Interview with Anson Rabinbach

Partial Transcript: "Well let's go back to the beginning. Where and when were you born?"

Segment Synopsis: Anson Rabinbach (RB) was born in 1945 in the Bronx, New York., which was a Jewish neighborhood at the time. He came from a very Jewish background. Both of his parents spoke Yiddish. His father worked as a tailor and was involved with the Yiddish communist New York daily newspaper. AR never became fluent in Yiddish, but his parents immersed him in Yiddish-communist culture and he attended Yiddish day school for several years. Knowing some Yiddish helped AR learn German. His father moved to a Yiddish speaking communist community in Florida when he retired in the 1960s.

Keywords: Bronx, New York; Communism; Soviet Union; Yiddish

Partial Transcript: "So Anson is an unusual name, how did you end up with that name?"

Segment Synopsis: AR's parents found his first name, Anson, in a book. His parents were not familiar with American culture and thought that it was a common American name like Fred or John. He was loosely named after a grandmother who died on the boat passage from Europe to America.

Keywords: American Culture; Names

Partial Transcript: "So you've described your father a bit. What was your mother like?"

Segment Synopsis: AR did not want to have anything to do with Jewish culture when he was a teenager. He saw Jewish culture as ancient. His parents did not get along and the "war" between them dominated AR's childhood.

Keywords: Bronx, New York; Jewish Culture

Partial Transcript: "So were there any family members, individuals, teachers who encouraged you in your studies, in your life?"

Segment Synopsis: AR called himself a bad student and never graduated from high school because he missed too many days and dropped out. He later went back to a road school to get his high school diploma. AR wrote his dissertation on Austrian Social Democracy, which his father read and commented on because he had spent time in the Weimar Republic and knew many of the people AR was writing about.

Keywords: Austria; Dissertation; Education; High School

Partial Transcript: "So you were an indifferent student. So what happened that allowed you to go to university and where did you go to school?"

Segment Synopsis: AR applied to several universities and upon receiving his high school diploma from the roads school, his earlier high school record was expunged. He attended a community college in Long Island and almost transferred to Queens College after a year, but he was offered a full scholarship and so he stayed and got a degree in history. AR had several professors who sparked his interest in history.

Keywords: History; Long Island; New York; University

Partial Transcript: "Did you have German by then?"

Segment Synopsis: The summer after receiving his undergraduate degree, AR went abroad to learn German. AR was pretty certain that the professor who taught him Austrian history that summer was a Nazi. By the end of the summer, AR had picked up some German. He received his master's degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and wrote his thesis on Jewish migration. AR talked about why George Mosse was attracted to him as a PhD candidate.

Keywords: Austria; German; Nazism; University of Wisconsin-Madison; World War II

Partial Transcript: "What were you doing down there in Greenwich Village?"

Segment Synopsis: AR discussed how he saw Lenny Bruce in Greenwich Village. He applied to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Chicago for graduate school. When he toured the University of Chicago, he did not like the snobbish atmosphere. He met George Mosse and some of his students at the terrace and had an engaging conversation when he toured UW-Madison.

Keywords: Greenwich Village; Lenny Bruce; University of Chicago; University of Wisconsin-Madison

Partial Transcript: "So now you're in Madison. It's the height of the sixties, anti-war politics and culture. You've met George. He's accepted you as a graduate student. So what was Madison like in those days when you first arrive?"

Segment Synopsis: AR described Madison as intellectually electric in the sixties when he attended graduate school. People were interested in learning and exchanging ideas. AR described the crowd during the day of the Dow Protests. He addressed the history of intellectual leftism in Madison and the leftist newspapers on campus. AR and the interviewer traced the university's leftist roots to the McCarthy era and Joseph McCarthy.

Keywords: 1960s; Dow Protests; Joseph McCarthy; Madison, Wisconsin; University of Wisconsin-Madison

Partial Transcript: "But anyways, to get back to that question of the origins of the new left partially in Madison certainly, significantly in Madison, but would you say that any theoretical underpinnings of the new left came out of Madison?"

Segment Synopsis: AR discussed the Port Huron Statement, which was the first attempt to lay out the framework of the new left. Madison had a strong SDS chapter, but AR does not think that they contributed to the new left statement. UW-Madison was seen was the place to attend if you wanted to do serious new left research, instead of Columbia and Berkley, which were seen as too activist. AR talked about a publication that he was involved with called Radical America.

Keywords: 1960s; New Left Movement; Port Huron Statement; Radical America; SDS; University of Wisconsin-Madison

Partial Transcript: "So what professors at UW in those years would have been engaged in this leftist dialogue that developed?"

Segment Synopsis: AR discussed taking an American intellectual history course with Merle Curti, which he did not enjoy. The course covered the history of libraries. AR liked taking classes with the professors who replaced George Mosse when he would go abroad to Jerusalem for a semester. He talked about the professor who got him interested in Austrio-Marxism. AR went to Vienna in January of 1971, when the campaign for chancellor in Austria was in full swing.

Keywords: George L. Mosse; Jerusalem; Marxism; Merle Curti; University of Wisconsin-Madison; Vienna, Austria

Partial Transcript: "So what about Hans Gerth. Did you take any course with him?"

Segment Synopsis: AR discussed the lectures of Professor Hans Gerth. He calls the lectures an unstoppable combination of prejudice and brilliant insights. He would go to Hans Gerth's house on Sundays and listen to the professor talk. George Mosse did not like Hans Gerth, which surprised the interviewer. Mosse felt that Gerth exploited his status as a refugee and Gerth had written for a Berlin newspaper that Mosse disapproved of. Hans Gerth was unpopular in the sociology department. AR and the interviewer discussed how academics are generally cautious in the current academic climate.

Keywords: Berlin; George L. Mosse; Hans Gerth; Newspapers; Refugees; University of Wisconsin-Madison

Partial Transcript: "One of the jobs that I had, I worked a lot when I was in college and one of the jobs that I had was stealing jokes."

Segment Synopsis: In college, AR had a job with an unsuccessful comedian stealing jokes from other comedians at hotels and comedy clubs. He was once caught by a comedian while stealing jokes and was thrown out of the hotel. George Mosse incorporated standup comedy into his lectures.

Keywords: Comedy; George L. Mosse; Lectures; New York City; Stealing Jokes

Partial Transcript: "And that goes to an interesting point we haven't really talked about, which was: what was his relationship to the new left?"

Segment Synopsis: AR categorized George Mosse as a progressive liberal. He was not a Cold War warrior, but instead had a lot of tolerance. George Mosse was able to relate to people whose political ideas he didn't agree with. He would provoke people in a humorous, ironic way. AR told a story about when some students picketed George's house and called him a fascist. George's response was, "Yes, but what kind of a fascist?"

Keywords: Fascism; George L. Mosse; The New Left; Tolerence; University of Wisconsin-Madison

Partial Transcript: "Okay so we should get back to your academic work..."

Segment Synopsis: AR discussed George Mosse's strong personal relationships with his students. Mosse helped AR when his mother died and played a significant role in the lives of many of his other students.

Keywords: George L. Mosse; University of Wisconsin-Madison

Partial Transcript: "So you're in Madison, you're beginning to work with George. So we've talked about this a bit, but what was he like as teacher, as a grad advisor?"

Segment Synopsis: AR described Mosse's approach to grad advising as a combination of toughness and uncompromising disciplinarian. He believed that there were certain things that historians had to be able to do and he personally admitted students to his graduate class instead of the department. AR's first assignment in Mosse's graduate seminar was to translate and annotate a German document as if AR was creating a critical addition of the document. AR received a sixteenth century Lutheran document in a German that no longer existed in a gothic script that was difficult to read. There was a famous historian in the seminar who could not complete the assignment and left George's class. George required his students to give a presentation to the seminar and would stop the presentation if he became bored.

Keywords: George L. Mosse; Graduate School; Teaching; University of Wisconsin-Madison

Partial Transcript: "So we've talked a bit about George as a graduate teacher and the process that he developed to teach graduate students..."

Segment Synopsis: The interviewer pointed out that AR was one of George's last PhD students and most of George's graduate students were within a small, ten year period. George Mosse insisted that if you didn't have anything new to say, then don't bother saying anything. He became more engaged at the Hebrew University after 1968.

Keywords: George L. Mosse; Graduate School; Hebrew University; University of Wisconsin-Madison

Partial Transcript: "Can I tell one George story before we go on because I just, it came into my head and I don't want to miss telling you this."

Segment Synopsis: George Mosse came to Germany in the 1970s, when AR was living in Vienna and the two met up. The pair visited George's old school in Germany, which had drastically changed since George had attended the school in the 1930s. AR and George came across a group of students in the courtyard smoking pot and listening to the Rolling Stones.

Keywords: George L. Mosse; Germany; School; The Rolling Stones

Partial Transcript: "He used to travel a lot with his students, going way back to the '50s. I think that's unusual."

Segment Synopsis: Mosse took a trip to Mexico in 1957 with two of his students and the two students got very sick. He also traveled across Eastern Europe with the man who started the American Enterprise Institute and was the Time Magazine bureau chief for Eastern Europe.

Keywords: Eastern Europe; George L. Mosse; Mexico; Time Magazine; Traveling

Partial Transcript: "Okay so it was (inaudible) that directed you towards..." "My dissertation subject."

Segment Synopsis: AR wrote his dissertation on the politics of Austrian social democracy, which was approved by Mosse. George Mosse did not give in-depth, page by page criticism on dissertations, but would just provide a few pages of feedback that AR said always hit the nail on the head. George felt that the main actor that AR had built his dissertation around was not that important and so AR went back to Vienna and spent another two years rewriting his dissertation. AR's dissertation became about the crisis of Austrian socialism. The interviewer discussed how Mosse would judge a book by its first two paragraphs. Mosse had a saying that went, "You don't have to drink the whole bottle to know if the wine is any good." AR eventually turned his dissertation into a book, which took a lot of work.

Keywords: Dissertation; George L. Mosse; Vienna, Austria

Partial Transcript: "So tell me about some of your colleagues that you studied with at UW..."

Segment Synopsis: When AR first arrived at UW-Madison, one of his colleagues, Sterling, had a heart attack and AR had to teach his course on the history of European education, a subject on which AR had very little background. AR talked about a colleague who monitored and disagreed with how AR taught the course. He also discussed other colleagues who were influential in his academic career.

Keywords: European Educational History; George L. Mosse; University of Wisconsin-Madison

Partial Transcript: "Did you know Harvey Goldberg or take any courses from Harvey?"

Segment Synopsis: AR would occasionally sit in on one of Harvey Goldberg's classes. While AR had always considered himself on the left, he disagreed with Harvey's approach to history and the history of the left. AR discussed the faculty on his dissertation committee, one of the members being Harvey Goldberg.

Keywords: Harvey Goldberg; Leftist Politics

Partial Transcript: "So that's why I was asking about Madison as an intellectual base for the new left because of these publications and these scholars that came out and these ideas that came out of it..."

Segment Synopsis: AR talked about how he wanted to reinvent German studies and bring the Frankfort school to America. He translated work from the Frankfort school into English. AR discussed a scholar who became interested in the Grimm fairytales. The journal, New German Critique, that AR helped start, was still thriving during the time of the interview. Mosse would occasionally write for the journal. JSTOR has helped the journal spread its reader base.

Keywords: Frankfort School; George L. Mosse; German Studies; Grimm Fairytales; New German Critique

Partial Transcript: "Okay, so is there anything else you want to say about your Madison years?"

Segment Synopsis: When AR left Madison, his scholarship was closely aligned with Mosse's work. Mosse set up a trip to Germany for AR to work with an expert on Nazi history. AR's post-Madison project was called the Beauty of Labor and it was published in the Journal of Contemporary History. The project was later expanded into a book called The Human Motor, which was about technologies of work and the body from the nineteenth century through the 1940s. This project allowed AR to combine his interests in Marxism, Nazism and the Frankfort School. One of his chapters was on the history of thermodynamics and Marxism. AR discussed how Mosse was very proud of the book that AR wrote.

Keywords: Frankfort School; George L, Mosse; Germany; Journal of Contemporary History; Marxism; Nazism; Technology; University of Wisconsin-Madison

Partial Transcript: "Have you read the transcript to that seminar at Stanford that he did the year before that book came out?"

Segment Synopsis: All of the experts on fascism were brought together for a seminar at Stanford to critique Mosse's book. Every week they would focus on a new chapter and Mosse would have to defend that chapter. The interviewer felt that this seminar marked a shift away from Mosse's focus on early modern history. During the time of the seminar, many academics thought of Nazism in terms of a failure of modernism and a failure of liberalism. Mosse disagreed with these explanations. Many historians, especially in Germany, ignored Mosse's ideas and contributions.

Keywords: George L. Mosse; Liberalism; Modernism; Nazism; Stanford University

Partial Transcript: "Well anyways, we've been going an hour and a half. Do you want to wrap this up and we could continue another time?"

Segment Synopsis: Anson's book, The Human Motor, demonstrated that UW-Madison and George Mosse were the engines of new left thinking. AR said the Human Motor was a way to operationalize the Frankfort School in a historical framework. He wanted to write a history that was informed by the Frankfort school, but not about the Frankfort school.

Keywords: George L. Mosse; Technology; The Frankfort School; The Human Motor; The New Left; University of Wisconsin-Madison

Partial Transcript: "So you then got a job at Cooper Union." "No, Hampshire College."

Segment Synopsis: After finishing graduate school, AR got a job at Hampshire College, which he described as an expensive liberal arts college that could not decide between being an academic institution or a therapeutic community. AR wanted the college to go in the direction of an academic institution, but many of the faculty did not want the college to go in that direction. When AR arrived at Hampshire college, there were very few courses and instead, professors held what AR called small "therapy sessions." AR created a course called Capitalism and Empire that he taught for two semesters at the college, which was a popular course. He stayed at Hampshire College for only three years because it was draining to have to stay in his office to see students all day long. After he left the college, he got a yearlong fellowship in New York and then went to work for Cooper Union.

Keywords: Academia; Capitalism; Cooper Union; Empires; Hampshire College; New York

Partial Transcript: "and then you were there until the nineties...."

Segment Synopsis: AR taught only undergraduate courses at Cooper Union. He taught a two semester survey course called The Making of the Modern World. He described Cooper Union as a chaotic place that was poorly run because the president of the college was incompetent. While he taught at Cooper Union, AR also wrote political pieces for a publication called Descent. He also taught for a semester at a small liberal arts college in St. Petersburg, Russia on a Fulbright teaching scholarship during the early Putin years.

Keywords: Cooper Union; Descent; Fulbright Scholarship; New York City; St. Petersburg, Russia; The Soviet Union; Vladimir Putin

Partial Transcript: "And you kept active in your scholarly life? I mean you had the time, you weren't overburdened with administrative or teaching responsibilities at Cooper..."

Segment Synopsis: AR could not do the type of archival research that he loved at Cooper Union. He wrote a book based on already published sources called In the Shadow of Catastrophe, which was released in 1996. The book was an attempt to compare the two German schools during the postwar periods following the first and second world wars. AR discussed the differences in the way the schools thought about catastrophe in the wake of the two world wars.

Keywords: Archival Work; Books; Germany; World War I; World War II

Partial Transcript: "So would you say your teaching style was influenced by George's?"

Segment Synopsis: AR wished his teaching style was more like that of George Mosse, who made jokes during his lectures. Mosse did not lecture at people, but had a talent for speaking to them during his lectures. The interviewer discussed how Mosse vigorously prepared for his lectures. He used his lectures as a laboratory for how to present his research. AR and the interviewer agreed that he was a great performer. Mosse wrote out his lectures in advance, but did not read from the script when he presented his lecture. He moved around while lecturing and was very aware of the audience's reception of his presentation. AR integrated computers into his lectures, which Mosse would never have allowed.

Keywords: George L. Mosse; Lectures; Presentations

Partial Transcript: "Has your teaching changed at all over the years?"

Segment Synopsis: During the time of the interview, AR taught in a large department of seventy-one people at Princeton University. He taught a course on the history of twentieth century Europe from World War I to the collapse of the Soviet Union and seminars. He felt that his teaching has become more elemental. He used many primary sources rather than secondary sources. George Mosse rarely assigned secondary sources in his courses.

Keywords: George L. Mosse; Princeton University; Sources; Teaching

Partial Transcript: "Perhaps we could do that at the end and talk a little more about your graduate training first."

Segment Synopsis: AR has advised about ten graduate students, mostly at Princeton University. He named some of his graduate students and discussed their careers after they graduated. AR said he was not like Mosse as an advisor because he does not terrify people. Princeton admits very few history graduate students, meaning he does not get a student every year. The admissions for graduate school at Princeton is done by committee.

Keywords: Graduate Advisor; Graduate School; History; Princeton University

Partial Transcript: "Well, but I've had ten pretty important students. Can I talk about them a little bit?"

Segment Synopsis: His former student, Joshua Derman, currently teaches at the University of Hong Kong and studies Max Weber. He was one of the students that AR was most proud of. Clara Oberle was also one of his students and teaches at San Diego College. She wrote her dissertation on the reconstruction of Berlin in the aftermath of the war. Another one of his former graduate students is the leading historian of the history of philanthropy. AR discussed his other graduate students and their dissertations.

Keywords: Berlin; Dissertation; Graduate Advisor; Graduate School; Max Weber; Princeton University