Herbert A. Strauss

In 1946 he went to the USA and taught there as professor of history at the City College of New York. In 1982, he was appointed to the Technical University of Berlin to become the founding director of the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung. In 1990 he returned to the USA; his successor at the Centre was Wolfgang Benz.

The planned and already approved emigration to Britain failed due to the outbreak of war in September 1939, and from autumn 1940 onwards he worked for the Jewish community in Berlin as auxiliary Rabbi alongside his studies. In January 1942, he was obliged to do forced labor as a street sweeper. In order to escape the impending deportation, he went underground in October 1942 with his fiancée Lotte Kahle, his later wife. In June 1943 he managed to escape with the help of Luise Meier [de] in Berlin, Elise Höfler [de] and Josef Höfler from Gottmadingen across the green border into the canton of Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Both he (Über dem Abgrund) and his wife (Über den grünen Hüge) describe the years of persecution in a book. At the University of Bern he studied history and received his doctorate in 1946 under Werner Näf [de] with the topic Staat, Bürger, Mensch. Die Grundrechtsdebatte der Deutschen Nationalversammlung zu Frankfurt 1848/49.

Strauss spent his youth in his home town of Würzburg, Bavaria. After school he began a commercial apprenticeship. In 1936 he moved to Berlin, where he headed the Nationale Jugendbüro at the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden. From 1936 until its closure in 1942, he studied at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin to prepare for his emigration to Palestine. In March 1942 he obtained his Abitur.

Herbert Arthur Strauss (1 June 1918, Würzburg, Germany – 11 March 2005, New York, NY) was a German-born American historian.