Andreas W. Daum is a German-American historian who specializes in modern German and transatlantic history, as well as the history of knowledge and global exploration.
Daum received his Ph.D. summa cum laude in 1995 from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where he taught for six years as an assistant professor. In 1996, he joined the German Historical Institute Washington DC as a research fellow. From 2001 to 2002, Daum was a John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University. Since 2003, he has been a professor of European history at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo. He also served as an associate dean for undergraduate education in the provost's office. [1] In 2010–11, he was a visiting scholar at the BMW Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University.
He is best known as a biographer of Alexander von Humboldt [2] and for his studies on popular science, emigrants from Nazi Germany, and the United States’ special relationship with "America’s Berlin". [3] His book Kennedy in Berlin highlights the role of emotions in the Cold War and provides a comprehensive explanation of John F. Kennedy's 1963 "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech. [4] [5]
In 2019, he was awarded the Humboldt Prize, a lifetime achievement award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for international scientists and scholars. [6] In 2024, he received the Meyerson Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching and Mentoring. [7] [8]
Daum has received fellowships and grants from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, American Philosophical Society, National Endowment for the Humanities, Smithsonian Institution, Gerda Henkel Foundation, DAAD, and the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes.
"Ich bin ein Berliner" is a speech by United States President John F. Kennedy given on June 26, 1963, in West Berlin. It is one of the best-known speeches of the Cold War and among the most famous anti-communist speeches.
Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt was a German philosopher, linguist, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the Humboldt University of Berlin, which was named after him in 1949.
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography, while his advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement pioneered modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.
The Humboldt University of Berlin is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany.
The Free University of Berlin is a public research university in Berlin. It was founded in West Berlin in 1948 with American support during the early Cold War period as a Western continuation of the Friedrich Wilhelm University, or the University of Berlin, whose traditions and faculty members it retained. The Friedrich Wilhelm University, being in East Berlin, faced strong communist repression; the Free University's name referred to West Berlin's status as part of the Western Free World, contrasting with communist-controlled East Berlin.
Robert H. Lochner was a journalist who helped to revive the free media in West Germany after World War II and who is most well known for assisting John F. Kennedy with his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in 1963.
Gerhard "George" Lachmann Mosse was a German-American social and cultural historian, who emigrated from Nazi Germany to Great Britain and then to the United States. He was professor of history at the University of Iowa, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and also in Israel, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Best known for his studies of Nazism, he authored more than 25 books on topics as diverse as constitutional history, Protestant theology, and the history of masculinity. In 1966, he and Walter Laqueur founded The Journal of Contemporary History, which they co-edited.
The Berlin Wall Speech was delivered by United States President Ronald Reagan in West Berlin on June 12, 1987. The speech is commonly known by a key line from the middle part: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Reagan called for the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to open the Berlin Wall, which had encircled West Berlin since 1961.
Carl Sigismund Kunth was a German botanist. He was also known as Karl Sigismund Kunth or anglicized as Charles Sigismund Kunth. He was one of the early systematic botanists who focused on studying the plants of the Americas. Kunth's notable contributions include the publication of Nova genera et species plantarum quas in peregrinatione ad plagam aequinoctialem orbis novi collegerunt Bonpland et Humboldt. This work spanned seven volumes and was published between 1815 and 1825.
Robert von Schlagintweit was a German explorer of Central Asia who also wrote about travels in America. Brothers Hermann, Adolf and Robert Schlagintweit were commissioned by the British East India Company to study the Earth's magnetic field in South and Central Asia. They were the first Europeans to cross the Kunlun mountains and the first to explore the region between Karakoram and Kunlun.
Karl August Möbius was a German zoologist who was a pioneer in the field of ecology and a former director of the Natural History Museum in Berlin.
Fritz Richard Stern was a German-born American historian of German history, Jewish history and historiography. He was a University Professor and a provost at New York's Columbia University. His work focused on the complex relationships between Germans and Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries and on the rise of National Socialism in Germany during the first half of the 20th century.
Daniel Kehlmann is a German-language novelist and playwright of both Austrian and German nationality.
Thaddeus Xaverius Peregrinus Haenke was a botanist who participated in the Malaspina Expedition, exploring a significant portion of the Pacific basin including the coasts of North and South America, Australia, the Philippines, New Zealand, and the Marianas. His collections of botanical specimens were the basis for the initial scientific descriptions of many plants in these regions, particularly South America and the Philippines. His extensive botanical work and far-ranging travel have prompted some to liken him to a "Bohemian Humboldt", named after Alexander von Humboldt, who made himself familiar with some of Haenke's findings before embarking on his journey to the Americas in 1799.
Friedrich Katz was an Austrian-born anthropologist and historian who specialized in 19th- and 20th-century history of Latin America, particularly in the Mexican Revolution.
Die Horen was a monthly German literary journal published from 1795 to 1797. It was printed by the Cotta publishing house in Tübingen and edited and run by Friedrich Schiller. Many and partially antagonistic prominent figures in German culture of the time contributed, among them Johann Jakob Engel, Fichte, Goethe, Herder, Alexander von Humboldt, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Johann Heinrich Meyer, August Wilhelm Schlegel, and Karl Ludwig von Woltmann. The journal formed the cornerstone of Weimar Classicism and exerted a great influence onto German intellectual history.
Georg Gerson Iggers was an American historian of modern Europe, historiography, and European intellectual history.
Otto Eduard Vincenz Ule was a German writer, known for his popularization of natural sciences, and liberal politician. He was the father of botanist Ernst Heinrich Georg Ule (1854–1915) and geographer Wilhelm Ule (1861–1940).
Liliane Weissberg is an American literary scholar and cultural historian specializing in German-Jewish studies and German and American literature. She is currently the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor in Arts and Sciences and Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She received, among others, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Humboldt Research Award for her research on German-Jewish literature and culture and the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin, and holds an honorary degree from the University of Graz.
Andrea Bréard is a German historian of mathematics and sinologist specializing in Chinese mathematics. She is Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Sinology in the Department of Classical World and Asian Cultures at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg.