| Affiliation: | Theodore Von Laue, a professor emeritus at Clark University, received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1944 and was certified by the Russian Institute at Columbia University. Among his publications during his long and illustrious career were well received books on German historiography late imperial Russia, and the Soviet Union. As a beginning historian, von Laue was greatly influenced by the humanist philosophy of German historian Leopold Ranke, who insisted that specific historical problems be set in the larger historical contexts of "human freedom, or justice, or other fundamental goals of Man."1 Van Laue's career has been dedicated to understanding the twentieth century, a century of unprecedented interdependence, with, in his words, "the help of our moral absolutes: compassion, charity, love. 'Without love,' as [German romantic poet and novelist] Goethe wrote, 'there is no true understanding."' Von Laue credits his own experience as an American immigrant in sensitizing him to the need for a relativist approach in studying other cultures. He was interviewed by Roger Adelson for the Autumn 1995 issue of the Historian;. In this issue he offers us a perspective on Soviet history based on his career of research and writing about the Soviet Union. |
