Frederick Merk (August 15, 1887 – September 24, 1977) was an American historian. He taught at Harvard University from 1924 to 1956.
Biography Frederick Merk was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1887.John Mack Faragher, "Foreword," in Frederick Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History, Revised Edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963, 1995): xi. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1911 and then worked for five years at the Wisconsin Historical Society. In 1916 he went to Harvard University to study under Frederick Jackson Turner.John Morton Blum, "A Celebration of Frederick Merk (1887-1977)", The Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer 1978: 446-453. Upon Turner's retirement in 1924, Merk took up his position with Turner's support. He taught at Harvard until 1956, and oversaw several dozen graduate students.Faragher, "Foreword" in Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History, p. xi.
Scholarly impact John Morton Blum, one of Merk's graduate students after World War II, recalled of his mentor that Merk emphasized integrity, "an integrity of mind and process, of the way in which to understand and to write history, an integrity by his standards so severe that perhaps no one of his students could ever achieve it, but a quality he made so important that all of them would try."Blum, A Celebration of Frederick Merk, 448.
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