Introduction

Abstract

Madison is a small city in Wisconsin, in the heart of the American Mid-west, halfway between Chicago and Minneapolis. Life there in the summertime moves at a tranquil pace; with the departure of the regular students from the university area, the remaining inhabitants circulate by bicycle along the tree-lined streets, stroll leisurely on trails that crisscross the many parks, or find relief from the heat at one of the city’s lakes. It was not, however, the holiday atmosphere of the campus or the desire to get away from Italy’s enervating heat that brought the editors of this volume—two young scholars, one of us interested in contemporary and the other in modern history—to Wisconsin’s capital. Nor was it the hope of turning up some unpublished document or sensational historical event. After all, we were not protagonists of a Fred Vargas novel, nor did we possess the charm and investigative prowess of the historian detectives made famous in French mysteries. The true reason for our presence in Madison was quite another: George L. Mosse, historian, German by birth, a Jew and a homosexual, who fled from the Third Reich and eventually ended up in the Department of History of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There he dedicated himself to the study of twentieth-century political and cultural movements. For us, the idea of pursuing Mosse’s historical legacy took serious form in this city where he spent the most prolific part of his career, and it is there that we found ourselves, somewhat by chance, collaborating in an intense month of study and research in the University’s Memorial Library.