Robert Gerwarth

Robert Benjamin Gerwarth (born 12 February 1976) is a German historian and author who specialises in European history, with an emphasis on German history. Since finishing a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Oxford, he has held fellowships at Princeton, Harvard, the NIOD (Amsterdam) and the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Western Australia. He teaches at University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland.

Career Born in Berlin, Gerwarth earned a master's degree in history and politics from Humboldt University of Berlin in 2000. While working on his doctorate at the University of Oxford, Gerwarth was appointed to a two-year lectureship in modern European history. Shortly thereafter, he was awarded a British Academy postdoctoral fellowship. He is also Head of the School of History, a position that has a three-year duration, his term began in 2017. In 2008, Gerwarth debated Holocaust-denier David Irving on Irish television.

Gerwarth has been commended for the thoroughness of his research on Reinhard Heydrich in his book Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich. Heydrich did not leave behind a substantive paper trail. Reviews have noted Gerwarth's diligence in digging through archives and other sources in the United States and Ireland in order to uncover the nature of his subject. Originally published by Penguin, the book has also been translated into sixteen further languages.

Gerwarth’s fourth monograph, November 1918: The German Revolution was published by Oxford University Press in 2020. In his review for the Financial Times, Tony Barber wrote: ”Gerwarth's November 1918 [is one] of the most stimulating histories of the interwar period to have been published in recent years."

Gerwarth's other scholarly work has been published widely in international journals such as The Journal of Modern History, Past & Present, and Vingtième Siècle. He is series editor for the Oxford University Press monograph series, The Greater War, 1912–23, designed to mark the centenary of the First World War

Personal Gerwarth was raised during the final years of the Cold War in Berlin, Germany. At age 13, he witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall. Gerwarth says that living in such a significant historical city sparked his interest in European history. Of his career path, Gerwarth says: "I have no regrets in following this career path; I love being a historian."

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