Administrative/Biographical History

Timothy Wright Mason (1940-1990) was a British Marxist historian of Nazi Germany. He was one of the founders of the History Workshop Journal and specialised in the social history of modern Germany, especially its working class. He argued for the "primacy of politics" and believed the Second World War had been caused by an economic crisis inside Germany.

Born in Birkenhead, the child of schoolteachers, he was educated at Birkenhead School and Oxford University. He taught at Oxford from 1971 to 1984 and was twice married. He helped to found the journal History Workshop Journal. Mason specialised in the social history of the Third Reich, especially that of the working class, and his most famous books were his 1975 work Arbeiterklasse und Volksgemeinschaft (The Working Class and the National Community), a study of working-class life under the Nazis and his 1977 book, Sozialpolitik im Dritten Reich (Social Policy in the Third Reich).

Scope and Content

Archive of Tim Mason, including: papers gathered by Mason during his time as a member of the History Workshop Editorial Collective, including editorial minutes, correspondence, agendas, draft articles, comments on contributions and typescripts of proposed articles, 1971-1982; papers relating to the life and work of Tim Mason, including correspondence with Raphael Samuel and others; published essays and obituaries; papers regarding Mason's memorial meeting and memorial lecture; papers regarding the publication "Tim Mason, Nazism, Fascism and the Working Class", 1960-1995.

Quantity

59 Folders