Berlin's Confidential Evaluation of American Universities

Prussia discovers a new kid on the block in higher education: From role model to emulator?

Professor Gregory R. Zieren (b. 1948) taught history at Austin Peay State University (TN) from 1991 until his retirement in 2022. He received his B.A. from the University of Mich¬igan, M.A from the University of London, and Ph.D. from the University of Delaware. His research focus is on late 19th and early 20th century social and economic history, especially German-American connections. Zieren coined the term Amerikakenner for his investigation into Studienreisende who studied conditions in the US and reported back to a German audience. Publications on economist August Sartorius von Waltershausen, on business pub¬licist Hermann Grothe, and on engineering professors Alois Riedler and Robert Thurston have already appeared. Future essays will deal with Mecklenburg immigrant Eduard Krauel, Forty-Eighter Friedrich Kapp, and World War One government minister Karl Helfferich. It was Zieren's essay "From Halle to Harvard: Johannes Conrad as Mediator of Economic Thought" (1996) that inspired this book on the 1897 Conrad Report. Zieren counts himself lucky that he was a Fulbright scholar in Germany teaching at the universities of Kassel (1988/89) and Erlangen-Nürnberg (1989/90) when unification was taking place.