Prominent German historian, Wolfgang Mommsen “has died”:http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,312871,00.html while swimming in the Ostsee. He was the scion of an astonishingly prolific family of German historians and thinkers (his great-grandfather, Theodor Mommsen, won the Nobel Prize; Max Weber was a relation by marriage). He is likely to be remembered for his prominent and honorable role in the _Historikerstreit_ (historians’ controversy), in which he along with several others (Jurgen Habermas, _Kaiserreich_ historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler, social historian Jurgen Kocka) battled with conservatives who seemed to be trying to normalize the Nazi period of German history. See “Rhine River blog”:http://rhineriver.blogspot.com/2004/08/passing-of-wolfgang-mommsen.html for more. Thanks to Nathanael Robinson for letting us know.