Talk:Christopher Clark

Odd passages about the views of “mainstream historians”

I was struck by the use of of the vague, yet sweeping term “mainstream historians” to present a narrative that Clark was somehow breaking entirely new ground when he challenged the “Sonderweg” and “German WWI war guilt” perspectives.

To my knowledge, the Sonderweg thesis has never been uncontested and, similarly, I am not aware that the notion that Imperial Germany was solely responsible for WWI was a solid, historical consensus (hence the huge volume of historical scholarship on the origins and causes of WWI).

In short, it seems that the article sets up something of a straw man in presenting unsourced and undefined “mainstream historians” agreeing on something that have been hotly debated by historians for decades (Sonderweg/origins of WWI) that make Clark’s contributions seem to be more of a paradigm shift than contributions to ongoing, historical debates.

Hence, I would suggest that these claims about the opinions of “mainstream historians” are either more precisely elaborated and sourced or modified to be a bit less bombastic. Mojowiha (talk) 10:00, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Review of page 20/10/25

Just an advanced warning that I am going to be looking at, reviewing, and updating (if necessary) this page. On a superficial glance it is no longer up to date with Christopher Clark's contributions, academic and popular, to historiography, and also features some inaccurate and inaccessible citations. But I intend to make a thorough examination of this, as I have in the past, including, if you see my profile, notable expansions of Prof. Quentin Skinner's page after problems were flagged with it, and I also created a separate page for his extensive bibliography which hitherto dominated Skinner's profile, List of works by Quentin Skinner.

Given the previous discussion topic on the page and the evident sensitivity of the topics Christopher Clark deals with in the history of Wilhelmine Germany, I am notifying editors in advance of this so that you might let me know if you have any points you've noticed that you think need modifying too, be they changes major or minor. Gulielmus Rosseus (talk) 06:18, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Noting points of interest as I go along, and I will not edit the page with first refreshing myself with the appropriate style guide in case there have been changes since my last update of this kind.

1. More clarification needed on citation regarding Regius Professorship, specifically, is he is the 22nd?

He is described as the twenty second Regius Professor of History at Cambridge. Whilst he is indeed Regius Professor of History at Cambridge, that he is the twenty second a complicated matter, and the citation is insufficient to support the claim, even though I believe it is true (further research pending before any changes to the article). For now I merely note that the the citation in this article, the ODNB article (for Samuel Harris (1682-1733) cited merely states,

→HARRIS, SAMUEL (1682–1733), first professor of modern history at Cambridge [...] In October 1724 he was admitted first regius professor of modern history at Cambridge. The professorship was founded by George I in the previous May.

Whereas on the page concerning the Cambridge Regius Professorship of History itself, Regius Professor of History (Cambridge) it notes,

″The professorship's field of modern history was intended to encompass all post-classical history, beginning from the fall of Rome. However, for the first few decades of the professorship's existence, only ancient history was studied in the University, and so the Regius Professorship of Modern History was little more than a sinecure. However, by the time an independent History undergraduate examination was established in the 19th century, the professorship had more duties to fulfil.

Under the original understanding of modern history, the Regius Professorship was several times held by academics specialising in the Middle Ages. However, by the 21st century, the meaning of modern history had shifted to refer either to the history of the modern period following the middle ages, or of the late modern period following the early modern period. In 2010, the Queen in Council approved the removal of the word modern from the title to reflect this change in usage, on the recommendation of the Faculty of History and the University.″

On this basis, at the very least, further investigation is needed to establish whether or not an additional citation is needed.--Gulielmus Rosseus (talk) 07:28, 20 October 2025 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gulielmus Rosseus (talk • contribs) 07:07, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

I've refigured what was the section focused on the apparent controversy mentioned at the end into a broader look at the historiographical impact of Clark on Prussian and German historical writing. I am yet to deal with the controversy itself and so cannot attest to the merit of the description at the end. Gulielmus Rosseus (talk) 00:37, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

The Controversy Section

This was hitherto the entirety of this section, and remains within the historiography section, which I am about to edit.

″In 2019, Clark was embroiled in controversy surrounding his 2011 report, commissioned by the head of the Hohenzollern family, Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, on the Hohenzollern family's relations with the Nazis. The report was in support of the family's claims for compensation under a 1994 German law allowing restitution for the loss of property confiscated by the German Democratic Republic if the claimants or their ancestors had not "given substantial support" to the National Socialist or the East German Communist regimes. Clark acknowledged that expressions of support for the Nazis had been made by the last Kaiser's eldest son, Wilhelm, the most senior member of the former dynasty in Germany in the 1920s and 30s and the owner of the Hohenzollern properties. However, his report concluded that Wilhelm was "one of the politically most reserved and least compromised persons" of the aristocratic Nazi collaborators and that he was simply too marginal a figure to have been able to give "significant support" to Hitler, a position that supported the Hohenzollerns' claims.

Clark's report was criticised by historians commissioned by the German state to consider the Hohenzollern claims: Peter Brandt [de], a specialist in Prussia and imperial Germany at the University of Hagen, and Stephan Malinowski [de], a German historian at the University of Edinburgh who is the author of the standard work on the relationship between the German aristocracy and the Nazi movement, Vom König zum Führer (2003). Brandt and Malinowski provided evidence of Wilhelm's support for the Nazis that Clark had overlooked. Their two reports leave no doubt about the prince's deep-seated anti-Semitism.[26] During the historical controversy that unfolded in the German press, Richard J. Evans, Clark's predecessor as Regius Professor of History (Cambridge), criticised his colleague for not reflecting more carefully before accepting offers to produce expert reports. In 2020, however, Clark claimed to have changed his view and more or less agreed with Malinowski."

All of the quoted above, except for the last sentence, rests upon three citations from a single source, the New York Review of Books article "What Do the Hohenzollerns Deserve? The controversy is about more than just the long shadows cast by the Nazi period" (by David Motadel, March 26, 2020 issue.) This is itself problematic. The New York Review of Books, for those who do not know, is much like the Times Literary Supplement and London Review of Books insofar as it is a magazine which routinely litigates ongoing disputes in academia and thus, whilst it features an impressive range of authors it does not purport to be a neutral, balanced, news source. These are explicitly polemical views by another historian, Motadel, an associate professor of international history at the LSE who likes has written about German history. This is thus a contribution to the controversy, not a neutral appraisal of it. That said, the above misrepresents Motadel's article, where "controversy" plainly refers to the controversy surrounding Kaiser Wilhelm II's son, Wilhelm, German Crown Prince. To the casual reader, "In 2019, Clark was embroiled in controversy surrounding his 2011 report, commissioned by the head of the Hohenzollern family, Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, on the Hohenzollern family's relations with the Nazis" one would imagine that Clark himself, not the Crown Prince, was the subject of the debate. The article does not support the claim that "Brandt and Malinowski provided evidence of Wilhelm's support for the Nazis that Clark had overlooked," and phrases such as "two reports leave no doubt" mean that the Wikipedia article itself is thus taking a position on the controversy, which is simply not the purpose of an article, especially about a living person.

But worst of all is the claim, supported by the Motadel article citation, that "Richard J. Evans, Clark's predecessor as Regius Professor of History (Cambridge), criticised his colleague for not reflecting more carefully before accepting offers to produce expert reports." In fact, Motadel's article actually states that "In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Richard J. Evans, Regius Professor of History Emeritus at Cambridge, criticized his colleagues for not reflecting more carefully before accepting offers to produce expert reports." The article notes that the current head of the Hohenzollerns commissioned an "expert report" from Clark in 2011, and that the "German state also commissioned two historians to write expert reports", namely Peter Brandt and Stephen Malinowski. When Motadel speaks of Evans as having "critized" his "colleagues", Motadel makes clear that this refers to all three. Moreover, Christopher Clark wrote about this in 2011 whilst, as is not made clear from the above, Brandt and Molanwski were commissioned to write reports in 2014. The debate continues to be a live issue, but Clark is no longer contributing to it whilst Molanowski, for example, is still very much engaged in the controversy now, Malinowski's continues to publish books on the subject, and articles this year have been written on those books this very year in e.g. the Daily Telegraph.

If you dig more deeply, Motadel refers explicitly to Evans's article in "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung", the article in question is written in German in a German newspaper, and is entitled Das Gewissen eines Gutachters [The Conscience of an Expert Witness], and is in large part a reflection on Evans's misgivings about his own role in an actual libel trial brought forward by David Irving in which Evans did serve as an expert witness. What Clark, Malinowski, and Pyat did, and are described as having done so by Motadel, is provide "export reports". Given that the controversy is actually now entering litigation, this is an important distinction.

Moreover, Evans provides context that is simply lacking. Namely, that this controversy and the need for export reports all concerns the legal disputes between the heirs to Wilhelm II and their former estate, confiscated on the grounds of Nazi collaboration, by German law, and that this matter was being investigated by the Brandenburg State Office for Unresolved Property Issues. It is a legal matter that Clark, Brandt, Malinowski et al. were employed to settle, and though it has far reaching political and historiographical implications it is an ongoing one. Given the deep sensitivity of the issue, the fact that it concerns ongoing legal disputes between living persons, and that the question has far reaching legal, political, and cultural consequences which are yet to be resolved, I simply recommend deleting this section until the controversy is actually resolved given that it is an ongoing legal matter and it unclear how it might be concluded, or how any of the reports mentioned shall be be used in concluding it. Clark, furthermore, plays a minor role in this story, having merely offered a report over a decade ago in a matter which has regained new interest not for Clark's role in it, but because of further disputes between the current claimants on the estate and subsequent export reports. To full substantiate this matter in a Wikipedia article concerning Clark would, in effect, change the subject of the article, and also involve, as you shall see below, relying on complicated German sources that English Wikipedia users cannot be expected to translate themselves. I therefore recommend simply deleting the section, and that whomever wishes to cover it provide an adequate summary if they can, without involving the article in the ongoing legal dispute itself. This seems an impossible task. Really, the solution would seem to be the creation of another article on the opinions of historians on the dispute, or on the estate dispute itself.

Beccause far from criticising Clark, Evans states, in reference to the original 2011 report, that it was "Offensichtlich musste man die Meinung professioneller Historiker einholen. Die Hohenzollern gaben bei Christopher Clark, Regius-Professor für Geschichte an der Cambridge University, ein Gutachten in Auftrag. Aufgrund dieses Gutachtens sprach das brandenburgische Landesamt für offene Vermögensfragen den Hohenzollern einen Anspruch auf Ausgleichszahlungen für verlorene Besitztümer zu. [It was obviously necessary to obtain the opinion of professional historians. The Hohenzollerns commissioned a report from Christopher Clark, Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge. On the basis of this report, the Brandenburg State Office for Unresolved Property Issues granted the Hohenzollerns a claim to compensation for their lost possessions.]"

Regarding the 2014 reports, moreover, Evans notes that far from being in total opposition to Clark, re Brandt and Malinowski, "Beide bestätigten Clarks These, wonach vor allem der Kronprinz gehofft hatte, die Nationalsozialisten als Mittel für seine eigene Rückkehr an die Macht nutzen zu können. [Both confirmed Clark’s thesis that the Crown Prince, above all, had hoped to use the National Socialists as a means to secure his own return to power.]"

I shall therefore simply delete the section because I think the controversy is far from resolved and that any comment on its status cannot help but avoid being partial until it is concluded, and would even then require finding sources accessible for English readers. If anyone can see their way past these obstacles, they should feel free to do so. I hope that this adequately explains the deletion.

Gulielmus Rosseus (talk) 09:31, 30 October 2025 (UTC)