Abstract

The account of the author’s life, spent between Europe and America, is at the same time an account of his generation, one that came of age between the two World Wars. Recalling not only circumstances of his own situation but that of his friends, the author shows how this generation faced a reality that seemed fragmented, and in their shared thirst for knowledge and commitment to ideas they searched for cohesiveness among the glittering, holistic ideologies and movements of the twenties and thirties. The author’s scholarly work on the German Resistance to Hitler revealed to him those who maintained dignity and courage in times of peril and despair, which became for him a life’s pursuit. This work is unique in its thorough inclusion of the postwar decades and its perspective from a historian eager to rescue the “other” Germany—the Germany of the righteous rather than the Holocaust murderers.

Born in Berlin of an Austrian family of Jewish background Klemens von Klemperer studied in Vienna until 1938 when he was forced to emigrate to the United States. He continued his studies at Harvard University, which were then interrupted from 1943 to 1946 by his service in the US Army. After receiving his PhD in History from Harvard University, he taught at Smith College, and after his retirement, at neighboring institutions.

“An intriguing view of a historian’s journey through the last century... a pleasure to read. With this memoir, von Klemperer joins the ranks of other historian memoirists such as Peter Gay, Felix Gilbert, and Werner Angress. It is a thoughtful and interesting account of what it was like to be a conservative historian of Germany in the decades after 1945.”  ·  Catherine Epstein, Associate Professor of History, Amherst College