Mr. Gay wrote groundbreakg books on the Enlightenment, Sigmund Frd and the cultural suatn of Jews Germany.
Contents:
PETER GAY OBUARY
Peter Gay, who has died aged 91, was one of Ameri’s leadg historians, known particularly for his work on morn European cultural and tellectual history.
PETER GAY, HISTORIAN WHO EXPLORED SOCIAL HISTORY OF IAS, DI AT 91
The first volume, subtled The Rise of Morn Paganism, was wily acclaimed far beyond the amic world, and won the Natnal Book award the first volume, subtled The Rise of Morn Pagansim, of Peter Gay’s massive study, was wily acclaimed far beyond the amic world In his encyclopedic The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Frd (five volum between 1984 and 1998), Gay explored wonrfully readable prose a wi range of aspects of the European – pecially the Brish, French and German – and the North Amerin middle class their heyday. But taken together, they are a fundamental text for anyone who wish to unrstand bourgeois culture the 19th and early 20th was, sentially, the culture to which Gay was born, Berl, as Peter Joachim Fröhlich, the son of Helga and Morz, a small bsman of left-leang views and liberal habs of md. Ined, Peter led a charmed life, beg admted to a grammar school unr the Nazis bee his father was a rated and war-wound army veteran and survivg the early years of the Third Reich whout any great difficulty as a blond, blue-eyed boy who did not nform to the Nazi image of a Jewish person any his engrossg memoir, My German Qutn: Growg up Nazi Berl (1998), Gay nfsed that he enuntered antisemism personally only on the very rart of ocsns: once, when, unually, a teacher clared that “Jews always exaggerate” (a remark to which he attributed his later ncern for precisn his historil wrgs), and 1936 when the fay went by r on a tour of Germany and enuntered a notice outsi a village sayg: “Jews are not wanted here.
PETER GAY
It means happy, jolly or gay, and they chose the last of the three nam, only for Peter to start receivg hate-mail years later, as the rise of the gay liberatn movement ma homophob thk his surname was a polil studied at the Universy of Colorado, Denver, then took a master’s gree at Columbia Universy, New York, 1947, and a doctorate polil science four years later, on the leadg “revisnist” social mocrat of the Kaiser’s Germany, Eduard Bernste, wh whose views he to a large extent intified.
But was not a path that Gay followed his amic reer: stead, he went another directn tght at Columbia om 1947 to 1969, beg profsor 1962, and was then at Yale up to his retirement 1993. His Frdianism was often applied wh a light touch, however, as The Bourgeois Experience, and his many says and shorter books on Frd and aspects of his life and thought were not uncril their approach to the, cultured, urteo and hospable, Gay held many semars and discsns his hoe, fondly remembered by his stunts. Yee/The New York TimMay 12, 2015Peter Gay, a German-born historian whose sense of tellectual adventure led him to wre groundbreakg books on the Enlightenment, the Victorian middle class, Sigmund Frd, Weimar culture and the cultural suatn of Jews Germany, died on Tuday at his home Manhattan.
He was ath was nfirmed by his stepdghter Elizabeth Gay, a refugee om Nazi Germany, voted his reer to explorg the social history of ias, a qut that took him far om his origal area of specializatn, Voltaire and the Enlightenment. Gay’s reputatn as one of the pre-ement historians of his generatn.