August Heckscher (Author)

August Heckscher (born September 16, 1913 in Huntington (New York) USA , † April 5, 1997 in New York City , USA ) was an American publisher , author , professor and intellectual of the 20th century.

Life

Heckscher came from a wealthy industrialist family based in New York City and Suffolk County on Long Island . His academic career took him to Yale University , where he graduated with a BA in 1936 . The next stop was Harvard University . There he graduated in 1939 with the title Master of Arts (MA). He returned to Yale for the next two years, teaching government.

During the Second World War , Heckscher worked for the US military intelligence service , the Office of Strategic Services , for which he was deployed in North Africa . From 1946 to 1948 he was editor of The Citizen Advertiser magazine in Auburn (New York) before going to the editorial board of the New York Herald Tribune until 1956 . From 1957 to 1962 he was Arts Commissioner for the City of New York City for 6 years . At the same time he was director of the Twentieth Century Fund , a foundation, from 1957 to 1967 . In 1962, President John F. Kennedy appointed him as the first advisor on arts to the White House . He resigned from this office in June 1963 because he had fulfilled his self-imposed tasks .

In 1963, Heckscher was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1965 he became a member of the New York State Art Council . In 1967, then-Mayor of New York City, John Lindsay , brought him back to New York and entrusted him with the Office of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs and the Office of Commissioner of Parks .

Heckscher was also known as the biographer of US President Woodrow Wilson and as the author of books on developments in major US cities. He died of heart failure in New York City in 1997.

family

Heckscher's grandfather, August Heckscher (1848–1941), was born in Hamburg and emigrated to the USA in 1867. His industrial ventures and land transactions made him a multimillionaire. He also used his wealth as a philanthropist who set up playgrounds, parks and a museum, the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York , in the city of New York City and Long Island , as well as purchasing the land for Heckscher State Park financed. His cousin Sylvia Brett married the last Rahja from Sarawak in northern Borneo , Charles Vyner Brooke . Another cousin was the British-American painter Dorothy Brett .

Publications

• 1936: These Are the Days <1935: 1936> , with an introduction by RD French. Yale Daily News, New Haven, Connecticut.
• 1962: The Public Happiness . Atheneum, New York City.
  • 1964: German by Gerhard Schönmann: Glück für Alle . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne.
• 1965: Foreword to Herbert Rosinski : Power and Human Destiny , posthumously ed. by Richard P. Stebbins. FA Praeager, New York City, USA.
• 1970: as editor and author of the foreword: The Politics of Woodrow Wilson, Selections from his Speeches and Writings . Books for Archives Press, Freeport (New York), USA.
• 1974: Alive in the City: Memoir of an Ex-Commissioner . Scribner, New York City, USA, ISBN 0-684-13708-9 .
• 1977: with Phyllis Robinson: Open Spaces: The Life of American Cities ; A Twentieth Century Fund Essay. Harper and Row, New York City, USA, ISBN 0-06-011801-6 .
• 1983: The Silence of Christmas . High Loft, Seal Harbor, Maine, USA 1983.
• 1991: Woodrow Wilson: A Biography , Scribner, New York City, USA, ISBN 0-684-19312-4 .

Web links

• Short biography of the political scientist