lit a candle 16h agoI first read Broken Lives in a graduate seminar in the mid nineties, borrowed from my advisor's shelf, and it changed how I thought about what a life under dictatorship actually costs a person. Eighty five years, and still teaching people like me who never sat in his classroom.
Their story
Konrad Hugo Jarausch was a German-American historian, the Lurcy Professor of European Civilization at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and one of the leading scholars of modern German history of his generation. He died on September 1, 2026, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, at the age of…
Konrad Hugo Jarausch was a German-American historian, the Lurcy Professor of European Civilization at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and one of the leading scholars of modern German history of his generation. He died on September 1, 2026, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, at the age of 85, after he went missing while swimming with his wife in Eastwood Lake; his body was recovered later that afternoon. Chapel Hill authorities and UNC identified him; the death was not treated as suspicious.
Jarausch was born on August 14, 1941, in Magdeburg, Germany, the only son of Charlotte Petri and Konrad Jarausch, a German soldier who died in Russia without meeting his son. He grew up in Krefeld, West Germany, completed the classical Abitur, and then left for Laramie, Wyoming, seeking the American West. At the University of Wyoming he played varsity soccer, served in the student senate, and earned a B.A. in American Studies in 1963. He took an M.A. (1964) and Ph.D. (1969) in modern European history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where a blind date introduced him to Hannelore Flessa, then a doctoral student in French. They married and shared 59 years together.
He taught at the University of Missouri-Columbia from 1968 to 1983, with visiting years at Princeton's Shelby Cullom Davis Center and the University of Saarbrucken. In 1983 he became Lurcy Professor of European Civilization at UNC-Chapel Hill, teaching modern Europe and Germany until retirement in 2024. In 1993 he co-founded UNC's Center for European Studies. From 1998 to 2006 he co-directed the Leibniz Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam, pioneering work on GDR history and transatlantic ties. He wrote or edited more than forty books and hundreds of articles, among them Out of Ashes (Bronislaw Geremek Prize, 2016), Embattled Europe, Reluctant Accomplice, Broken Lives, and his 2023 autobiography The Burden of German History. Colleagues remembered him as a mentor to more than sixty doctoral students and as a bridge builder between German and American scholarship.
He is survived by his wife Hannelore Flessa Jarausch; sons Konrad and Peter; grandchildren Tyson, Anneliese, Charlotte, and Johanna; daughters-in-law Melissa Ober and Shannon Tracey; and his brother-in-law Karl Flessa and sister-in-law Mari Jensen. A celebration of life is planned for November 7, 2026. The family suggests donations to the Konrad H. Jarausch Essay Prize for Advanced Graduate Students in Central European History at UNC.
Biography adapted from Endswell Funeral Home (Hillsborough) / Legacy.com family obituary; The Daily Tar Heel; ABC11 Raleigh-Durham; Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)..
In their own words
“He laid the foundation for this well-deserved reputation that we enjoy now.”
UNC history professor Chad Bryant, Daily Tar Heel
“There are very few scholars in any field that I know of who did as much to shape their field as Konrad Jarausch did.”
Adam Seipp, former doctoral student, Daily Tar Heel
Photos
1Konrad Hugo Jarausch
by People Forever
That book did the same for me at Wisconsin. Quiet devastating writing.