Peter C. W. Hoffmann (13 August 1930 – 6 January 2023) was a German-Canadian historian who was the William Kingsford Professor in the Department of History at McGill University. His principal area of research dealt with the German resistance against Nazism, and in particular, the resistance efforts of Claus von Stauffenberg. Hoffmann lived in Canada and in Germany.

Life

Hoffmann was born in

Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...

, Germany, on 13 August 1930 and grew up in

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; ; Swabian German, Swabian: ; Alemannic German, Alemannic: ; Italian language, Italian: ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, largest city of the States of Germany, German state of ...

. He was the son of , a former director of the Wurtemberg State Library and University Library of Tübingen. After studying at the universities of

, Tübingen,

Zurich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

Northwestern University Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...

and

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

he received his doctorate in 1961 from Franz Schnabel following his thesis defence on ''The diplomatic relations between Württemberg and Bavaria during the Crimean War and until the beginning of the Italian Crisis''. In 1965 he became a postdoctorate at the University of Northern Iowa. In 1970 he took up a teaching position on German History at McGill University in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

. Hoffmann was the William Kingsford Professor of History at McGill and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Hoffmann died on 6 January 2023, at the age of 92.

Works

* ''Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat - Der Kampf der Opposition gegen Hitler''. 4. new reworked and expanded edition. Piper, München 1985. . * ''German Resistance to Hitler''. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1989. . * ''Stauffenberg und der 20. Juli 1944''. Beck, Munich 1998. . * ''Hitler's Personal Security''. Da Capo Press, Boston 2000 979 . * ''Stauffenbergs Freund. Die tragische Geschichte des Widerstandskämpfers Joachim Kuhn.'' C. H. Beck, Munich 2007. .see also Joachim Kuhn and th
''Rezension''
by Hanne Stinshoff at H-Soz-Kult * ''Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. Die Biographie''. Fourth, expanded edition. Pantheon, Munich 2009. . * '' Carl Goerdeler and the Jewish Question, 1933–1942''. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2011. . * ''Behind Valkyrie. German Resistance to Hitler. Documents''. McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal & Kingston, London, Ithaca 2011. . * ''Carl Goerdeler gegen die Verfolgung der Juden''. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2013. .

Literature

* T. Lahme: ''Ein Leben im Widerstand. Zum 80. Geburtstag von Peter Hoffmann''. In: FAZ, 9. August 2010, S. 28.

References

External links

*
Website with publications by Peter Hoffmann the McGill University server
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hoffmann, Peter 1930 births 2023 deaths 20th-century Canadian historians Academic staff of McGill University Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada German emigrants to Canada Writers from Dresden Officers Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 21st-century Canadian historians 20th-century German historians