Volker Berghahn is the Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University where he moved in 1998 from Brown University, after a longer spell of teaching at the University of Warwick in England. The author of more than a dozen books, he has long been interested in the challenges of modern biography. In 1993, he published a study of the industrialist Otto A. Friedrich and his role in the reconstruction of West German industry after 1945. His America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe uses Shepard Stone—renowned journalist, Ford Foundation officer in charge of its European and international programs, and the first director of the Berlin Aspen Institute—as a window to the trans-Atlantic world of American and European intellectuals and scholars, many of whom were associated with the Congress for Cultural Freedom during the Cold War.

• PrefaceChapter 1. Introduction: Biography in Modern History—Modern Historiography in BiographySimone LässigChapter 2. Biography and the Historian: Opportunities and ConstraintsIan KershawChapter 3. Dreams and Nightmares: Writing the Biography of Kaiser Wilhelm IIJohn C.G. RöhlChapter 4. Gustav Stresemann: A German Bürger?Karl Heinrich PohlChapter 5. Women’s Biographies—Men’s History?Angelika SchaserChapter 6. Historiography, Biography, and Experience: The Case of Hans RothfelsJan EckelChapter 7. A Historian’s Life in Biographical Perspective: Johan HuizingaChristoph StruppChapter 8. The Heroic Ecstasy of Drunken Elephants: The Substrate of Nature in Max Weber—A Missing Link between his Life and WorkJoachim RadkauChapter 9. Generational Experience and Genocide: A Biographical Approach to Nazi PerpetratorsMichael WildtChapter 10. Criminal Biographies and Biographies of Criminals: Understanding the History of War Crimes Trials andPerpetrator “Routes to Crime” Using Biographical MethodHilary EarlChapter 11. From Himmler’s Circle of Friends to the Lions Club: The Career of a Provincial Nazi LeaderHartmut Berghoff and Cornelia Rauh-KühneChapter 12. Contexts and Contradictions: Writing the Biography of a Holocaust SurvivorMark RosemanChapter 13. The Improbable Biography: Uncommon Sources, a Moving Identity, a Plural Story?Willem FrijhoffChapter 14. Structuralism and Biography: Some Concluding Thoughts on the Uncertainties of a Historiographical GenreVolker R. BerghahnBibliographyNotes on Contributors

Volker Berghahn is the Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University where he moved in 1998 from Brown University, after a longer spell of teaching at the University of Warwick in England. The author of more than a dozen books, he has long been interested in the challenges of modern biography. In 1993, he published a study of the industrialist Otto A. Friedrich and his role in the reconstruction of West German industry after 1945. His America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe uses Shepard Stone—renowned journalist, Ford Foundation officer in charge of its European and international programs, and the first director of the Berlin Aspen Institute—as a window to the trans-Atlantic world of American and European intellectuals and scholars, many of whom were associated with the Congress for Cultural Freedom during the Cold War.

• PrefaceChapter 1. Introduction: Biography in Modern History—Modern Historiography in BiographySimone LässigChapter 2. Biography and the Historian: Opportunities and ConstraintsIan KershawChapter 3. Dreams and Nightmares: Writing the Biography of Kaiser Wilhelm IIJohn C.G. RöhlChapter 4. Gustav Stresemann: A German Bürger?Karl Heinrich PohlChapter 5. Women’s Biographies—Men’s History?Angelika SchaserChapter 6. Historiography, Biography, and Experience: The Case of Hans RothfelsJan EckelChapter 7. A Historian’s Life in Biographical Perspective: Johan HuizingaChristoph StruppChapter 8. The Heroic Ecstasy of Drunken Elephants: The Substrate of Nature in Max Weber—A Missing Link between his Life and WorkJoachim RadkauChapter 9. Generational Experience and Genocide: A Biographical Approach to Nazi PerpetratorsMichael WildtChapter 10. Criminal Biographies and Biographies of Criminals: Understanding the History of War Crimes Trials andPerpetrator “Routes to Crime” Using Biographical MethodHilary EarlChapter 11. From Himmler’s Circle of Friends to the Lions Club: The Career of a Provincial Nazi LeaderHartmut Berghoff and Cornelia Rauh-KühneChapter 12. Contexts and Contradictions: Writing the Biography of a Holocaust SurvivorMark RosemanChapter 13. The Improbable Biography: Uncommon Sources, a Moving Identity, a Plural Story?Willem FrijhoffChapter 14. Structuralism and Biography: Some Concluding Thoughts on the Uncertainties of a Historiographical GenreVolker R. BerghahnBibliographyNotes on Contributors

Volker Berghahn is the Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University where he moved in 1998 from Brown University, after a longer spell of teaching at the University of Warwick in England. The author of more than a dozen books, he has long been interested in the challenges of modern biography. In 1993, he published a study of the industrialist Otto A. Friedrich and his role in the reconstruction of West German industry after 1945. His America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe uses Shepard Stone—renowned journalist, Ford Foundation officer in charge of its European and international programs, and the first director of the Berlin Aspen Institute—as a window to the trans-Atlantic world of American and European intellectuals and scholars, many of whom were associated with the Congress for Cultural Freedom during the Cold War.

• PrefaceChapter 1. Introduction: Biography in Modern History—Modern Historiography in BiographySimone LässigChapter 2. Biography and the Historian: Opportunities and ConstraintsIan KershawChapter 3. Dreams and Nightmares: Writing the Biography of Kaiser Wilhelm IIJohn C.G. RöhlChapter 4. Gustav Stresemann: A German Bürger?Karl Heinrich PohlChapter 5. Women’s Biographies—Men’s History?Angelika SchaserChapter 6. Historiography, Biography, and Experience: The Case of Hans RothfelsJan EckelChapter 7. A Historian’s Life in Biographical Perspective: Johan HuizingaChristoph StruppChapter 8. The Heroic Ecstasy of Drunken Elephants: The Substrate of Nature in Max Weber—A Missing Link between his Life and WorkJoachim RadkauChapter 9. Generational Experience and Genocide: A Biographical Approach to Nazi PerpetratorsMichael WildtChapter 10. Criminal Biographies and Biographies of Criminals: Understanding the History of War Crimes Trials andPerpetrator “Routes to Crime” Using Biographical MethodHilary EarlChapter 11. From Himmler’s Circle of Friends to the Lions Club: The Career of a Provincial Nazi LeaderHartmut Berghoff and Cornelia Rauh-KühneChapter 12. Contexts and Contradictions: Writing the Biography of a Holocaust SurvivorMark RosemanChapter 13. The Improbable Biography: Uncommon Sources, a Moving Identity, a Plural Story?Willem FrijhoffChapter 14. Structuralism and Biography: Some Concluding Thoughts on the Uncertainties of a Historiographical GenreVolker R. BerghahnBibliographyNotes on Contributors