Alfred Erich Senn

Garbės daktaras / Honorary Doctor (Suteiktas vardas 1999-03-25)

In 1999, Vytautas Magnus University (VDU) awarded honorary doctorate regalia to Professor Alfred Erich Senn, a historian, political scientist, prominent public figure, and author of numerous books, scholarly articles, and journalistic essays from the University of Wisconsin.

Alfred Erich Senn, an American scholar of Lithuanian-Swiss descent, was an honorary doctor of VMU, a foreign member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, and one of the most significant researchers of 20th-century Lithuanian history.

Prof. Alfred Erich Senn was born on April 12, 1932, in the United States into the family of linguist Alfred Senn. From 1949 to 1953, he studied at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, earning a bachelor’s degree. In 1955, he obtained a master’s degree from Columbia University in New York, followed by a doctorate in 1958. From 1958 to 1960, he taught at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. From 1961 to 1998, he served as a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin.

He authored several books, including The Emergence of Modern Lithuania (1959, second edition 1975, Lithuanian edition Lietuvos valstybės atkūrimas, 1918–1920, 1995), The Great Powers, Lithuania and the Vilna Question, 1920–1928 (1966), The Russian Revolution in Switzerland, 1914–1917 (1971), Diplomacy and Revolution: The Soviet Mission to Switzerland, 1918 (1974), Jonas Basanavičius: The Patriarch of the Lithuanian National Renaissance (1980), Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis: Music of the Spheres (with J. Bowlt and D. Staškevičius, 1986), Lithuania Awakening (1990, second edition 2002; Lithuanian edition Bundanti Lietuva, 1992), and Gorbachev’s Failure in Lithuania (1995, Lithuanian edition Gorbačiovo nesėkmė Lietuvoje, 1997), among others. For the latter work, he was awarded the Edgar Anderson Prize by the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies in 1996.

Prof. Alfred Erich Senn passed away on March 8, 2016, at the age of 83.

Based on information provided by VMU Library.