Professor Receives American Philosophical Society Sabbatical Fellowship

Warren Rosenblum, Associate Professor of History, has received one of 16 American Philosophical Society sabbatical fellowships granted for 2011. The fellowships supplement already-awarded sabbaticals in the humanities and social sciences.

Rosenblum will use his sabbatical year to write a book about the Magdeburg justice scandal of 1926. The case involved Rudolf Haas, a Jewish industrialist in the German town of Magdeburg, who was falsely accused of murdering his former accountant in order to contain a tax investigation. The complex judicial proceedings involved right- and left-wing machinations and accusations of conspiracy, and the case was seen as a symbol of the judicial “crisis of trust” in the Weimar Republic’s final days. Rosenblum gathered relevant archival materials in Magdeburg and Berlin in the spring of 2006 and the summer of 2009. He will read through and evaluate these materials and then focus on writing. Rosenblum previously authored Beyond the Prison Gates: Punishment and Welfare in Germany 1850-1933 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009).

This is the final year for the American Philosophical Society sabbatical fellowship program. Supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the program provided more than 220 fellowships in a 12-year period. The American Philosophical Society promotes useful knowledge in the sciences and humanities through excellence in scholarly research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and community outreach. The U.S.'s first learned society, the APS has played an important role in American cultural and intellectual life for over 250 years.

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