Abstract

The essay analyzes Felix Gilbert’s writings on the twentieth century, beginning with his autobiography, A European Past: Memoirs 1905-1945, published in 1988. A great scholar of the Renaissance and the history of diplomacy, Gilbert has devoted insightful essays and reviews to the history of Europe in the twentieth century. Read in the light of his autobiographical writings, these texts offer an important insight into the cultural history of twentieth-century Europe. Finally, the essay focuses on the close connection between historiography, exile, and autobiography for German Jewish scholars who fled Hitler’s Germany.