James Robert (Bob) Wegs died, after a long struggle with lymphoma, on 14 July 2010. He was too much a scholar of modern Europe for it not to be mentioned that this was Bastille Day. A passionate and dedicated historian of Austria, Wegs served throughout the 1990s on the editorial board of the Austrian History Yearbook and the Executive Committee of the Society for Austrian and Habsburg History. His career reflects a certain chapter of U.S. history even as it forms part of the dynamic historiography of Central Europe.

In many ways, Bob Wegs was an unlikely academic. He grew up on a farm near Mt. Sterling, Illinois, and after graduating high school in 1955, enlisted in the U.S. Army. He spent three years at an army base in Stuttgart, sorting parts and traveling around Europe. That experience opened his eyes to the wider world and sparked an enduring interest in Central European history, society, and culture. Thanks to the GI Bill, Wegs was able to attend Western Illinois University in Macomb. He received a B.S. in Education with a major in History in 1963 and went on to Northern Illinois University in DeKalb for an M.A. After a year teaching high school, he entered the PhD program in History at the University of Illinois. A Fulbright-Hays grant supported research in Vienna for his dissertation on the economic mobilization of Austria during World War I. Wegs completed his dissertation in 1970, and the work was subsequently published in German.Footnote ¹

The Habsburg Empire at war, Wegs showed, was economically much more independent than had been assumed; it was neither integrated into the German war organization nor propped up by Germany. Wegs also demonstrated a higher level of economic coordination within Austria-Hungary than had previously been recognized. Two features of Wegs's dissertation anticipated themes in his later work. He saw independence and resilience where others assumed only decadence and failure, and he found agency and the exercise of power in places that were not immediately obvious.

Paul W. Schroeder, who supervised Wegs's dissertation, saw related qualities—self-reliance and resourcefulness—in his student:

Thirty years later, Wegs's work on the Austrian economy during World War I remains a significant contribution. In Researching World War I, Robin Higham and Dennis Showalter highlight his dissertation and a related piece as “the most important comprehensive studies of Habsburg industrial mobilization and logistical support.” They reserve particular praise for Wegs's 1977 article on transportation: “a badly needed addition to a very limited literature.”Footnote ³ Another article, on copper, appeared in this publication in 1976.Footnote ⁴ Maybe sorting all those engine parts on that Stuttgart army base paid off.

Wegs entered the profession as an economic historian with a focus on wartime. Over the course of his career, he proved to be remarkably versatile in adapting methodologies and experimenting with approaches. In Schroeder's words, “[a]long with Bob's remarkable concentration and work ethic went a keen eye for historical problems and unrecognized puzzles that needed to be solved, at which I think he was very successful in his numerous and valuable publications.” Wegs's second project demonstrated this knack for asking good questions and finding the best ways to address them. In a 1982 article,Footnote ⁵ and his 1989 monograph, Growing Up Working Class,Footnote ⁶ he departed from his previous work in at least three ways: This was social history; it focused on youth; and it made extensive use of oral history sources. Wegs drew on 120 interviews, many of them he conducted,Footnote ⁷ a challenging task for many reasons, not least of which was the working-class dialect that his elderly Viennese subjects spoke. In Wegs's treatment, these first-hand accounts served not simply to enliven the narrative, but also as sources of information in their own right that challenged the assumptions of his written sources—government documents, parish records, popular journals, and moralistic accounts by middle-class reformers—and exposed cracks in the dominant historiography.

Wegs's arguments were fresh and humane. He revealed the importance of tradition, family, and community as sources of stability in the face of modernization. He emphasized the dignity of workers who were adept at dealing with scarcity. Women received considerable attention, and he highlighted the sites of their solidarity—hallways with the communal toilet and water supply, kitchens. Neither sentimental nor condescending, he avoided drawing attention to his own family history. Only years later, in a proposal for a new project, did he suggest that the fact he was “reared in an American working-class family” influenced his choice of topic. No doubt it also, contributed to his empathy and ability to remain at once clear-eyed and generous. Essential, too, was the influence of his wife Joyce Wegs (formerly Markert), a PhD in English literature who became prominent in the Indiana chapter of the National Organization for Women and whose wisdom, support, and editorial advice he acknowledged in every book he wrote.

Bob Wegs's career began and ended in the Midwest, but the points in between were also formative. His first academic job was at New York University, where he relished the pleasures of big city life: opera, theater, jazz clubs, good food and wine. At NYU he met the historian Stewart Stehlin, who characterizes him as “the best one could hope for in a colleague and a friend”:

While in New York, Wegs began work on what became Europe Since 1945: A Concise History. Still widely used in classes, the book has appeared in five editions, with a sixth in Polish.Footnote ⁹ In the 1970s, the post-World War II period was almost exclusively the purview of political scientists. Wegs took the lead to bring this era into history. Although the textbook marked a departure from his earlier chronological focus, it still built on his previous publications. Political and economic developments provided the framework for a concise yet nuanced discussion of societies and cultures. Notable is Wegs's awareness of the importance of small states, middling and lesser powers, likely the result of his familiarity with Austria. Norway and Portugal, Bulgaria, and even Belgium all feature in the book (and not just if it's Tuesday). Europe Since 1945 appeared in 1977, just as Wegs, after spending a year as a visiting assistant professor at Vanderbilt, moved to the University of Notre Dame.

At Notre Dame, Wegs proved to be an academic leader of formidable intelligence, vision, and entrepreneurial skill. As chair and a senior Europeanist, he guided the expansion and internationalization of the History Department and played a key role in recruiting and supporting a distinguished array of junior and senior colleagues—Thomas Kselman, Gary Hamburg, Howard Louthan, Andrzej Walicki—to create a program that looked westward and eastward from Central Europe. He was also a memorable teacher. In the words of Glen Ryland, a former student now teaching at Mount Royal University in Calgary, “he had a way about him that brought us into the history that he knew so well.”Footnote ¹⁰ Mark Jantzen, now associate professor of history at Bethel College in Kansas, was influenced by Wegs's interest in culture: “[h]e introduced me to Effi Briest in his seminar on fin-de-siècle Central Europe, and I have been in love with the book and Fontane ever since. I have assigned it often to undergrads and found the use of literature in teaching history, a pedagogical approach he advocated, to be enormously productive.”Footnote ¹¹

Wegs pioneered teaching about the Holocaust at Notre Dame, and he did so in a way that took seriously the university's Catholic character. In the 1980s, together with a colleague in theology, Roger Brooks, now Elie Wiesel Professor of Judaic Studies and dean of the faculty at Connecticut College, Wegs created a course called “Historical and Theological Perspectives on the Holocaust.” It quickly became one of the most popular classes in the College of Arts and Letters. Through his ties to the Holocaust Educational Foundation in Skokie, Illinois, and its President, Theodore Zev Weiss, Wegs connected Holocaust studies at Notre Dame to national and international networks of scholars and students. He traveled to Jerusalem and Poland with the Foundation and hosted its biennial Lessons and Legacies Conference on the Holocaust at Notre Dame in 1996.Footnote ¹²

After Brooks left Notre Dame, Wegs taught the Holocaust course with another colleague in theology, Michael A. Signer, the Abrams Professor of Jewish Thought and Culture. Rabbi Signer headed Notre Dame's Holocaust Project until his death in 2009. A legendary and dynamic duo, Wegs and Signer co-organized a remarkable international conference in 1997, “Humanity at the Limit: The Impact of the Holocaust Experience on Jews and Christians.” There, and in the subsequent volume, Wegs responded to Gerhard Botz's analysis of antisemitism in Austria.Footnote ¹³ The particular quality of Wegs's engagement in Holocaust studies is best seen through the eyes of a participant in his class. In 1998, Mark Jantzen was a PhD candidate at Notre Dame: “Serving as a TA for the Holocaust course Bob Wegs taught with Rabbi Signer was formative for me. It was, I think, the largest history course in terms of enrollment at Notre Dame, and Bob got the Vatican's representative on the issue (Cardinal Cassidy) to come to class, right after “We Remember the Shoah” came out. A roomful (150) of Catholic undergraduates talking about this with a Rabbi and a Cardinal was almost surreal.”Footnote ¹⁴

In the early 1990s, Professor Wegs participated in a Notre Dame-sponsored cruise on the Danube River, where he gave talks on the history and culture of the region. In that setting, he met an alumnus Robert Nanovic, and his wife Elizabeth. Deeply impressed, they made a substantial gift to support European studies at Notre Dame. Wegs's proudest accomplishment was probably turning what started as a lecture series into the Nanovic Institute of European Studies. In 1993, he became its founding director, a position he held until 2002. Under his leadership, the Nanovic Institute initiated, inspired, and funded countless projects—conferences, publications, visiting scholars, films series, and other campus events; undergraduate, graduate, and faculty research. Wegs always thought big: An invitation to Vaclav Havel may not have borne fruit, but many other dreams did, and the film directors, academic superstars, ambassadors, and heads of state he hosted put Notre Dame on the map.

Administrative commitments slowed but did not stop Wegs's scholarly output: He conducted extensive research into perceptions of youth criminality and the justice system in Austria and published his findings in The Journal of Social History (1999).Footnote ¹⁵ Wegs demonstrated that the “youth crime epidemic” in turn-of-the-century Austria was not a statistical reality but, rather, constructed and fueled by officials keen to justify draconian laws. Parallels with developments a century later in North America were not lost on Wegs, who considered the “three strikes” policy in the United States to be a symptom of a comparable panic.

Friends, colleagues, and students of Bob Wegs all highlight his delightful personality. Schroeder recalls his “wonderful sense of humor (often sly).” Stehlin observes that “he was a tremendous support. As a person, his gentle manner, his wit and subtle humor were always there to help uplift us when things were not going right.” Dirk Moses, a graduate student at Notre Dame in 1992, remembers Wegs as a “gracious man” and a “welcome source of good cheer.”Footnote ¹⁶ Other Notre Dame students point to his dedication and generosity.

Bob's kindness and warmth complemented, indeed reinforced, another characteristic essential to his success: his persistence, even stubbornness. An aggressive tennis player, he showed incredible resilience in everything he did. A lover of music, he studied the cello in his fifties until he developed “cello elbow.” In the face of devastating diagnoses, invasive surgeries, and grueling treatments, he continued with his scholarship and teaching, even embarking on an ambitious research project that was to be titled Denying Their Nazi Past: Failures in Educating Austrian Youth after World War II. Wegs had already gathered large amounts of material and begun to interview key players in what he envisioned as an intellectual history of the growth of acceptance that Austria shared responsibility for National Socialism and its crimes.

As Bob Wegs's colleague for almost a decade at the University of Notre Dame, I benefited on countless occasions from both his kindness and his determination. In 2006, when my case for promotion to full professor came up, Bob was extremely ill, just back from surgery and a series of treatments at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Under doctor's orders to remain at home because of the life-threatening risk of infection, Bob nevertheless came to campus to participate in the meeting. It was an act of unbelievable loyalty, inspiring in its selflessness, that Bob, with characteristic understatement, shrugged off as simply what one does for a colleague.

Wegs's integrity and fearlessness played out on a much larger stage, too. As a graduate student in Illinois, he had led a rally against the antiballistic missile defense system. Two decades later, as I heard from numerous Notre Dame colleagues, he was instrumental in stopping the University from granting an honorary degree to Kurt Waldheim. Although Waldheim's Nazi past had not yet become a matter of public knowledge, Wegs, the historian of Austria, must have known or sensed that the honor would be an embarrassment and an insult to the victims of Nazism. Ever the professional, Wegs never boasted of what he had done; indeed, he did not speak of it at all. But someone in Austria must have noticed. In the late 1990s, long after Waldheim's disgrace, an undergraduate student wrote an honors thesis under my supervision, on contemporary Austrian discourse around the Holocaust. Her host “parents” in Innsbruck, critical of her project and what they considered high-minded American meddling in Austrian affairs, demanded to know the name of her professor. Shaken, she refused to tell them. No need, they retorted; it was doubtless the same Notre Dame turncoat who had slandered their former president by blocking the award of “his” honorary degree.

Always an optimist, Bob Wegs had planned a Central European tour with his wife for autumn 2010, with stops including Munich, Prague, Bratislava, Budapest, and Vienna. After his death, Joyce Wegs decided to go herself, and she sprinkled some of his ashes in the Danube. An incident she recounted upon her return captures her husband's relationship with the country he studied, analyzed, criticized, and loved for more than fifty years:

In 2002, when Bob Wegs stepped down as director of the Nanovic Institute, his friend and colleague, the distinguished Gramsci scholar Joseph A. Buttigieg, paid tribute to his “Negative Capability,” John Keats's term for the capacity to accept uncertainty that he deemed a mark of greatness. In Austrian history, Wegs may have found the optimum field in which to exercise this quality. Bob Wegs is fondly remembered and sorely missed by his many colleagues, students, and friends.