Erich S. Gruen

This article deals with the Austro-American ancient historian. For the German painter and graphic artist of the same name, see Erich Grün

Erich Stephen Gruen (born May 7, 1935 in Vienna ) is an American - Austrian ancient historian . He has taught at the University of California, Berkeley since 1966 as "Gladys Rehard Wood Professor of History and Classics". In 1992 he was president of the American Philological Association .

life and work

Gruen was born in Austria and emigrated to the USA in 1939 after Austria's annexation , where he studied at Columbia University in the 1950s . In 1964 he received his doctorate from Harvard University . Since 1966 he taught at Berkeley.

Gruen's initial research focus was on the history of the Roman Republic . Perhaps his best-known work, The Last Generation of the Roman Republic (Berkeley 1974), is widely regarded as an alternative to Ronald Sime's The Roman Revolution (Oxford 1939). The study The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome , in which Gruen argues that Roman policy towards the Greek world under Hellenism was primarily characterized by misunderstandings that ultimately led to the annexation of Greece by Rome, was also extremely influential - something that the Romans would not have wanted, at least initially. Further research interests of Gruen are ethnicity and Judaism in the ancient world.

Awards

• 1986: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 1999: Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art
• 2000: Election to the American Philosophical Society

Important work

• Erich S. Gruen: The Last Generation of the Roman Republic , Berkeley 1974.
• Erich S. Gruen: The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome , Berkeley 1984.
• Erich S. Gruen: Diaspora. Jews amidst Greeks and Romans , Cambridge (MA.) 2002.
• Erich S. Gruen: Cultural Borrowings and Ethnic Appropriations in Antiquity ( Oriens et Occidens 9), Stuttgart 2005 (as editor).
• Erich S. Gruen: Rethinking the Other in Antiquity . Princeton 2011.
• Erich S. Gruen: The Construct of Identity in Hellenistic Judaism. Essays on Early Jewish Literature and History ( Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Studies 29), Berlin, Boston 2016.

literature

• Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 , Vol II, 1, Munich: Saur 1983, ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 425.
• Andreas W. Daum , Hartmut Lehmann , James J. Sheehan (eds.): The Second Generation. Émigrés from Nazi Germany as Historians. With a Biobibliographic Guide . Berghahn Books, New York 2016, ISBN 978-1-78238-985-9 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Andreas W. Daum: Refugees from Nazi Germany as Historians. Origins and Migrations, Interests and Identities . In: Andreas W. Daum, Hartmut Lehmann, James J. Sheehan (eds.): The Second Generation. Émigrés from Nazi Germany as Historians . Berghahn Books, New York 2016, ISBN 978-1-78238-985-9 , pp. 1-52, 375-376 .