Wolfgang Mommsen, 1930–2004

Extract

One of our preeminent historians, Wolfgang Mommsen, died on August 11, 2004, at the age of seventy-three. Death came while he was swimming off Usedom, in the Baltic Sea. To speak of him as “ours” is to say at once that he was a treasured international presence for all of us, that he fully embodied the new transnational character of historical studies. His prodigious work and ebullient temper enriched the lives of his students, colleagues, and friends.