George W. F. Hallgarten

Who was George W. F. Hallgarten?

George W. F. Hallgarten, or Georg Wolfgang Felix Hallgarten was a German-born American historian.

Hallgarten was a student of Max Weber in the University of Munich for a short time. In 1925 he became Dr. phil. in Munich, taught by Hermann Oncken and Karl Alexander von Müller. In 1933, He moved to Paris to flee the Nazis, mainly due to his marxist approach and his pacifist conviction, as his mother was the well-known German pacifist Constanze Hallgarten.

Hallgartens grandfather Charles Hallgarten has had US citizenship, but G. W. F. Hallgarten had to re-naturalize as an American in 1942. Afterwards, he took part in the US war effort, working for the psychological warfare division.

When the second world war ended, Hallgarten returned to the US, working as a historian, first for the US-Army. When the Cold War evolved, he refused to work for the Army and resigned. He was guest professor several times in the US, in Germany, Japan, India and Italy, without tenure professorship until 1972. Then he became Robert Lee Bailey professor at University of North Carolina in Charlotte.