| 1 | Name: | Professor Karl Dietrich Bracher | |
| Institution: | University of Bonn | ||
| Year Elected: | 1978 | ||
| Class: | 3. Social Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 304. Jurisprudence and Political Science | ||
| Residency: | International | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 1922 | ||
| Death Date: | September 19, 2016 | ||
Karl Bracher is considered by German historians and analysts alike to be a pathbreaker in scholarly analyses of the Nazi regime. After receiving his D. Phil. from the University of Tübingen in 1948, he taught at the Free University of Berlin from 1955-58 before moving to the University of Bonn in 1959 as a professor of political science and contemporary history. In books such as Turning Points in Modern Times (1995), Dr. Bracher has constructed arguments against dictatorship, illuminated threats to democracy and offered blueprints for coming to terms with the legacies of Nazism, fascism and Communism. As a founder of the "new history" of Germany, he is known for considering historical events through the theories of social science and the values of liberalism and democracy. His book The German Dictatorship (1970), a penetrating and incisive study of Adolf Hitler, is considered to be his crowning achievement. Dr. Bracher is a past president of the German Association of Political Science and was a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies of Stanford and Princeton Universities. He became a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1971, the American Philosophical Society in 1978, and the British Academy in 1976. | |||