Interview with Robert Gerwarth

Robert Gerwarth is a German-born historian and author of several popular books on the major figures and forces behind the 20th century’s worst conflicts, with his work translated into 30 languages. As an academic, he helped to establish the University College Dublin Centre for War Studies and won Ireland’s first European Research Council Starting Grant in the humanities in 2009. He won the Irish Research Council Researcher of the Year Award for 2022.

Where and when were you born and how has this shaped who you are?
I was born in 1976 in Cold War West Berlin. Looking back, it was a pretty strange place to be a child and then a teenager, surrounded by a wall, with the noticeable presence of American, British and French soldiers and the knowledge that the Soviets were just a few miles down the road. It certainly shaped my particular interests in the spatial and temporal “shatter zones” of 20th-century history.

When did you first become aware of history?
Growing up in Berlin, it was difficult not to be aware of and interested in history. The place is essentially one big open-air museum, and it wears the scars from its turbulent past very openly and deliberately.

What is the biggest difference between the Berlin of your childhood and the city today?
With the fall of the wall, the city obviously grew substantially and it effectively became the world’s largest construction site for several decades after that. In other ways, very little has changed because people have always lived, and continue to live, in their urban villages. The suburb where I grew up looks and feels pretty similar to how it did in the 1980s.

Why write popular history books?
My books are generally crossovers written in what I hope is an accessible style, but deeply rooted in archival research. I nearly always publish academic articles and an edited collection on the same topic before writing a popular book. I have also always found the thought depressing that you invest years of research in a new book that will then be read only by a small group of specialists, who often know that stuff anyway.

What draws you to the subjects of your books?
At first sight, the subjects of my books are difficult and even repulsive: wars, genocides, paramilitary violence, civil wars. But obviously they are very much part of the human experience, particularly in the 20th century. Understanding why violence happens in certain contexts, and how and why conflicts begin, end and perpetuate, is the driving question that links much of my work together.

What was your first thought when you heard about the invasion of Ukraine last year?
It was immediately apparent to me that 24 February 2022, the day of the Russian invasion, would be one of those dates that people will remember in the same way that they remember 9 November 1989 or 11 September 2001. We’re talking about significant European rearmament, a radical move away from Russian energy dependency and a realigned alliance system that has irrevocably tied Russia to China.

Tell us about someone you’ve always admired
The German writer Erich Kästner, who is generally known as a children’s book author in the anglophone world, but who was much more than just that. His political views as a pacifist and his fierce criticism of the Nazis annoyed them so much that, after Hitler’s rise to power, he was added to the list of authors whose books were banned and publicly burnt in Berlin. Kästner was the only author on that list who actually attended the book burning – in disguise – and wrote about it after the war.

If you could go back in time and have a pint with one person, who would it be and why?
I’d love to have a pint with Friedrich Ebert, the first president of the Weimar Republic and chairman of the revolutionary government that oversaw the transition from Germany’s constitutional monarchy to parliamentary democracy as well as the end of the First World War. I have come to admire the skill with which he navigated Germany through this difficult period.

What’s been your most memorable moment at a university?
The moment you hold your first book in your hands. That feeling never comes back – no matter how many books one writes. That and finishing my three-year term as head of department. I still remember the incredible sense of relief that my time as a middle manager had come to an end.

If you weren’t an academic, what do you think you’d be doing?
Before I decided to go into academia, I was hoping to become a diplomat. I did a couple of internships in embassies and with the United Nations in New York. In the end, I never applied for an actual job in that field, because the lifestyle – particularly moving your family every couple of years – was not really for me.

What would you like to be remembered for?
I am not vain enough to think that many people outside the profession remember past historians. If you asked a group of random people who Wilhelm Mommsen was (the only historian ever to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature, for his The History of Rome, in 1902), you’d be staring at a lot of blank faces.

ben.upton@timeshighereducation.com

CV

1996-2000 Master’s, Humboldt University of Berlin

2000-03 PhD (modern history), University of Oxford

2004-07 British Academy postdoctoral fellow, Corpus Christi College, Oxford

2005 The Bismarck Myth: Weimar Germany and the Legacy of the Iron Chancellor

2007-present Founding director, University College Dublin Centre for War Studies

2010-present Chair of modern history, UCD

2012: Hitler’s Hangman: The Life of Reinhard Heydrich 

2014-17 Vice-principal for global engagement, College of Arts and Humanities, UCD

2016 The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917-23 

2020 November 1918: The German Revolution

Appointments

Katie Callow-Wright has been named the next executive vice-president of Princeton University, replacing Treby Williams, who announced her retirement in January after nearly a decade in post. As Princeton’s chief administrative officer, she will provide overall leadership for the university’s campus planning, operations and infrastructure. Ms Callow-Wright has been the University of Chicago’s executive vice-president since 2020 after spending two decades there in other senior administrative roles.

Tricia Serio has been appointed provost and executive vice-president for academic affairs at the University of Washington. She is currently provost and senior vice-chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and replaces Mark Richards, who is stepping down this summer. A professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, Professor Serio previously held positions at the University of Arizona, Brown University and Yale University.

Anna Valtonen will be the next vice-chancellor of Konstfack University in Stockholm, Sweden. She is currently professor of strategic design at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland.

Alex Betts has taken on a new senior role at the University of Oxford, becoming its first local and global engagement officer. He moves from his current post of professor of forced migration and international affairs in Oxford’s department of international development.

Martin Stow has been appointed to the new position of pro vice-chancellor for business engagement and enterprise at the University of Leeds. He has been director of the university’s innovation hub, Nexus, since its launch five years ago.

Thomas Zurbuchen, an astrophysicist and associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at Nasa, will join ETH Zurich as a professor and new director of its space division in August.