Peter Gay – Amerin Amy of Arts and Letters

Contents:

• PETER GAY OBUARY
• PETER GAY
• PETER GAY, HISTORIAN WHO EXPLORED SOCIAL HISTORY OF IAS, DI AT 91
• PETER GAY (1923–2015)
• PETER C. GAY, M.D.
• DR. PETER C. GAY

PETER GAY OBUARY

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. 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. 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.

Memorabily MetricsPage views of Peter Gays by languageAmong HISTORIANSContemporariIn GermanyAmong HISTORIANS In Germany Peter GayPeter Joachim Gay (né Fröhlich; June 20, 1923 – May 12, 2015) was a German-Amerin historian, tor, and thor. Unr Peter Gay’s stctn that semter, I learned that I had a surprisg number of thgs mon wh Dora, the Wolf Man, and the Rat Man—I was nrotic, showed signs of obssive pulsive disorr, and had some light symptoms of hysteria. How I ever managed to make through my bourgeois New York childhood, let alone through my first few years at Yale, seemed to me nearly miraculo, but Peter Gay, his urtly, avuncular way, also disabed me of the ia that I was any way special.

PETER GAY

Peter Gay was an expert of the social history of the European bourgeoisie—his magisterial five-volume history, The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Frd, appeared between the years 1984 and 1998—and he tght his stunts to nsir Frd not only as a great geni, but also as a Vienne Jew astutely observg the world which he lived. What was so utterly enlighteng, then, to e a very Gayian term, about Peter Gay’s lectur on Frd was precisely his abily to suate Frd his late 19th- and early 20th-century world whout any way dimishg his acplishment; what was thrillg, that is, was his abily to nvey how Frd’s historil circumstanc did not exclively create, but certaly ma possible his set of perceptns about seemgly universal aspects of human psychology. Gay tght me—and to this I believe I owe my own trajectory as a scholar—that to separate the fields of history, psychology, lerature, relign, and polics om one another was to produce a drastilly rced unrstandg of the past.

Gay and his parents emigrated 1941 om Cuba to the Uned Stat, where they settled Denver orr for his mother to nvalce at a Jewish sanarium for tuberculosis treatment—an episo that sounds like a zany ncurrence of Mann’s Magic Mounta, Frd’s Dora, and the Wild Wt.

Over the urse of Peter Gay’s long and immensely productive reer, he shared wh a large Amerin public the grand narrativ of European tellectual and social thought, pturg for this new world the pleasur and idsyncrasi of the old world that his fay had left behd. 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.

PETER GAY, HISTORIAN WHO EXPLORED SOCIAL HISTORY OF IAS, DI AT 91

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 to tra at the Wtern New England Instute for Psychoanalysis and motivated him to wre a revisnist psychohistory of the Victorian middle class, “The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Frd, ” whose five volum were published the 1980s and 1990s.

” They me out the 1980s and the 1990s, not jt the we handle rrectnsA versn of this article appears prt on, Sectn A, Page 25 of the New York edn wh the headle: Peter Gay, Historian and Frd Bgrapher, Di at 91. Footnote 5 In the meantime, Gay explored the entertaments of Havana and worked on his English, polishg his prose at the Havana Bs Amy (to which he received a scholarship) and vourg Amerin perdils like Time, Collier's, and the Saturday Eveng Post.

PETER GAY (1923–2015)

This was ma possible by the terventn of Gay's former high school English teacher, Helen Hunter, who worked out a plan to allow Gay to fish his high school gree by pletg a private urse wh her on William Shakpeare. Lookg back years later, Gay nsired fortuo that he had spent the early years “Middle Ameri, ” a place where was possible to pe the ncerns of the German immigrant muny and bee fully (or at least mostly) “Amerinized. In Gay's study, Bernste is very much the hero, the reformer who sought to ee the ethil re of Marxism om s encstatn Hegelian metaphysics and rencile socialism's visn of equaly wh the polil stutns of parliamentarism and mocracy.

PETER C. GAY, M.D.

The choice of Bernste reflected Gay's rejectn of both the Stalist left and the McCarthye right; was also a rebuff to those of his lleagu and acquatanc who had migrated om one polil extreme to the other—typilly om the far left to the far right: “I felt fortunate beg immune om what I took to be an often willful polil bldns of two warrg groups who disputed their ground at New York cktail parti and on the Wellfleet beach.

”Footnote 7 Gay remaed fundamentally optimistic regardg Amerin polil stutns, even if his worldview was shaped ccially by tellectuals—many of them also German-Jewish émigrés—whose views of Ameri were hardly naïve or uncril.

DR. PETER C. GAY

”Footnote 8 Marce not only helped persua Gay to take Frd serly, but also to see his view of human nature as fundamentally psimistic, such that s unpleasant featur were unlikely to disappear a postpalist society. Although she never earned a doctorate, Ruth Gay would go on to wre a seri of well-received works on Jewish history, cludg The Jews of Germany: A Historil Portra (1992), Unfished People: Eastern European Jews Enunter Ameri (1997), and Safe Among the Germans: Liberated Jews After World War II (2002). ”Footnote 15 In a siar manner, Gay sought to vdite the Enlightenment's attu toward history, argug that s notns of historil atn and culture were far richer than prevly acknowledged, and s nceptns of progrs far more tentative, particularly given the philosoph’ ls-than-rosy timate of human nature.