The Outsider as Insider

Abstract

As George Mosse made clear in his autobiography written toward the end of his life, his condition as an outsider was a major influence and motivating force in his work as a historian of modern Europe, and the question of the relation between outsider and insider emerged as a central preoccupation of his entire oeuvre. “My status as a real or potential outsider,” Mosse wrote, “a Jew living in a decidedly hostile environment during my formative years, was bound to leave its mark, as was my existence as a sexual outsider.”¹ Mosse also noted, “Concern with outsiderdom continued to determine much of [the] content [of my work]”; this resulted in the attempt “to show how the fate of outsiders is part of the essential workings of our society, and how, in turn, society itself created the image of the outsider, the shape which he took in people’s minds.”² According to Saul Friedländer, Mosse came to elaborate an actual “theory of outsiderdom,”³ which sustained his interpretation of the history of racism up to its most tragic climax, the Holocaust—another central concern, or nightmare, that obsessed Mosse throughout his life and work, as he himself and others have pointed out.⁴