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Former Member of Staff: Professor Volker Berghahn

Warwick History Department, 1975-1988

 
Volker Berghahn is the Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University. He moved to New York in 1998 from Brown University where he was the John P. Birkelund Professor of History since 1988 after some twenty years of teaching at the universities of East Anglia and Warwick. He holds an M.A. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a Ph D. from the University of London. He completed his Habilitation at Mannheim University in 1970. He has published widely on modern German and European history as well as on trans-Atlantic economic and cultural relations during the Cold War. Two relevant titles on these latter themes are: The Americanization of West German Industry, 1945-1973 (Cambridge UP., 1986) and America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe (Princeton UP, 2001). He is currently working on European and American social scientists and modernization theory during the Cold War and on American big business perceptions of the German industrial system in the 20th century.

Education
Habilitation: University of Mannheim, 1970
Ph.D. - University of London, 1964
M.A. - University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1961

Interests and Research
Volker Berghahn, Seth Low Professor of History, specializes in modern German history and European-American relations. He received his M.A. from the University of North Carolina , Chapel Hill (1961) and his Ph.D. from the University of London (1964). He taught in England and Germany before coming to Brown University in 1988 and to Columbia ten years later. His publications include: America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe (2001); Quest for Economic Empire (ed., 1996); Imperial Germany (1995); The Americanization of West German Industry, 1945–1973 (1986); Modern Germany (1982); Der Tirpitz-Plan (1971); and most recently Europe in the Era of Two World Wars (2006).

Teaching
Modern Germany, 1871-2000
Europe, 1900-1945
European Historiography
European-American business relations
European-American cultural relations

Awards
Fellow, Royal Historical Society, England
Order of Merit, First Class, Federal Republic of Germany
Honorary Professor, University of Warwick
Fellow, Wissenschaftszentrum, Berlin
Helmut-Schmidt Prize of ZEIT Foundation

Selected Books
Industriegesellschaft und Kulturtransfer, Goettingen 2010
Europe in the Era of Two World Wars, 2006
America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe, 2001
Sarajewo 1914. Der Untergang des alten Europa, 1997
Imperial Germany, 1871-1914, 1995
Otto A. Friedrich. Ein politischer Unternehmer, 1993
The Americanization of West German Industry, 1945-1973, 1986
Militarism. The History of an International Debate, 1863-1979, 1982
Modern Germany. Economy, Society, and Politics in the Twentieth Century, 1982
Germany and the Approach of War in 1914, 1973

Selected Edited Volumes
with Simone Laessig, Between Structure and Agency, 2008
with Sigurt Vitols, Gibt es einen Deutschen Kapitalismus?, 2006
Quest for Economic Empire, 1996
with Wilhelm Deist, Rüstung im Zeichen der wilhelminischen Weltpolitik, 1988
with Martin Kitchen, Germany in the Age of Total War, 1981
Militarismus, 1975

Volker Berghahn