Klemens von Klemperer

Klemens Wilhelm von Klemperer ( born November 2, 1916 in Berlin, † December 23, 2012 in Easthampton, Hampshire County ( Massachusetts)) was a German - American historian.

Life

Klemens Wilhelm von Klemperer was born in 1916 in Berlin as the son of Herbert and Frieda Kuffner von Klemperer. His grandfather Gustav Klemperer of Klemenau (1852-1926), a major financier of Jewish origin and Chief Executive Officer of Dresdner Bank, was ennobled by Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria.

After graduating from the French Gymnasium in Berlin Klemens von Klemperer was in 1934 at Balliol College, Oxford, before he moved to the University of Vienna to continue his studies in legal history with Heinrich Mitteis. After the "Anschluss of Austria" to the German Reich in March 1938, Klemperer was involved in the resistance against National Socialism. He fled in November 1938 in the United States. There he was able to attend Harvard University for exiled scientists from Europe as part of a program of the Roosevelt administration.

From 1942 to 1946 Klemperer served in the intelligence service of the U.S. Army in Europe before he earned his doctorate in 1949 at Harvard. He then went as a lecturer at Smith College, where he spent his entire career and also his wife Elizabeth met her, which was later a professor of literature at Smith College.

Already in the 1970s, Klemperer was an internationally respected specialist in historical research on National Socialism and the German resistance, who was among others in Oxford and at the Institute for Advanced Study Berlin Visiting Professorships or Fellowships. 1998 Klemperer held at Westminster Abbey memorial speech for Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who has been there immortalized as one of the ten martyrs of the 20th century. For the theologian Klemperer was an example of that humanity, even under a cruel tyranny is possible. 1997 Austria had honored him, First Class for his services as a scientist with the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art. From 2000-2005 Klemperer was a board member of the Volkswagen Foundation, and from 2000 until his death Advisory Board of the Research Council 20 July 1944.

Besides his academic work Klemperer was an avid mountaineer. He had conquered the Matterhorn at a young age and was joined in the United States the Appalachian Mountain Club. Even in his old age he went for long hikes in the White Mountains in northern New Hampshire.

Works (selection)

• Germany's New Conservatism ( Princeton, 1957).
• Ignaz Seipel: Christian Statesman in a Time of Crisis ( Princeton, 1972).
• Kurt von Schuschnigg. New Austrian Biographies, Volume 22 (Vienna, 1987).
• A Noble Combat: The Letters of Shiela Grant Duff and Adam von Trott, 1932-1938 (Oxford, 1988).
• German Resistance Against Hitler: The Search for Allies Abroad 1938-1945 (Oxford, 1992).
• "More on the German Resistance, " Smith Alumnae Quarterly, Summer 1993.
• " For Germany ". The men of the 20th July 1944. Ed. by Rainer Zitelmann and Enrico Syring. Ullsteinhaus, Frankfurt / M. 1996, ISBN 3-548-33207-2.
• German incertitudes: The Stones in the Cathedral ( Westport, 2002).
• Voyage Through the 20th Century: A Historian 's Recollections and Reflections (New York / Oxford, 2009).