On 20 January 1933, a few days before Hitler seized power in Germany, Professor Dietmar Rothermund was born in Kassel. He lived through the War, and then went on to study History and Philosophy at Philipps-Universitat Marburg and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1959. His PhD dissertation centred on the social history of America. Shortly thereafter he travelled to India on a fellowship from the German Research Council, and wrote a book on the Indian freedom movement titled Die Politische Willenbildung in Indien (1965). In 1968, he was called to a chair in South Asian History at the University of Heidelberg, which he held until 2001.
