Fritz Stern
Fritz Richard Stern was born in Breslau, Silesia, to a prominent family of Jewish heritage that converted to Lutheranism before emigrating to the United States in 1938, fleeing Nazi persecution.
Settling in New York, Stern studied and later taught at Columbia University for over four decades.
His scholarship focused primarily on the origins of National Socialism, tracing Nazism to the 19th-century völkische movement and rejecting the Sonderweg interpretation of German history.
He was also a notable critic of Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners and explored the rich cultural relationship between Jewish and German communities.
