12 Facts About Fritz Stern

Fritz Richard Stern was a German-born American historian of German history, Jewish history and historiography.

Fritz Stern was a University Professor and a provost at New York's Columbia University.

Fritz Stern's work focused on the complex relationships between Germans and Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries and on the rise of National Socialism in Germany during the first half of the 20th century.

Fritz Stern's father, Rudolf Stern, was a physician, medical researcher and a veteran of the First World War.

Fritz Stern's mother, Kathe Stern, was a noted theorist, practitioner and reformer in the field of education for young children.

The family settled in Jackson Heights, Queens, where Fritz Stern spent the remainder of his childhood, attended public school and quickly learned English while his parents re-established their respective careers.

Fritz Stern then attended Columbia University, where he received his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees.

In 1993 to 1994, Fritz Stern served as an adviser to the US ambassador to Germany, Richard Holbrooke.

In 2010, Fritz Stern spoke at the former German military headquarters building, the Bendlerblock, on the 66th anniversary of an assassination attempt on Hitler.

Fritz Stern traced the origins of Nazism back to the 19th-century volkische movement.

Fritz Stern considered that the virulent anti-Semitic volkische movement to have been the result of the "politics of cultural despair" experienced by German intellectuals, who were unable to come to grips with modernity.

However, Fritz Stern rejected the Sonderweg interpretation of German history and considered the ideas of the volkische movement to have been merely a "dark undercurrent" in 19th-century German society.