How East Central Europe Changed: The István Deák School of History
This fall, The Journal of Austrian-American History published a special commemorative issue, “How East Central Europe Changed: The István Deák School of History,” dedicated to the historical influence of historian István Deák. He was renowned for his scholarship on central and eastern European history and politics, and especially the Habsburg Empire. His publications included Weimar Germany's Left-wing Intellectuals (1968); The Lawful Revolution: Louis Kossuth and the Hungarians, 1848-1849 (1979); Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848-1918 (1990); and Essays on Hitler's Europe (2001).
Professor Deák inspired a generation of scholars of the Habsburg Empire, many of whom contributed, along with Deák’s colleagues, to the special issue: Eliza Ablovatski, Holly Case, Gábor Egry, Jennifer Foray, Alison Frank Johnson, Benjamin Frommer, Paul Hanebrink, Pieter Judson, Rebekah Klein-Pejšová, Norman Naimark, Cynthia Paces, Dominique Reill, Máté Rigó, Marsha Rozenblit, Nancy Wingfield, and Larry Wolff.
Deák also taught as Visiting Professor in the Department of History at Stanford for several terms in the 1990s-2000s. According to Norman Naimark, Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of Eastern European Studies, Deák “was an active member of our community and played an important role in the education especially of our Ph.D.s in East European history.”