Herbert Arthur Strauss (1 June 1918, Würzburg, Germany – 11 March 2005, New York, NY) was a German-born American historian.
From 1936 until its closure in 1942, he studied at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin to prepare for his emigration to Palestine.
[1] The planned and already approved emigration to Britain failed due to the outbreak of war in September 1939, and from autumn 1940 onwards he worked for the Jewish community in Berlin as auxiliary Rabbi alongside his studies.
In order to escape the impending deportation, he went underground in October 1942 with his fiancée Lotte Kahle,[2] his later wife.
At the University of Bern he studied history and received his doctorate in 1946 under Werner Näf [de] with the topic Staat, Bürger, Mensch.