Jeffrey Herf

Jeffrey C. Herf (born April 24, 1947) is an American historian. He is Distinguished University Professor of modern European, in particular modern German, history at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Herf graduated in history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1969 and received his PhD in sociology from Brandeis University in 1980. Before joining the faculty at the University of Maryland, he taught at Harvard University and Ohio University. He has published essays in The American Interest, Commentary, Die Welt, Die Zeit, Partisan Review, The Times of Israel, and The New Republic.

In his 1984 book, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich, drawing on critical theory, in particular ideology critique, Herf coined the term “reactionary modernism” to describe the mixture of robust modernity and an affirmative stance toward progress combined with dreams of the past - a highly technological romanticism - which was a current in the thinking of ideologues of Weimar's "conservative revolution" and of currents in the Nazi Party and Nazi regime.

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