Heide Fehrenbach

Rewriting history

It was the mysterious foreign language she heard as a child that first kindled Heide Fehrenbach’s interest in what has become her life’s work.

Fehrenbach wished she could decipher the conversations of her grandparents, who came to the United States from Germany in the 1920s. Her curiosity led to the study of the German language and later an intense interest in German and European history.

Today, Fehrenbach is internationally recognized for her research into the social and cultural effects of World War II on Germany and other nations.

Guggenheim Fellow

She has written two highly regarded books and co-edited a third that are being taught in advanced courses at leading universities worldwide. She is a frequent invited speaker at top U.S. academic institutions and abroad. Earlier this month, she won a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, recognizing past achievements and “exceptional promise for future accomplishment.”

“She is a scholar of tremendous accomplishment and vision, a true innovator,” says Robert Moeller, professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. “Fehrenbach is among a handful of scholars who is shaping the research agenda for the study of Europe in the decades following the Second World War.”

Fehrenbach holds a Ph.D. in modern European history from Rutgers University. She joined the NIU faculty in 2001 and teaches courses on the history of World War II, Nazi Germany, modern Germany and modern European cultural history.

Path-breaking books

Colleagues describe her research as path-breaking.

Her first book, “Cinema in Democratizing Germany” (1995), demonstrated how cinema played a significant role in the reformulation of postwar German national and gender ideologies. The book won the 1996 Biennial Book Prize of the Conference Group for Central European History.

Fehrenbach’s most recent book, “Race after Hitler: Black Occupation Children in Postwar Germany and America” (2005), focused on transnational responses to children born to German women and African-American soldiers during post-World War II military occupation. The book examined perceptions and policies regarding race and German-ness after 1945 and illuminated a thorny issue for Americans: the military that came armed to democratize Germany was itself racially segregated.

“A consummate intellectual with provocative ideas and penetrating analysis, Professor Fehrenbach is an outstanding scholar with that ‘star’ quality that prestigious universities covet,” NIU colleague Christine Worobec says.

Using research in the classroom

Fehrenbach has received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities and others. She is now working on a book exploring the effects of war, military occupation and the rise of international adoption on the notions of family, immigration and citizenship.

“While working on the ‘Race’ book, I came across a treasure trove of archival material on child-rescue initiatives during World War II and on the emergence of international adoption as a new practice for trying to find homes and loving families for thousands of orphaned, unidentified or in some cases stateless children who managed to survive the war,” she says.

Fehrenbach’s research often finds its way into classroom lessons and even prompted the development of a course on the history of human rights.

- Tom Parisi, NIU Public Affairs
- Photo by Scott Walstrom, NIU Media Services