Rudolf Braun (18 April 1930 in Basel – 19 May 2012 in Basel; originally from Basel[1]) was a Swiss historian.[2]
Braun was the son of a geologist. He attended Mathematical-Natural Scientific High School of Basel and later studied folklore and history from 1950 to 1958 at the universities of Freiburg, Basel and Zurich before he earned a doctor's degree (Dr. phil.) in 1960. He worked as an assistant at the Center for Social Research of Dortmund from 1959 to 1961 and as a scientific assistant in Chicago from 1961 to 1964, before he qualified as a professor at the University of Bern in 1964. He subsequently wrote a paper about integration problems of Italian guest workers in Switzerland. He became a lecturer in 1966 and was an ordinary professor of social and economic history at the Free University of Berlin from 1968 to 1971. From 1971 to 1995, he was an ordinary professor of general and Swiss modern history at the University of Zurich.
He was one of the pioneering social historians of German-speaking Switzerland alongside Markus Mattmüller (Basel) and Erich Gruner (Bern).[3] In his diversified works, he linked political, social and cultural history.
He co-organised the first seminary for women's history at the University of Zurich with his assistant Jakob Tanner.[4]
As an author
As an editor