Jonathan B. Knudsen (December 16, 1944 - August 28, 1999) was an American historian who specialized in 18th-century German history, a translator from German to English, and a professor of history at

Wellesley College Wellesley College is a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant as a female seminary, it is a member of the original Seven Sisters Colleges, an unofficial g ...

. He did his graduate work at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

and was the last advisee of

Hans Rosenberg Hans Rosenberg (February 26, 1904–June 26, 1988) was a German refugee historian whose works influenced a whole generation of post-war German scholars. Life Rosenberg was born in Hannover. Though of Jewish ancestry, he was raised as a Protes ...

(who retired from Berkeley in 1972). His other graduate advisors were

Gerald Feldman Gerald Donald Feldman (April 24, 1937 – October 31, 2007) was an American historian who specialized in 20th-century German history. He was Professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, and received several prizes and honors, in ...

and Wolfgang Sauer ( de).

Life

Knudsen was from a working-class family and grew up in inner-city Detroit. In addition to studying at Berkeley, he spent many summers in Germany at the Max Planck Institute for History in Göttingen to conduct primary research. American mathematician Ted Hill met Knudsen in Germany in the '70s and has written about their encounter and friendship is his memoir, ''Pushing Limits''.

Academic Work

Knudsen has written the first and only monograph in English about the life and work of German social theorist Justus Möser. He also translated from German to English the book "Germany in the Age of Absolutism", by German historian Rudolf Vierhaus ( de). Knudsen published research articles on

Friedrich Meinecke Friedrich Meinecke (October 20, 1862 – February 6, 1954) was a German historian, with national liberal and anti-Semitic views, who supported the Nazi invasion of Poland. After World War II, as a representative of an older tradition, he criti ...

and

Christoph Friedrich Nicolai Christoph Friedrich Nicolai (18 March 1733 – 11 January 1811) was a German writer and bookseller. Life Nicolai was born in Berlin, where his father, Christoph Gottlieb Nicolai (d. 1752), was the founder of the bookseller ''Nicolaisch ...

. He served for many years in the editorial board for the

Central European History ''Central European History'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal on history published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Central European History Society, an affiliate of the American Historical Association. It covers all as ...

journal, in which he published book reviews and translations.

Career at Wellesley College

Knudsen joined the History Department of

in 1976 and served as its chair from 1992-1996. He taught a variety of courses in European cultural history, modern German history, the philosophy of history, and the sociology of knowledge. In 1982, he received the inaugural Pinanski Prize for Excellence in Teaching.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Knudsen, Jonathan B. Wellesley College faculty Historians of Germany 1944 births 1999 deaths 20th-century American historians 20th-century American male writers American male non-fiction writers