Karina Urbach is a German historian with a special interest in the Nazi period (1933–45).[1] She has written several books on 19th and 20th century European political and cultural history.[2]
Urbach is currently researching American intelligence operations against the National Socialists in wartime and postwar.[3]
In 2015 Urbach took part in uncovering a 1934 film clip of a young princess Elizabeth making the Nazi salute.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] She has since then been campaigning with The Times and The Guardian for the release of Interwar period material from the royal archives.[13][14] In 2020 she published Das Buch Alice (Alice's Book). The story of her grandmother Alice Urbach, a Jewish chef in Vienna whose bestselling cookbook was expropriated by the Nazis. Karina Urbach discovered that Alice was not the only Jewish author who had been replaced by an ‘Aryan’ stooge. Alice never saw her book published again under her name, but in 2020 the German magazine Der Spiegel ran a story about the findings of Alice's Book. As a consequence, Alice's publishing house issued a reprint.[15][16][17][18][19] The English language version of Alice's Book appeared in May 2022, published by MacLehose Press and translated by Jamie Bulloch.
Urbach has worked as historical adviser on many BBC, PBS and German TV documentaries.[20][21][22] She has contributed articles to the Wall Street Journal,[23] The Guardian,[24] The Literary Review,[25] Die Zeit,[26] Die Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ)[27] and Die Tageszeitung (TAZ).[28]
Bismarck's Favourite Englishman. Lord Odo Russell's Mission to Berlin, Tauris Academic Press, London and New York, 1999 [45]
Edited books
with Ulrich Lappenküper (eds.), Realpolitik für Europa: Bismarcks Weg, Paderborn, 2016
with Franz Bosbach, John Davis (eds.), Common Heritage, Documents and Sources concerning German-British Relations in the Archives and Collections of Windsor and Coburg, Vol. I, 2015 , Vol. II, 2017 [46]
with Jonathan Haslam (eds.), Secret Intelligence and the International Relations of Europe in the 20thC, Stanford University Press, 2013
with Brendan Simms (eds.), Bringing Personality back in: Leadership and War. A British-German Comparison 1740-1945, Munich, 2010
Royal Kinship. British and German Family Networks 1815-1914, Munich, 2008
European Aristocracies and the Radical Right in the Interwar Period, Oxford University Press, 2007
with Franz Bosbach and Keith Robbins (eds.), Birth or Talent ? The Formation of Elites in a British-German Comparison, Munich, 2003
^Detlev, Mares. "Rezension zu: K. Urbach: Queen Victoria". H-Soz-Kult. Kommunikation und Fachinformation für die Geschichtswissenschaften (in German). Retrieved 2017-11-16.
