Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Mack Walker, a leading historian of early modern Germany, died of Covid-19 in February 2021.He was best known for German Home Towns, published in 1971, which is still a starting point for explorations of early modern German urban history.He spent most of his career at Johns Hopkins University, where he mentored dozens of students.2 Post World War II Germany and evolving German-American relations shaped his life and career, and he in turn came to shape those relations.His first, formative experience of Germany came in the early 1950s when he was stationed in Bavaria and then Württemberg with the U.S. military.He met his wife Irma in Württemberg.While explaining the genesis of the Third Reich was the underlying impetus for German Home Towns, Walker later engaged in a sustained building of academic bridges between West Germany and the U.S. that has strengthened both German and American historical culture. Life and CareerWalker was born near Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children.His father was a teacher, basketball coach, orchardist, and chicken farmer.3 Walker spent summers at his grandparents' farm near Londonderry, New Hampshire, which dated to the 1730s.He retained a reserved, understated New England manner that masked a somewhat shy personality.He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1950, then briefly worked in commercial gardening with his brother and attended Yale Law School for one semester before enlisting in the army.He was sent to Germany, where U.S. military bases were burgeoning as Germany became a waystation for traffic to and from the Korean conflict.After a year at Augsburg/Gersthofen, he was transferred to Göppingen, near Stuttgart.There he met Irma, who was working on the base; they began dating in spring 1953.When Germans in the community heard that she was dating an American, singers in her church choir "no longer talked to me, looked the other way when I met them on the street: I was a 'bad girl.'"Likewise, the church Sunday school teacher
Source: Central European History
Author: Tanya Kevorkian
Institution: Millersville University
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4406918686