Karen Johnson Freeze, 22 October 1945–19 March 2009: A Tribute

It was the American Karen Freeze (fig. 1) who wove the social fabric of our scholarly community in eastern, central, and southeastern Europe. Karen showed us that, despite received notions, this region has never been isolated from western Europe—even during the most divisive years of the cold war. She embodied the shared history of “eastern” and “western” Europe. Karen was the perfect person to help us include the eastern European experience—and scholars—in the Tensions of Europe Network. Her knowledge of eastern and western Europe came from both scholarship and experience. For extended periods, she lived and worked in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Russia. She was fluent in Czech and Danish, and well-versed in Russian and German. Karen’s Ph.D. dissertation was entitled “The Young Progressives: The Czech Student Movement, 1887–1897” (Columbia University, 1974). Later, she taught modern eastern and central European studies and European women’s history at Brandeis University and Harvard University.

The Czech Republic became a second home for Karen. In 1983, she met Pavel and Radka Světlíkovi, a Czech pastor and his wife, who became, like many others, part of her extended family. After the Velvet Revolution, the three collaborated on many projects. Together, they founded the Czech branch of the international charitable environmental organization A Rocha. Karen had spent her childhood exploring the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest; she was a devoted conservationist. For ten years she co-directed the annual English language summer camps in rural southern and northeastern Bohemia. And while her postdoctoral professional life took her in new directions, she always maintained her strongly felt Czech connections.

Portrait of Karen Freeze.

In 1975 Karen began working at the Harvard-Danforth Center (now the Derek Bok Center) to help young undergraduate teachers improve their teaching skills. In 1980, she became a research associate for case development at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, where she researched and wrote case studies on technology management. Her essay “From a Casewriter’s Notebook” was reprinted for use in training new case writers.¹ In 1989 she became director of research for the Design Management Institute in Boston, where she wrote and supervised case studies and articles on the role of design in product development in U.S. and European business.² She continued to enjoy case-study work throughout her life, as it allowed her to delve into the lives and creative work of people whose vision and projects compelled her. Her extensive interviews and in-depth biographical research led her, for example, to the fascinating life of Peter Gold-mark, the inventor of—among other things—the long-playing record.³ Case-study work also satisfied her love of narrative, “thick description,” and detail. After leaving the Design Institute, she taught history and management at the Technical University of Liberec (1995–97), Eastern Nazarene College, Quincy, Massachusetts (1997–98), the University of Washington (1998–2002), and Charles University in Prague (2005). In 2008, she completed a commissioned case study on Samsung Electronics’s design strategy.⁴

Our collaboration with Karen began in 2003. At that point, the Tensions of Europe Network was thriving, but lacked critical eastern European representation, despite past efforts to include the region. We were thrilled when Karen agreed to take on the role of coordinator for central, eastern, and southeastern Europe. It was Karen who brought eastern European scholars into the network and, in doing so, introduced a fresh scholarly perspective. Always tactful, she educated us about our western-centric views. She helped to expand our collective view of European history of technology scholarship. She did this by literally turning our attention to exploring the long-neglected regions of eastern, central, and southeastern Europe.

Karen’s diplomatic skills were instrumental in her new position; she helped build the very international community of scholars with whom we work today. In 2004, the year of the ten-country expansion of the European Union, Karen helped grow the network as well...