Peter Gay obuary | History books | The Guardian

Contents:

• PETER GAY OBUARY
• PETER GAY
• PETER GAY, HISTORIAN WHO EXPLORED SOCIAL HISTORY OF IAS, DI AT 91
• PETER GAY, HISTORIAN WHO WROTE ABOUT FRD AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT, DI
• JAGUARS ACH KEV MAXEN OUT AS GAY HISTORIC ANNOUNCEMENT

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. 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.

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

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. In January 1988, I was a junr at Yale College, studyg English and Italian lerature, and perfectly nfint —or rather blissfully different to—my psychologil well-beg, when I enrolled Peter Gay’s urse on Frd.

PETER GAY, HISTORIAN WHO WROTE ABOUT FRD AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT, DI

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. What ma this an oddly reassurg, and not simply ighteng, experience was that Peter Gay was a profsor of History, and not a profsor of Psychology.

JAGUARS ACH KEV MAXEN OUT AS GAY HISTORIC ANNOUNCEMENT

Gay was approachg Frd, that is, as a historil thker the same way that he approached Hume or Voltaire his urs on Enlightenment Europe. 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. Peter Gay knew first-hand about the plexy and ntgency of livg a particular historil perd—why mattered, that is, to live one century, or one cy, rather than another.

Gay was born Berl 1923 to bourgeois, atheist, ethnilly Jewish parents, who nnily fled Germany jt time. His father, Morz Fröhlich (Gay was the English translatn of this German name) had purchased tickets for his fay 1938 on the St. 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.