Announcement: The newly named CEHS Annelise Thimme Article Prize

The Central European History Society is proud to announce the naming of its article prize after Annelise Thimme, the German and Canadian political historian who served as first female President of CEHS. The CEHS membership voted to name the prize in honor of Prof. Thimme at its 2021 business meeting.

Thimme, born in 1918, studied in Berlin and Freiburg before earning her doctorate in 1951 at Göttingen University. With many opportunities for career advancement closed due to her gender, Thimme taught for a decade at a girls’ school in Hamburg before moving to North America. From 1968 until her retirement in 1984 she made her professional home at the University of Alberta. Her most substantial contributions to the field include Gustav Stresemann: Eine politische Biographie (Gustav Stresemann: A Political Biography, 1957) and Flucht in den Mythos: Die deutschnationale Volkspartei und die Niederlage von 1918 (Flight into Myth: The German National People’s Party and the Defeat of 1918, 1969). She was known for her supportive mentorship and collegiality. Thimme was selected as the first female President of the Central European History Society, then named the Conference Group for Central European History, in 1984. After her retirement she returned to Germany where she remained intellectually active until her death in 2005.

While CEHS has long had an article prize, it had never been formally named. From 2004-2018 the prize was attached to the Hans Rosenberg Book Prize as a matter of informal custom. The CEHS Board felt called to honor the diversity of its membership, and after substantial research nominated Thimme as a deserving namesake for its article prize. CEHS thanks the committee of Astrid M. Eckert, Caitlin Murdock, and Andrea Orzoff for their significant work.

For more information on Thimme’s life and career, we have made available the memorial written by her former student Doris L. Bergen in Central European History in 2005.