Otto Pflanze
American historian (1918–2007)
Otto Paul Pflanze (April 1, 1918 – March 3, 2007) was an American historian. He was one of the leading historians of 19th century German history. He is perhaps best known for his three-volume biography of the German statesman Otto von Bismarck.
Life
Pflanze was the son of Otto Paul Pflanze (1885-1944) and Katrine Mills Pflanze (1886-1959). He attended Maryville College and Yale University before his graduate education at Yale was interrupted by World War II, where he served in the Pacific Theater in the Army Air Corps as an intelligence officer documenting the war effort.
After the end of the war, Pflanze worked for the State Department and was in the Berlin Airlift accompanying the delivery of supplies in 1948, before finally resuming his graduate studies at Yale. He received his PhD in 1950. His dissertation, “The Internal Integration of Germany, 1867-1880,” was written under the supervision of Hajo Holborn, the eminent historian.
Pflanze taught at the following institutions (listed in chronological order): New York University, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, University of Illinois, University of Minnesota, Indiana University, and Bard College. From 1970 to 1971, Pflanze was a Scholar in Residence at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Otto Pflanze” as american historian (1918–2007). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american historian (1918–2007). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1552805. VIAF identifies the subject as 54162422. The Library of Congress control number is n83210027. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1918, 2007, 1885 and 1944.
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This entry incorporates text from “Otto Pflanze” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.