to honor his sister Hilde. The family was restituted the Schenkendorf estate (which had served after the war as a military base) as well as other properties, and George Mosse attended the dedication of the Mosse media center in the building that formerly housed the offices of the Mosse Publishing House.

George L. Mosse died on January 22, 1999 in Madison. In his will he generously endowed a program at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, and stipulated that this money be used for furthering academic exchange and collaboration between the departments of history at the University of Wisconsin and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He also left funds in support of gay and lesbian studies, and scholarships in Jewish and modern European history. Among other beneficiaries were The Leo Baeck Institute in New York, the Jewish Museum in Berlin, the Gay and Lesbian Studies department at the University of Amsterdam, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The authors of the finding aid would like to thank John Tortorice, partner of George L. Mosse, for his comments on the Biographical Note.

September 20, 1918

Born in Berlin, Germany

1937-1939

Attended University of Cambridge

1941

Received B.S., Haverford College

1946

Received Ph.D., Harvard University

1944-1955

Instructor to Associate Professor, State University of Iowa

1955-1965

Associate Professor to Professor, University of Wisconsin

1963-1964

Visiting Professor, Stanford University

1965-1982

John C. Bascom Professor, University of Wisconsin

1969-1978

Visiting Professor, Hebrew University

1972, 1979

Visiting Fellow, History of Ideas Unit, Australian National University

1973

Doctor of Literature (honorary) Carthage College

1977

Visiting Professor, Jewish Theological Seminary of America

1978-1985

Koebner Professor of History, Hebrew University

1980

Kaplan Center for Jewish Research, Capetown University

1982-1983

Visiting Professor, University of Munich

1982-1988

Weinstein-Bascom Professor in Jewish Studies, University of Wisconsin

1986

Visiting Professor, Ecole des Hautes Études, Paris

1987

Visiting Fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies, Hebrew University

1987

D. Litt. (honorary) Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion

1988

Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin

1988

Visiting Professor, University of Amsterdam

1989, 1992

Visiting Professor, Cornell University

1989

Visiting Professor, Tel Aviv University

1990, 1991, 1994

Visiting Professor, Pembroke College, Cambridge University

1993

A.D. White Professor at Large, Cornell University

1994-1995

Shapiro Visiting Fellow, United States Holocaust Museum, Washington, D.C.

1995

Dr. L.C. (honorary) Università Degli Studi di Camerino, Camerino, Italy

1998

Dr. L.C. (honorary) Universität-Gesamthochschule, Siegen

January 22, 1999

Death of George L. Mosse

1950

Struggle for Sovereignty in England, from the Reign of Queen Elizabeth to the Petition of Right. New York: Octagon Books, 1950.

1953

The Reformation. New York: Holt, 1953.

1957

The Holy Pretence: A Study in Christianity and Reason of State from William Perkins to John Winthrop. New York: H. Fertig, 1957.

1957

Europe in Review. Readings and Sources since 1500. Edited with introductions by George L. Mosse and others. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1957.

1961

Culture of Western Europe: the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1961.

1964

The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1964.

1966

Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural, and Social Life in the Third Reich, Edited by George L. Mosse. New York: Schocken Books, 1966.

1968

with H.G. Koenigsberger Europe in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968.

1970

Germans and Jews; the Right, the Left, and the Search for a "Third Force" in Pre-Nazi Germany. New York: H. Fertig, 1970.

1974

Jews and Non-Jews in Eastern Europe, 1918-1945. Edited with Bela Vago. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1974.

1975

Nationalization of the Masses; Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich. New York: H. Fertig, 1975

1978

Toward the Final Solution: a History of European Racism. New York: H. Fertig, 1978.

1980

Masses and Man: Nationalist and Fascist Perceptions of Reality. New York, H. Fertig, 1980.

1985

Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe. New York: H. Fertig, 1985.

1990

Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

1993

Confronting the Nation: Jewish and Western Nationalism. Hanover: Published [for] Brandeis University Press by University Press of New England, 1993.

1996

Image of Man: the Creation of Modern Masculinity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

1999

Fascist Revolution: Toward a General Theory of Fascism. New York: H. Fertig, 1999.

2000

Confronting History: A Memoir. Madison, University of Wisconsin, 2000.