Carl Frederick Wittke, (13 November 1892 – 24 May 1971) was an American historian and academic administrator. He was a specialist on ethnic history in America, especially regarding the

German Americans German Americans (german: Deutschamerikaner, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 43 million in 2019, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the Unite ...

. He was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1892; his father was a German immigrant who owned a factory. In 1913 he graduated

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal ...

from

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

, and took a PhD in history under Professor Charles Howard McIlwain at Harvard in 1921. He taught history at Ohio State University (1921–37), and for a few years was chair of the history department and later, dean of the graduate school. He was the dean at Oberlin College (1937-1948). He then became dean of the graduate school at

Western Reserve University Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US * Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that i ...

, until his retirement in 1963. Wittke wrote 13 scholarly books, edited a comprehensive six volume history of Ohio, wrote hundreds of articles for scholarly journals and popular magazines, and wrote 262 critical book reviews. Wittke served on the editorial boards of the ''Mississippi Valley Historical Review,'' ''Canadian Historical Review,'' and the ''Ohio Historical Society Quarterly.'' He helped establish ethnic studies as a major specialty in American history.Don Heinrich Tolzmann, "German-American studies: History and development." ''Monatshefte'' (1988): 278-28
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Bibliography

* '' German-Americans and the World War.'' Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, 1936 (with secial emphasis on Ohio's German-language press) * ''A History of Canada''. McClelland & Stewart, 1941.
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* editor, ''The history of the state of Ohio.'' Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, 6 vol 1941. * ''Against the Current: The Life of Karl Heinzen (1809-80)'' University of Chicago Press, 1945
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* ''We who built America: The saga of the immigrant.'' Prentice-Hall, 1939
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* ''The Utopian communist: A biography of Wilhelm Weitling, nineteenth century reformer.'' Louisiana State University Press, 1950
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* ''Refugees of Revolution.'' University of Pennsylvania Press 195
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als
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* "The immigrant theme on the American stage." ''Mississippi Valley Historical Review'' 39.2 (1952): 211-23
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* ''The Irish in America.'' Louisiana State University Press, 1956
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* ''The German-Language Press in America.'' U. of Kentucky Press, 1957. * "Ohio's Germans, 1840-1875." ''Ohio Historical Quarterly'' 66 (1957): 339–54. * ''William Nast: Patriarch of German Methodism.'' Wayne State University Press, 1959. * ''The Foundations of Ohio.'' Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, 1968, coauthor with Beverley Waugh Bond, * ''Tambo and Bones: A history of the American minstrel stage.'' Greenwood Pub Group, 1968
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Further reading