Walter L. Arnstein

Walter Leonard Arnstein (14 May 1930 – 6 October 2019) was a German-born American historian who was Professor of History Emeritus and Jubilee Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences Emeritus at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign from 1968–98. He specialised in the history of Victorian Britain.^[1][2]

Arnstein was born in Stuttgart into a Jewish family.^[3] They immigrated to the United States in 1939 and became U.S. citizens in 1942. His father, Richard, was a shipping clerk. Arnstein adopted the middle name "Leonard" in honor of American conductor Leonard Bernstein.^[4]

Arnstein graduated magna cum laude from the City College of New York in 1951 and earned a Master of Arts from Columbia University in 1954. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of London and in 1961 earned his doctorate in History at Northwestern University in 1961.^[4]

From 1951–53, he served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War as an assistant battalion supply sergeant in an anti-aircraft battalion.^[4]

In 2001, he received a festschrift in his honor, titled Splendidly Victorian, and edited by Michael Shirley and Todd Larson.^[5]

He married Charlotte Sutphen in 1952. He died in 2019 in Urbana.^[4]

Selected publications

• The Bradlaugh Case: A Study in Late Victorian Opinion and Politics (1965, 1984)
• Britain, Yesterday and Today: 1830 to the Present (1966, 2018)
• Queen Victoria (2003)^[6]