Evan Burr Bukey (1940–2024)

Members of the University of Arkansas history department, along with a broad transatlantic community of scholars, look back with gratitude and wistfulness on the life and legacy of Evan Burr Bukey, professor emeritus, eminent historian of modern Central Europe, lifelong AHA member, and one of the university’s most cherished academic personalities. The memory of Evan—his intellect, quirks, kindness, and incomparable wit—remains alive in the halls he animated for nearly four decades.

Photo courtesy Bukey family

Evan seemed fashioned from an earlier academic age. Students and colleagues recall him gliding into class dressed like a Brooks Brothers window display, his tie of the day drawn from what he sheepishly admitted was a “shameful number” of neckties. He delighted in appearing every bit the professor one expects from Hollywood’s golden age films: erudite, dryly funny, and brimming with enthusiasm for whatever archival gem he had recently unearthed.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Evan grew up in a household shaped by education and service. His mother Dorothy was a teacher. His father Norman, an engineer in peacetime and a US Army lieutenant colonel during World War II, stationed the family near the Carolina coast, where antiaircraft blimps and warships filled Evan’s imagination. Some of his earliest memories, he later wrote, fused the spectacle of global conflict and sparked a lifelong interest in the history of Nazi Germany.

Evan carried that fascination into his academic life. After earning his undergraduate degree at Ohio Wesleyan University—where he formed lifelong friendships and fraternity ties—he completed his master’s and PhD at Ohio State University. There he also met the love of his life, Anita Fishpaw. They married in 1963 and embarked on their first European adventure together during Evan’s Fulbright fellowship in Göttingen. That was the beginning of a shared, lifelong cartography of international friendships, scholarly exchanges, and return visits.

Joining the University of Arkansas history department in 1969, Evan made Fayetteville his home for over half a century. By 1986, he was a full professor; by 2008, professor emeritus; and through it all, he remained a teacher’s teacher. His students admired and feared him in equal measure, as the Fulbright College noted when he was awarded the Master Teacher in 1997: They praised him “even while they groaned a bit about his tough standards.” Evan also taught at the US Military Academy at West Point and served as a visiting fellow at Cambridge University’s Wolfson College, where his dry wit and impeccable suits were, one suspects, equally appreciated.

Yet it was Evan’s scholarship that left his deepest imprint, as he was one of the foremost authorities on Austria during the Nazi era. His first two books, Hitler’s Hometown (Indiana Univ. Press, 1986) and Hitler’s Austria (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2000), won widespread acclaim, including the National Jewish Book Award and the Austrian Cultural Book Prize. In his later works, Jews and Intermarriage in Nazi Austria (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011) and Juvenile Crime and Dissent in Nazi Vienna, 1938–1945 (Bloomsbury, 2020), he moved seamlessly from political to social history. In 2014, Bukey received Austria’s highest scholarly honor, the Karl von Vogelsang State Prize, sponsored by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Science, Research and Economy—an award his family remembers him accepting with characteristic modesty and a half smile suggesting he found the whole business slightly too grand.

Even after retiring in 2008, Evan remained a constant intellectual presence, continuing to publish, review, mentor younger colleagues, and serve the German Studies Association and the Conference Group for Central European History. He also enjoyed the university swimming pool and sauna, where lively discussions unfolded in his familiar mix of banter and playful solemnity.

Evan is survived by Anita; their children Ellen Bukey Langley (Mark) and David Burr Bukey (Beth); his brother David Bruce Bukey (Rachel); grandchildren Sebastian, Robin, Lauren, Kathryn, and Gretchen; and several nieces and extended family members. All continue to share the stories, quirks, and gentle mischief that made him unmistakably himself. More than a year after his passing, we remember Evan with enduring affection. His scholarship remains foundational, his teaching unforgettable, and his humor, sometimes professorially dry, sometimes unexpectedly playful, still very much alive in the memories of those who were lucky enough to know him.