On Friday, March 10, Jürgen Heideking, a professor of modern history and director of the Anglo-American Institute at the University of Cologne (1992-2000), a member of the GHI's Academic Advisory Council (1992-2000), and a former senior research fellow at the GHI, died tragically in a car accident close to his home in Brühl, Germany. He was not quite 53 years old. He is mourned - and celebrated - by students, colleagues, and the academy as a central figure in the European study of American history.
Jürgen Heideking, one of the first research fellows at the GHI, served as deputy to its founding director, Hartmut Lehmann. He established the GHI's scholarship programs, planned and organized numerous conferences and workshops, and was instrumental in building up the GHI Library. During his tenure in Washington, D.C., he used his widespread academic contacts in Europe and North America to create a network of scholars that would remain supportive for years to come.
Jürgen Heideking studied at the University of Tübingen (1968-74) and at the Sorbonne (1970-1). He earned his Ph.D. in 1978, and his Dr. phil. habil. in 1987 - both from Tübingen. A student of Gerhard Schulz, Heideking's work spanned centuries: He started out as a classicist - his first book focused on antiquity (Chronologie des Perikleischen Zeitalters, with Erich Bayer, 1975) - but then turned his attention to the twentieth century (Areopag der Diplomaten: Die Pariser Botschafterkonferenz der alliierten Hauptmächte und die Probleme der europäischen Politik 1920-1931, 1977). He later broadened his scope even further by choosing an American topic of the early modern period for his Habilitation. He traveled to the University of Wisconsin at Madison to mine their holdings in constitutional history. His years in Madison, when he was a Feodor Lynen Fellow of the Humboldt Foundation (1983-4), had a strong impact on him. He often felt drawn back to Madison and returned almost annually "to celebrate salacious parties," as he joked, with the many friends he and his family had made there over the years.
Back in Tübingen, Jürgen Heideking finished his magisterial work on the origins of the U.S. Constitution. Its title, inspired by a quotation from George Washington ("The Constitution is now before the Judgement Seat"; Die Verfassung vor dem Richterstuhl: Vorgeschichte und Ratifizierung der amerikanischen Verfassung 1787-1791, 1988), is somewhat misleading. His analysis was not limited to the Constitution but embraced a wide range of topics on American political culture of the "early national period." For example, by focusing on public festivities and celebrations he discovered that rituals, myths, and symbols are essential to an understanding of political beliefs and social values. His study also demonstrated that the public discourse during the "critical period" of the young nation transformed American society from the republicanism of the founding fathers to a new form of "modern democracy," one characterized by pluralism, that did not exist in Europe. (See the forthcoming collection he edited with James A. Henretta on Republicanism and Liberalism in America and the German States, 1750-1850, 2001).
Jürgen Heideking's scholarly findings strengthened his belief in the "American experiment." He was confident that American society, despite its endemic problems - social inequality and voter apathy - brought progress both to citizens and new immigrants. At a lecture in Jerusalem last year he spoke of a "Pattern of American Modernity" that he believed to be characteristic of America's unique path in history. Fascinated by the many "American cultures," Heideking was convinced - as he told his students and friends on many occasions - that the U.S. political and constitutional discourse over the last 200 years as well as the high degree of self-reflection and self-criticism in the society were the true stabilizing elements of American democracy. An author of more than twenty major articles in the fields of international relations and history, and a keen observer of contemporary international events, he also had faith in America's role as a global player.
During his tenure at the GHI, Jürgen Heideking conducted groundbreaking research on the German resistance to Hitler and U.S. intelligence during World War II. He co-authored three books on this topic, including American Intelligence and the German Resistance to Hitler: A Documentary History (1996). In addition, he co-organized several major international conferences, including one on the German Basic Law, one on political and economic issues in the interwar period (published in 1991 as Genoa, Rapallo, and European Reconstruction in 1922), and two on German influences in education - one held at Madison and one at Tübingen. (The first was published in 1995 as German Influences on Education in the United States to 1917; the second, in 1997, as a special issue of Paedagogica Historica.) At the GHI, Heideking had worked to expand scholarship opportunities for younger German and American scholars and co-edited the GHI's first scholarship guide (German-American Scholarship Guide for Historians and Social Scientists/Deutsch-Amerikanischer Stipendienführer für Historiker und Sozialwissenschaftler, 1989).
In 1990 Jürgen Heideking became both the first "Professor of North American History" at the University of Tübingen (and in the state of Baden-Württemberg) and the acting director of that university's Institute for Contemporary History. Upon his return to Germany he told his students that the two-and-a-half years at the GHI had been a very special time for him and his family, but that he longed to get back into the classroom. He loved class discussions and was an extremely sympathetic mentor as well as a constructive critic. His enthusiastic manner attracted scores of graduate and undergraduate students. Sometimes he would take students on excursions in order to "convey a sense of the immediacy of history." In the fall of 1999 he organized a workshop at the GHI for his "team" - one of his favorite words - of doctoral and postdoctoral students; and shortly before his untimely death, he had taken a class to the Roosevelt Study Center at Middelburg in The Netherlands. He also designed and developed collaborative book projects with his students. Already in 1981, when very few German professors taught courses on the Holocaust, he edited a remarkable collection of essays that students had written under his guidance (Holocaust: Nationalsozialistische Judenpolitik und Judenvernichtung 1933-1945, 1981); another collection of student essays - on the Civil Rights movement in the United States - is underway.
In 1992 Jürgen Heideking accepted an offer to succeed Erich Angermann as director of the prestigious Anglo-American Institute and as chair of British and American history at Cologne. With funding from major research foundations, he initiated several research projects in the field of U.S. environmental history (for example, "The German Experience with the Land in the Midwest"), on decolonization in Asia and Africa, in comparative history (see his Zwei Wege in die Moderne: Aspekte der deutsch-amerikanischen Beziehungen vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg, with Ragnhild Fiebig-von Hase, 1998), and on ceremonies in U.S. history (see his Ceremonies and Spectacles: America and the Staging of Collective Identities, with Geneviève Fabre, 2000).
Jürgen Heideking also wrote books on American history that appealed to a broader public. In total he authored and edited over twenty books. He loved to write and believed that the best way to explain the past was through narrative accounts. Heideking's solid research and his illuminating analyses were written with the kind of clarity and elegance that appealed to scholars and laymen alike. His 500-page overview of U.S. history has become a standard "textbook" (Geschichte der USA, 1996), and his introduction to the study of U.S. history has been praised by both students and scholars (Einführung in die amerikanische Geschichte, with Vera Nünning, 1998). His book on the American presidents from Washington to Clinton became a bestseller in Germany and has been translated into several languages, including Russian (Die amerikanischen Präsidenten: 41 historische Porträts von George Washington bis Bill Clinton, 2d ed., 1997).
Within a few years, Jürgen Heideking rose to become one of the leading European experts on American history. In addition to his constant stream of widely respected publications, he established a new book series on U.S. culture and history ("Mosaic: Studien und Texte zur amerikanischen Kultur und Geschichte"), he edited a series on U.S. documentary films ("Studien zum amerikanischen Doku-mentarfilm"), and he gave numerous radio and TV interviews on U.S. politics and culture, particularly for Deutsche Welle. He was elected to the GHI's Academic Advisory Council and became a member of its scholarship committee. He joined, among others, the advisory board of the German Association of American Studies (DGfA), the board of the Intelligence History Study Group (as a founding member), and was elected to serve on committees of the German-American Academic Council (GAAC/DAAK), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and the Humboldt Foundation.
In 1997 Jürgen Heideking became the first - and so far the only - recipient of the prestigious Schurman Award of the University of Heidelberg for his Die Verfassung vor dem Richterstuhl - "the best book on U.S. history written by a German." The book will soon be published in English by Madison House.
Jürgen Heideking was an optimist. He had faith in the progress of civilization, diplomacy, and liberty. His greatest concern was for the academic prospects of the younger generation; whenever and wherever he could, he helped create new positions for doctoral and postdoctoral scholars. His work towered over that of many others, but he was entirely free of conceit. He had a touch of modesty and lightness in his voice, and a smile for his students and colleagues. Heideking is survived by his wife, Anne, and two children, Martin and Claudia.
He will be very dearly missed.
Christof Mauch