Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
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.
1 James Robert Wegs, “Austrian Economic Mobilization during World War I with Particular Attention to Heavy Industry,” (PhD diss., University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign, 1970); Wegs, Robert J., Die österreichische Kriegswirtschaft 1914–1918, trans. Mejzlik, Heinrich (Vienna, 1979)Google Scholar.
2 Paul W. Schroeder, e-mail to the author, dated 5 December 2010.
3 Higham, Robin and Showalter, Dennis E., eds., Researching World War I: A Handbook (Westport, CT, 2003), 388Google Scholar; Wegs, J. Robert, “Transportation: The Achilles' Heel of the Habsburg War Effort,” in Kann, Robert A., Kivaly, Bela, and Fichtner, Paula, eds., The Habsburg Empire in World War I (Boulder, CO, 1977)Google Scholar.
4 Wegs, J. Robert, “The Marshaling of Copper: An Index of Austro-Hungarian Economic Mobilization during World War I,” Austrian History Yearbook 12–13 (1976–1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Wegs, J. Robert, “Working Class Respectability: The Viennese Experience,” Journal of Social History 15, no. 4 (Summer 1982): 621–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also “Working Class ‘Adolescence’ in Austria, 1890–1930,” Journal of Family History 17, no. 4 (1992): 439–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Wegs, J. Robert, Growing Up Working Class: Continuity and Change among Viennese Youth, 1890–1938 (University Park and London, 1989)Google Scholar.
7 Transcripts and the original tapes deposited in the University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Library.
8 Stewart Stehlin, e-mail to the author, 3 December 2010.
9 Wegs, J. Robert, Europe Since 1945: A Concise History (New York, 1977)Google Scholar; 2nd ed., 1984; 3rd ed., 1991; 4th ed., with Robert Ladrech, (Basingstoke, UK and New York, 1996); 5th ed., 2006; Polish edition, Europa po 1945 roku—Zarys historii (Warsaw, 2008)Google Scholar.
10 Glen Ryland, e-mail to the author, 15 July 2010.
11 Mark Jantzen, e-mail to the author, 29 October 2010.
12 The volume that grew out of that conference is Thompson, Larry V., ed., Lessons and Legacies IV: Reflections on Religion, Justice, Sexuality, and Genocide (Evanston, IL, 2003)Google Scholar.
13 Wegs, J. Robert, “Jews and Non-Jews in Austria,” in Signer, Michael A., ed., Humanity at the Limit: The Impact of the Holocaust Experience on Jews and Christians (Bloomington, IN, 2000), 280–85Google Scholar. Gerhard Botz's chapter, “Jews and Non-Jews in Austria,” is in the same volume, 264–79.
14 Mark Jantzen, e-mail to the author, 29 October 2010.
15 Wegs, J. Robert, “Youth Delinquency and ‘Crime’: The Perception and the Reality,” Journal of Social History 32, no. 3 (Spring 1999): 603–22CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
16 A. Dirk Moses, e-mail to the author, 23 August 2010.
17 Joyce Wegs, e-mail to the author, 2 December 2010.