Taylor’s revisionist interpretation of the origins of World War II, and Ralf Dahrendorf’s formulation of a German “special path” ( Sonderweg) to modernization, U.S. While German historians threshed out Fritz Fischer’s thesis of an expansionist Second Reich as prelude to the Third, A. This was also a time of lively political and scholarly debates. The 1960s were an auspicious time to study diplomatic history because of the availability of the captured German government records on microfilm for the period between 18. Thus, in my Bard senior thesis, intrigued by the Allied Control Council’s accusatory language in its dissolution of the state of Prussia in 1947, I attempted to revise the mythology of the warrior-absolutist-bureaucratic state. As a student I sought unexplored issues in German history. I’m often asked, “why German history”? At an early age I was drawn to this subject not only because of the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust but also because of my immersion in the literature, poetry, and music of Central Europe and my questions about a people riven by religious and social conflicts, diverse regimes, shifting boundaries, and clashing narratives of national direction and identity. Gatzke at Yale for his extraordinary understanding and support when I followed my own path. I also thank my teachers: Howard Shaw at the Bronx High School of Science for encouraging unorthodox intellectual views, Hsi-Huey Liang and Heinrich Blücher at Bard for asking the hard questions and Ralph Ellison for his kindness and friendship, and my Ph.D.

Let me also thank my parents for the trip to Québec that stirred my wonder at exploring historic places and my enchantment with the French language.Ībove all, let me express profound gratitude to my birthplace, New York City, for the libraries, museums, theaters, and concert halls that provided joy and enlightenment, and for the buses and subways that carried me to after-school and summer jobs where I learned the world of commercial insurance, copyright and patent law, high-end liquor imports, and office-building materials to my volunteer stints in hospitals, the Red Cross, and with deaf children and to enchanting destinations such as the ocean ships docked in New York harbor, the Cloisters, and Coney Island. Let me start with my grandmother, who thrilled me with the language and landscape of her pre-World War I village in southeastern Poland (that I would visit a century later).

We are all children of our times, and certainly the twentieth century’s wars, genocides, social protests, and economic upheaval shaped my consciousness but my family did as well. It is an honor to join my distinguished colleagues in relating my career as an historian but it is also a daunting task to create a useful and coherent narrative of the paths I have followed. Essay by Carole Fink, The Ohio State University, Emerita

The Genoa Conference by Carole Fink