Peter Gay obuary | History books | The Guardian

Contents:

• PETER GAY OBUARY
• PETER GAY, HISTORIAN WHO EXPLORED SOCIAL HISTORY OF IAS, DI AT 91
• PETER GAY
• PETER GAY - BGRAPHY
• PETER GAY (1923–2015)
• PETER GAY  
• FAY 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. 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 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.

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

Gay relled the pleasur of attendg the 1936 Olympics — spoiled only by the sight of Hler and Görg the stands — and the nfg mix of savage reprsn and tolerance that characterized life unr the Nazis until 1938.

” 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. 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. Gay followed the succs of Voltaire's Polics wh a wir history of the Enlightenment, The Enlightenment: An Interpretatn (1969), for which he was honored wh the Natnal Book Award 1967 and the Mecher Book Prize.

”Footnote 3 By mid-1937, Gay's parents had formed a plan to move the fay om Berl to Florida, where an uncle lived wh his Amerin wife, but the events of 1938 ratcheted up the prsure even further. 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

Jt weeks after arrivg Colorado, Gay's fay applied for Amerin cizenship, and, followg the example of a who had immigrated several years earlier, they Amerinized their first, middle, and last nam.

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. 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.

PETER GAY - BGRAPHY

”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.

Here Gay benefted om the support of Henry Roberts, a specialist Eastern European history, and Richard Hofstadter, a supremely acplished Amerin historian who had bee Gay's clost iend at Columbia. 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.

PETER GAY (1923–2015)

Gay sisted, agast this le of thought, that the philosoph had sought a tly scientific view of the world, ground not ratnalist philosophy but rather a skeptil empiricism whose rults uld be revised light of new evince and new rmatn. In Voltaire's Polics: The Poet as Realist (1959), Gay attempted to monstrate that almost all Voltaire's wrgs, cludg his plays and histori, were rmed by a sire to tervene ntemporary polil affairs, but that the threat of censorship or even imprisonment had forced him to hi his tentns behd “vague, allive generali.

”Footnote 19 Gay's approach to Voltaire—lotg his wrgs their ntemporary polil environment—formed the basis for what he me to ll the “social history of ias, ” which he envisned as an alternative to, on the one hand, Arthur Lovejoy's form of tellectual history, which ma ias the un of analysis and traced them across time as they passed om one great thker to the next, and, on the other hand, the type of tellectual history that foced on cultural trop and clichés—what he lled “the reer of send-class ias send-class mds.

”Footnote 20 Gay's form of tellectual history, by ntrast, was guid by the prciple that “ias have many dimensns”: “They are exprsed by dividuals, but they are social products; they are nceived, elaborated and modified amid a specific set of historil circumstanc… Therefore, the social historian of ias nnot rt ntent wh analyzg their formal logil stcture. ”Footnote 21 For Gay, the advantage of this approach was that helped unravel some of the more problematic aspects of the Enlightenment, such as Denis Dirot's sexual libertism (which uld be seen as a way of attackg the Catholic Church), Jean-Jacqu Rose's Social Contract (not jt a work of polil theory, but a proposal to reform the Genevan cy-state), and Voltaire's antisemism, which Gay explaed (away) as both a product of his day and as an direct means of attackg the te famy, i. Gay argued that the philosoph were “morn pagans, ” not jt the sense that they had sought to rever the herage of classicism but also (and pecially) bee they had been irreemably hostile to anized relign—and Christiany particular.

PETER GAY  

”Footnote 25 This was a readg of the Enlightenment that placed Voltaire and his mpaign to “csh the famy” ont and center, while margalizg the German Aufklärer, whom Gay emed “isolated, impotent, and almost wholly unpolil. While workg on his two-volume study of the Enlightenment, Gay found time to wre and publish Weimar Culture: The Outsir as Insir (1968), a short book that remas one of the most fluential studi of this topic. ”Footnote 31 Gay embedd his terpretatn of Weimar culture as the creatn of “outsirs” thst to the “si” wh a narrative of Oedipal revolt that, typil Frdian manner, risted any clear intifitn wh the sons or the fathers.

Footnote 32 Gay also displayed impatience wh the dherg of Vernunftrepublikaner like Thomas Mann, who nfsed that, his heart, he was no Settembri, the embodiment of liberal ratnalism Der Zberberg (1924). ”Footnote 33 In fact, Gay wrote most affectnately about those few stutns that seemed to be bastns of vigoro cricism and reasoned quiry, such as the German Amy for Polics, the Psychoanalytil Instute Berl, and the Warburg Instute, the tellectual home of Gay's idol Ernst Cassirer.

FAY GAY

Objective or not, the says this volume are among the most powerful and personal that Gay ever wrote, particularly three set piec that pict enunters between artists and crics, masters and discipl, Jews and “Aryans” that unfold the shadow of mil Wagnerism. Footnote 39 Frd, Jews and Other Germans may have marked an endpot Gay's engagement wh “German” cultural history, but signaled the begng of a of tensive scholarly engagement wh the life and thought of Frd. Footnote 40 Jt as Gay had nstcted his image of the philosoph, to some gree, on the mol of Frd, he now ma the se for Frd as the “last philosophe, ” the vtigator who had broken through to that science of the human that had been the goal of the Enlightenment.

As a more or ls orthodox Frdian, Gay had ltle e for branch of psychoanalysis that viated om Frdian ego psychology, much ls for those (like Jacqu Lan) who fed wh stcturalist lguistics and Hegelian philosophy. Gay's sistence on Frd's stat as an empirilly ground scientist put him at odds wh those scholars who sought the roots of psychoanalysis the artistic and polil climate of Vienna, notably Carl Schorske, whose celebrated terpretatn of Frd he dismissed as “eccentric. ”Footnote 43 If there was a cultural ntext for Frd's thought, Gay suggted, was not fed by his physil surroundgs but rather by the books he had read (Goethe, Shakpeare) and the art he llected (notably reproductns of classil sculptur), all of which reflected tablished nons of German bourgeois taste, as well as by his ntacts wh scientists and tellectuals at home and abroad: “Frd, ” Gay sisted, “lived far ls Atrian Vienna than his own md.

Here Gay turned the tools of psychoanalysis on s founr, and if most of his analys followed paths suggted by Frd himself, they nohels gave his narrative a psychologil pth not found prev bgraphi. Gay had taken note of the rise of social history the 1970s and the proliferatn of tailed studi of peasant and workg-class life, and he was nvced that the middle class were need of siar attentn, particularly given what he saw as misnceptns about the bourgeoisie as narrow, reprsed, and philiste.