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Central European History at Fifty: Notes from a Longtime Fan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2018

Konrad H. Jarausch*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Extract

In the mid-1960s, a small delegation of graduate students went to Theodore S. Hamerow's office at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Noting that the Journal of Central European Affairs had ceased publication in 1964, James Harris, Stanley Zucker, and I asked our advisor why there was no academic journal dedicated to German history, a new field that had been developing rapidly. What could we do to create such an organ? The otherwise placid Hamerow wrinkled his brow and angrily asked who had put us up to this initiative! When we answered that this was just our idea, he relaxed and told us that he was the chair of a committee charged by the Conference Group for Central European History with doing just that, namely, founding such a new journal. Douglas A. Unfug of Emory University had already put in a bid, in fact, and Central European History started to appear in 1968. By using a variation of the previous name, the journal hoped to pick up prior subscribers and avoid being identified by its title with the erstwhile enemy—Germany.

Type
Part I: Recollections and Reminiscences
Copyright
Copyright © Central European History Society of the American Historical Association 2018 

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References

1 Jarausch, Konrad H., “Contemporary History as a Transatlantic Project: Autobiographical Reflections on the German Problem, 1960–2010,” Historical Social Research 24 (2012): 749Google Scholar.

2 Stelzel, Philipp, “The Second Generation Emigres’ Impact on German Historiography,” in The Second Generation: Émigrés from Nazi Germany as Historians, ed. Daum, Andreas, Lehmann, Hartmut, and Sheehan, James J. (New York: Berghahn, 2016), 287303Google Scholar.

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21 See Jarausch, Konrad H.The Economic Dynamics of German Unification,” CEH 24 no. 4 (1991): 446–49Google Scholar; and reviews of: Ash, Timothy Garton, In Europe's Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (New York: Random House, 1993)Google Scholar, in CEH 27, no. 2 (1994): 257–59Google Scholar; Naimark, Norman, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995)Google Scholar, in CEH 29, no. 1 (1996): 142–45Google Scholar; Fulbrook, Mary, Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR, 1949–1989 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar, in CEH 30, no. 2 (1997): 344–46Google Scholar; Herbert, Ulrich, Geschichte Deutschlands im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: Beck Verlag, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in CEH 48, no. 2 (2015): 249–51Google Scholar; Merkl, Peter H. and Glaessner, Gert-Joachim, German Unification in the European Context (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993)Google Scholar, in CEH 27, no. 1 (1994): 121–23Google Scholar.

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29 Karen Hagemann, Tobias Hof, and Konrad H. Jarausch, eds, “Burdens and Beginnings: Rebuilding East and West Germany after Nazism,” CEH (forthcoming).

30 See the contributions by Kenneth Ledford and Kees Gispen in this commemorative issue.

31 Lessons and Legacies (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991-pres.)Google Scholar publishes the proceedings of the biennial Holocaust conference.

32 Lindenberger, Thomas and Sabrow, Martin, eds., German Zeitgeschichte: Konturen eines Forschungsfelds. Konrad Jarausch zum 75. Geburtstag (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2016)Google Scholar; Meng, Michael and Seipp, Adam, eds., Modern Germany in Transatlantic Perspective (New York: Berghahn, 2017)Google Scholar; Karen Hagemann, ed., “Festgabe in Honor of Konrad H. Jarausch” (Chapel Hill, NC: ms., 2017).