Fritz Stern, prominent historian and academic, dead at 90

Fritz Stern, a refugee from Nazi Germany who became a prominent historian, government adviser and a longtime professor at Columbia University, has died. He was 90.
Katrin Maria Daehn, a spokeswoman for Stern's German publisher, C H Beck, told The Associated Press that Stern died today at his home in New York City. She had no additional details.
He was born in the former German province of Silesia (now in Poland) to a prominent family that had converted from Judaism to Christianity. But the Sterns felt increasingly menaced by Hitler's reign and left in 1938 for New York, where he received an undergraduate and master's degree and Ph.D. from Columbia.

He taught there for more than 40 years, specializing in European history, before retiring in 1997. He also briefly served as provost.
In books, essays, interviews and lectures, he probed the rise of Nazism and the treats to democracy: On occasion, he advised government officials. In the early 1990s, he was among the experts asked to consult with then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on German reunification, which he supported.
In 1993, he took a leave absence from Columbia after being appointed a senior aide to his friend Richard Holbrooke, the US ambassador to Germany.
In a message of condolence Wednesday to Stern's widow, Elisabeth Sifton, German President Joachim Gauck described Stern as "a historian of great erudition and a wise, great person.