Catherine Epstein

A Past Renewed: A Catalog of German-Speaking Refugee Historians in the United States after 1933

Publications of the German Historical Institute. Cambridge University Press, 1993.


A Past Renewed portrays the generation of German-speaking refugee historians who settled in the United States after fleeing Hitler's Europe. Bio-bibliographical entries on eighty-eight refugee historians document their scholarly contributions, historical interests, and impact on the American historical profession after 1945. Besides material on noted historians of modern Europe such as Felix Gilbert, Hajo Holborn, and Hans Rosenberg, the catalog includes information on many other historians influential in the fields of Jewish history, Renaissance history, the history of Roman and Canon Law, Chinese history, and the history of medicine. A Past Renewed provides a valuable reference work for scholars interested in the academic emigration from Nazi Germany, historiographical developments in the United States in the postwar era, the collective contribution of refugee historians to the American historical profession, and the lives and works of individual refugee historians.