At the University of California, Berkeley he fostered the growth of the Center for German and European Studies, which became the Institute of European Studies. He had a particular interest in promoting connections between academics in the U.S. and Europe, leading him to serve as an advisory board member and president of the "Friends" group for the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC, an organization that facilitates interactions between German and American historians. In 2004 he became a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and was a Berlin Prize Fellow in the Classes of Fall 1998 and Spring 1999. For more than fifteen years he was a member of the editorial board of the Contemporary European History.German Historical Institute, Gerald D. Feldman Memorial Lecture Endowment In 2000 he was awarded with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
