Felix Gilbert

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Felix Gilbert (born May 21, 1905 in Baden-Baden , † February 14, 1991 in Princeton ) was a German-American historian .

Live and act

The son of William Heinrich Gilbert (1860–1906), an English ophthalmologist, and Cécile Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1874–1923), a daughter of the chemist Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy , grew up in Berlin and attended a humanistic grammar school there. After graduating from high school in 1923, he studied history and philosophy at the universities of Heidelberg , Munich and Berlin . He received his doctorate in 1931 under Friedrich Meinecke in Berlin with a thesis on the historian Johann Gustav Droysen .

Because of his partial Jewish descent and threatened as a supporter of social democracy , Gilbert had to leave Germany during the Nazi regime. He went to London in 1933 and from there to the USA . There he worked at Scripps College in Vermont / California and from 1939 at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He received American citizenship in 1943 and joined the State Department as a Research Analyst for the Office of Strategic Services . With the American army he came to London, Paris and again to Germany in 1945 . After his retirement, he became a lecturer and soon professor at Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia in 1946 . As a visiting professor, he also taught at the University of Cologne . In 1962 he received a professorship at the School of Historical Studies of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he taught until his retirement in 1975. He became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1963), the American Philosophical Society (1969) and a corresponding member of the British Academy (1974).

At the center of Gilbert's research were works on the Italian and Florentine Renaissance , and in particular the people Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini . In addition, he wrote studies on the history of ideas and methodology, the history of historiography (contributions to Lorenz von Stein , Leopold von Ranke , Jacob Burckhardt and Otto Hintze ) and the latest history.

Fonts (selection)

Monographs

  • Venice, the Pope and his banker (= Edition Pandora. 22). Translated from the English by Klaus Blocher. Campus-Verlag et al., Frankfurt am Main et al. 1994, ISBN 3-593-35033-5 .
  • History - Politics or Culture? Review of a classic conflict (= Edition Pandora. 6). Translated from the English by Christiane Spelsberg. Campus-Verlag et al., Frankfurt am Main et al. 1992, ISBN 3-593-34726-1 .
  • Guicciardini, Machiavelli and the historiography of the Italian Renaissance (= small cultural and scientific library. 29). Wagenbach, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-8031-5129-5 .
  • Years of apprenticeship in old Europe. Memoirs 1905–1945. Translated from the American. Siedler, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-88680-167-5 .
  • Machiavelli e il suo tempo (= Universal Paperbacks Il Mulino. 71, ZDB -ID 192535-0 ). Mulino, Bologna 1977.
  • Machiavelli and Guicciardini. Politics and History in Sixteenth-Century Florence. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1965 (numerous editions and editions).
  • Niccolò Machiavelli e la vita culturale del suo tempo (= Saggi. 44, ZDB -ID 410152-2 ). Traduzione di Alda de Caprariis. Il Mulino, Bologna 1964.
  • To the Farewell Address. Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1961.
  • Johann Gustav Droysen and the Prussian-German question (= historical magazine . Supplements. 20, ISSN  0342-5363 ). Oldenbourg, Munich et al. 1931, JSTOR i20519244 , (in part also: Berlin, University, dissertation, 1931).

Editorships

  • Bankers, scholars and artists. Unpublished letters from the Mendelssohn family from the 19th century (= series of scientific treatises by the Leo Baeck Institute. 31). Mohr, Tübingen 1975, ISBN 3-16-836362-6 .
  • The historical essays of Otto Hintze. Oxford University Press, New York 1975, ISBN 0-19-501819-2 .

literature

  • Horst Fuhrmann : Felix Gilbert, "Ambassador of the Weimar Spirit". In: Horst Fuhrmann: People and Merits. A personal portrait gallery. Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-47221-4 , pp. 213-219.
  • Hans R. Guggisberg : Felix Gilbert. Work and effect. In: Felix Gilbert: Guicciardini, Machiavelli and the historiography of the Italian Renaissance (= small cultural and scientific library. Vol. 29). Wagenbach, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-8031-5129-5 , pp. 7-13.
  • Gerhard A. Ritter : The Meinecke students who emigrated to the United States. Life and historiography between Germany and the new home: Hajo Holborn, Felix Gilbert, Dietrich Gerhard, Hans Rosenberg. In: Historical magazine . Vol. 284, 2007, pp. 59-102, doi : 10.1524 / hzhz.2007.284.jg.59 .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Franz Neumann , Herbert Marcuse , Otto Kirchheimer : In the fight against Nazi Germany. Reports for the American Secret Service 1943–1949. Edited by Raffaele Laudani, Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2016, pp. 38, 111, 163.
  2. ^ Member History: Felix Gilbert. American Philosophical Society , accessed August 19, 2018.
  3. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy , accessed June 1, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Gilbert, Felix
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American historian
DATE OF BIRTH May 21, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Baden-Baden
DATE OF DEATH February 14, 1991
Place of death Princeton