Américo Castro

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Américo Castro y Quesada (born May 4, 1885 in Cantagalo , Brazil , † July 25, 1972 in Lloret de Mar , Spain ) was a Spanish cultural historian , philologist , literary critic and diplomat who, through his study España en su historia - Cristianos, moros y judíos sparked the greatest historians' dispute during the Francisco Franco era in 1948 .

biography

Castro was born in Brazil to Spanish parents and grew up in Spain after their return in 1890, where he studied at the University of Granada after attending school . After completing this course in 1904, he completed postgraduate studies at the Sorbonne between 1905 and 1907 .

After his return to Spain in 1910 he became an employee of the newly established Center for Historical Studies ( Centro de Estudios Históricos ), where he was head of the lexicography department .

In 1915 he took a position as professor at the Complutense University of Madrid and taught there until 1931.

After the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931, he became its first ambassador to the German Reich and held this post until he was replaced by Luis Araquistáin in 1932.

After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, he went into exile in the United States . There he was first professor of literature at the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 1937 , before teaching between 1939 and 1940 in this capacity at the University of Texas at Austin . Most recently, he was professor of literature at Princeton University from 1940 until his retirement in 1953 . In 1970 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Controversy and reception

With his study España en su historia - Cristianos, moros y judíos , published in 1948, he aroused fierce controversy with his historical conclusions that the Castilians would not have become a separate ethnic group if Spain had not been conquered by the Muslims in 711 , an event that they in one next to the Islam and Judaism existing Christian walked group. A second, also heavily criticized, conclusion was that the history of Spain and Portugal was negatively impacted by the successes of the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula, known as the Reconquista , and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.

The Spanish historian of the Middle Ages Eduardo Manzano Moreno was critical of Castro's historical works. Regarding the alleged harmony between Moors, Jews and Christians in the Caliphate of Cordoba , Manzano wrote that Castro had not adhered to the rules of historiography and that he could not provide any historical evidence for the concept of a peaceful convivencia . This is a myth . Mark R. Cohen, professor at Princeton, also criticized the theory as a myth based on the work of Heinrich Graetz about an alleged time of peaceful coexistence, as well as the myth of a peaceful Jewish-Arab coexistence under Islam, which is said to have only been shaken by Zionism has been. In 1066 the massacre of the Jews in Granada occurred, in which several thousand people were killed. In 1090 the Jewish community was attacked again. Castro's thesis of an at least temporarily poor period is supported by Bernard Lewis and David Wasserstein and also shared by Cohen, but a generalization is difficult due to clear regional differences.

Publications

Castro was also the author of numerous other specialist articles and books. His most significant publications include:

  • Vida de Lope de Vega , 1919
  • El elemento extraño en el lenguaje , 1921
  • La enseñanza del español en España , 1922
  • Juan de Mal Lara y su "Filosofía vulgar" , 1923
  • Lengua, enseñanza y literatura , 1924
  • Don Juan en la literatura española , 1924
  • El pensamiento de Cervantes , 1925
  • El nuevo Diccionario de la Academia Española , 1925
  • Santa Teresa y otros ensayos , 1932
  • Los prólogos al Quixote , 1941
  • Lo hispánico y el erasmismo , 1942
  • Antonio de Guevara , 1945
  • La realidad histórica de España , 1954
  • Semblanzas y estudios españoles , 1956
  • Hacia Cervantes , 1958
  • Origen, ser y existir de los españoles , 1959
  • De la edad conflictiva , 1961
  • La peculiaridad lingüística rioplatense , 1961

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cristianos, moros y judíos - Américo Castro and the Spain of the three cultures today
  2. ↑ Homage to Américo Castro
  3. ↑ Américo Castro and the Spain of the Three Cultures
  4. ↑ Eduardo Manzano Moreno: Qurtuba: Algunas reflexiones críticas sobre el califato de Córdoba y el mito de la convivencia [Qurtuba: Critical reflections on the Caliphate of Córdoba and the myth of the convivencia]. In: Awraq n. ° 7. 2013, pp. 225–246 ( Online , PDF, 179 kB)
  5. ↑ Bat Ye'or: The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam. Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1985.
  6. ↑ R.Cohen Mark: Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages. 4th revised ed. Princeton UP, 2008.
  7. ^ Bernhard Lewis. The Jews in the Islamic world. From the early Middle Ages to the 20th century . CH Beck, Munich 2004.
  8. ↑ David Wasserstein: The Rise and Fall of the Party-Kings, Politics and Society in Islamic Spain, 1002-1086. Princeton 1985.
personal data
SURNAME Castro, America
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Castro y Quesada, America
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish literary historian, scholar, critic, university professor and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH May 4, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Cantagalo , Brazil
DATE OF DEATH July 25, 1972
Place of death Lloret de Mar , Spain