Anson “Andy” Rabinbach, the Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History, Emeritus, died from complications of a heart attack at the Policlinico Umberto I hospital in Rome on Feb. 2. He was 79.
Rabinbach joined Princeton’s faculty in 1996 and transferred to emeritus status in 2019. He also served as director of the Humanities Council’s Program in European Cultural Studies from 1998 to 2008.
He was known for his scholarship and teaching on the social, cultural and intellectual history of modern Europe, with research interests spanning Nazi Germany, Austria, fascism, labor and European thought in the 19th and 20th centuries.
“Tough-minded and pessimistic in his approach to topics including totalitarianism and genocide, Rabinbach shed important light on some of the darkest moments of the 20th century,” said Angela Creager, the Thomas M. Siebel Professor in the History of Science, professor of history and department chair.
At Princeton, Rabinbach taught courses including “History of European Fascism,” “The Intellectual History of Europe” and “Europe in the 20th Century,” as well as the graduate seminars “European Intellectual History” and “20th Century European History.”
His many honors include Guggenheim, American Academy in Berlin, American Council of Learned Societies and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, as well as a visiting professorship in Russia as a Fulbright Senior Scholar, among others. In 1987, he received Austria’s Victor Adler State Prize for outstanding achievements in the field of social and cultural history.
