Felix E. Hirsch was a scholar of European history, a beloved advisor for many students, and an influential interpreter of Germany to Americans and the United States to Germans for over three decades following World War II. He was born in Berlin in 1902, and was educated at Heidelberg University (Dr. Phil., 1923). He served as a political reporter and editor at the Acht-Uhr Abendblatt and Berliner Tageblatt until dismissed by the Nazi regime in 1934. He emigrated to the United States, where he received the BA in Library Science from Columbia University and embarked on a joint career as librarian and professor of history, first at Bard College and then at Trenton State College (now the College of New Jersey). His influence led many of his students to enter careers in public service. Hirsch wrote nearly a hundred articles on twentieth century history, much of which he had experienced first hand, particularly about Gustav Stresemann, the German Chancellor and Foreign Minister of the 1920s, and Theodor Heuss, the First President of the German Federal Republic, both of whom he knew personally. His biography of Stresemann was published for the centennial of the statesman's birth in 1978. Hirsch was a founder of the American Council on Germany in 1952 and lectured in Germany on behalf of the U.S. Government in 1949 and 1954 and held visiting professorships in Karlsruhe and Heidelberg in the 1960s. He received the Commander's Cross of the German Order of Merit in 1973 for his efforts in bettering German-American relations in the aftermath of World War II. He died in 1982. His papers are in the German Intellectual Émigré Collection at the State University of New York at Albany and the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, Germany.