George L. Mosse was born in Berlin in 1918, the youngest child of Hans and Felicia Lachmann-Mosse, the heirs of a wealthy German publishing empire. While George would ultimately become one of the world’s most well known and respected historians, his early life gave no indication of this trajectory. He was a rambunctious and mischievous boy, known to be a troublemaker, and his time at boarding school only furthered this reputation. His grades were middling, and he put more effort into pranks than reading, cognizant of the rise of fascism in Germany but unaware of the myriad ways it would shape the rest of his life.

The Mosse family was Jewish, and they were exiled from Germany after Hitler came to power in 1933, their assets seized and their publishing empire quickly dissolved. George was sent to England, where he attended another boarding school, Bootham, and then the University of Cambridge. He began his study of history there, but his grades remained unremarkable. It was only when he immigrated to America with the rest of his family that he fully embraced his studies. Thanks to a special scholarship for German students, he attended Harvard University and earned his PhD in 1946. He then taught at the University of Iowa, where he focused on early modern European history. In 1955, he received a job offer from the University of Wisconsin, with the caveat that he teach modern European history instead. He accepted the position and thereby, launched his career as one of the world’s most prominent historians of Nazism, fascism, and mass movements.

George’s first exploration of contemporary issues such as Marxism and fascism was published as The Culture of Western Europe in 1961, a book that adapted his lectures from his first years teaching at Wisconsin as he investigated the societal movements that led to the calamities of the First and Second World Wars. He ultimately published more than 25 books, continuing to explore Nazism and fascism from different angles. George’s work was especially notable for moving beyond an elite view of history, focused on leading intellectuals and the ruling classes. Instead he turned to popular culture in an effort to understand the mass appeal of nationalism on a deeper level rooted in the day to day life and beliefs of Europeans. In books like The Nationalization of the Masses and Toward the Final Solution, George illustrated what he called a völkisch ideology, an organic movement characterized by ethnic nationalism that fostered an atmosphere of racism and antisemitism. He believed that fascism did not rise solely from economic uncertainty or other external factors, but rather from fascist leaders exploiting existing prejudices and beliefs among the populace to achieve their own ends.

In his later career, George broadened his approach to discuss the roles that masculinity and sexuality played in modern history. He continually re-examined his chosen field from new angles, adding enlightening depths to our modern understanding of fascism and the many factors that led to its origins. Unbeholden to any specific doctrine or school of thought, George crafted an all-encompassing view of this era that examined each root cause in detail. It was a profoundly meaningful undertaking for him, his work colored by a deep desire to understand the forces that had so shaped his life.

George was named the first Bascom Professor of European History and Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin, and he also held the Koebner Professorship of History at Hebrew University in Jerusalem beginning in 1969. He co-founded the Journal of Contemporary History with Walter Laquer in 1965, and edited the publication for the rest of life. George was a celebrated professor, and his lectures were well attended as he brought history to life with his endearingly boisterous, at times combative style. Beloved by his students, he gave advice and counsel above and beyond traditional teaching, imparting not just his own critical methods but his openness and tolerance of diverse political, religious, and social points of view.

George returned to Europe throughout the decades, visiting the continent as he traveled regularly from Madison to Jerusalem and back. He was back in Germany specifically on many occasions, exploring restitution for the family in the 1950s and later overseeing the family property and the preservation of the family’s legacy in the reunited Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall. George gave many interviews in Berlin, where he discussed past and present Mosse undertakings, and one of his most extensive was eventually published under the title I Remain An Emigrant (Ich bleibe Emigrant). Upon his death in 1999, George bequeathed his portion of the Mosse estate to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to continue the conversations he had been a part of on the history of exclusionary politics and the history of sexuality. This lives on today through the George L. Mosse Program in History and the Global Mosse Lecture Series, which supports  public talks around the world where innovative thinkers “confront and address the challenges that face our global societies.”

His posthumous autobiography, Confronting History, provided a retrospective view on his private and professional life, including his research, his Judaism, and his homosexuality. After his death, friends and colleagues established the  American History Association’s George L. Mosse Prize, an annual award given to “an outstanding major work of extraordinary scholarly distinction, creativity, and originality in the intellectual and cultural history of Europe.”

Additional resources:

George L. Mosse’s books are available from the University of Wisconsin Press.

A selection of George’s lecture are available on Minds@UW.

George L. Mosse, “Oral History Interview,” Parts 1 & 2
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | March 13, 1995:

George L. Mosse, “The Importance of Gay History”
George L. Mosse Program in History | October 18, 1996:

“George L. Mosse: The Man and the Legacy”
George L. Mosse Program in History | June 7, 2019: