My gifts stem from a dual sense of gratitude, to the University itself for all it has done for me, and to this program for its work with developing nations and the people who live in those places.

Margaret “Meg” E. Osborne McLane (’69 MS L&S, ‘92 PhD L&S), donor to the Development Studies PhD Program

Mosse Estate Benefits L&S Students, Programs

George L. Mosse, internationally recognized for his expertise in European culture and the roots of Hitler's "final solution," trained a generation of historians. "He was probably one of the UW's most electrifying lecturers," said David Sorkin, a former student of Mosse's and the current Frances and Laurence Weinstein Professor of Jewish Studies at UW-Madison.


Mosse joined the UW-Madison Department of History faculty in 1955 where he was instrumental in establishing the UW's Jewish Studies program. Mosse, who retired in 1988, died in 1999 at age 80.


Demonstrating his enthusiasm for the thousands of students he taught, he left an estate worth at least $12.5 million to the University of Wisconsin Foundation for the benefit of the College of Letters and Science. The bequest includes funds to endow scholarships and fellowships in modern Jewish history and modern European cultural history with annual supplements provided by WARF through the Wisconsin Distinguished Graduate Fellowship Program.


Additional funds were included in the will for the George L. Mosse Teaching Fellowship established by Mosse before his death. This will allow for one teaching fellowship per semester. Mosse, also renowned for his academic work on sexuality and concepts of masculinity, left other funds to be used to encourage UW-Madison studies in gay and lesbian history.
The remainder of the estate is designated to support a unique exchange program between the UW-Madison and Hebrew University in Israel, where Mosse taught for a semester each year beginning in the late 1960s.


Mosse was born in 1918 in Berlin, Germany, into a wealthy publishing family. His family left Germany to escape Nazi persecution and went into exile, eventually immigrating to the United States.


After retirement from UW-Madison, Mosse continued his academic work with teaching assignments at Cambridge and Cornell universities and also as the first scholar-in-residence at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.