Mosse, the Cultural Turn, and the Cruces of Modern Historiography

Abstract

George Mosse passed away just 13 years ago. It seems like just yesterday that he was here with us—that we read and listened to his papers and presentations and reflected on the new horizons for research that they revealed. Every day the absolute importance of Mosse for historians becomes more and more evident. Just a decade later, not only does today’s research on themes dear to Mosse—nationalism, racism, the experience of war, the religion of politics, consensus under totalitarian regimes, the experience of modern Jews, models of masculinity, iconographic sources—follow his lead, but it seems impossible to carry out such research without the foundations he put in place.