Uploaded July 2021 | Updated September 2026, 5 hours ago
In an interview on 17 August 2017, University of Wisconsin-Madison alumnus, Sidney Iwanter talked about why he recorded Professor George L. Mosse’s European history lectures on racism and anti-semitism back in the 1970s.
Sidney Iwanter is a Wisconsin native who became a TV producer and vice president of the Fox Kids Network. He majored in history at UW-Madison and, given his family’s Eastern European Jewish background, felt a special connection to Mosse’s courses. Mosse himself was born to a Jewish family in Germany and escaped the Nazis in 1933—an experience that informed his scholarly interest in authoritarian regimes.
“Prof. Mosse was digging deeply into his own soul,” Iwanter says. “It’s one thing to talk about intellectual history of the 19th century, but another thing to talk about the reason why you and your family had to scram out of Berlin. It was the sort of emotional impact you could hear in his voice.”
As a UW-Madison student, Iwanter taped Mosse’s lectures because he wanted his father—who’d grown up in Eastern Europe—to hear them. He’s donated the tapes to the university, which has restored them for use in What History Tells. They’ve been enhanced with transcripts, web links, images, and introductions by Doney.
In an interview on 17 August 2017, University of Wisconsin-Madison alumnus, Sidney Iwanter talked about why he recorded Professor George L. Mosse’s European history lectures on racism and anti-semitism back in the 1970s.
Sidney Iwanter is a Wisconsin native who became a TV producer and vice president of the Fox Kids Network. He majored in history at UW-Madison and, given his family’s Eastern European Jewish background, felt a special connection to Mosse’s courses. Mosse himself was born to a Jewish family in Germany and escaped the Nazis in 1933—an experience that informed his scholarly interest in authoritarian regimes.
“Prof. Mosse was digging deeply into his own soul,” Iwanter says. “It’s one thing to talk about intellectual history of the 19th century, but another thing to talk about the reason why you and your family had to scram out of Berlin. It was the sort of emotional impact you could hear in his voice.”
As a UW-Madison student, Iwanter taped Mosse’s lectures because he wanted his father—who’d grown up in Eastern Europe—to hear them. He’s donated the tapes to the university, which has restored them for use in What History Tells. They’ve been enhanced with transcripts, web links, images, and introductions by Doney.
