Gene Brucker

Gene Adam Brucker (born October 15, 1924 in Cropsey , Illinois , † July 9, 2017 in Emeryville , California ) was an American art historian . He was the Shepard Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley .

Academic life

Gene Brucker completed his BA in history in 1946 and his MA two years later with a thesis on the French astronomer Jean-Sylvain Bailly . His master's thesis was published as a book at the University of Illinois in 1950 . In 1954 he received his doctorate for a dissertation on Florence in the 14th century from Princeton University . He was looked after by Joseph Strayer and Theodor Ernst Mommsen . Between 1969 and 1972 he worked at the Chair of History and later on the Academic Council (1984–86) at the University of California, Berkeley . In 1991 he finally retired and received the Berkeley Citation for his contribution to the university.

Brucker has appeared as an author on the Florence of the Renaissance . He has presented “Renaissance Florence” (1983), “Florence: The Golden Age” (1998) and “Living on the Edge in Leonardo's Florence: Selected Essays” (2005). His work on Florentine history is evidence of a high level of detailed knowledge and was groundbreaking for research. Through his work, Brucker brought a new approach to the Florentine renaissance into historical studies . Unlike previous historians , he did not focus on art and poetry, but rather on society and social institutions. In various works about Florence he showed the development of a medieval trading city into a city that became the driving force for politics, economy and culture in Europe and the birthplace of the Renaissance. The focus of his research was on the temporal changes in class structures, bureaucracy , religion, relations between the sexes, family structures and social welfare . Brucker advocated the thesis that these changes can be researched and uncovered, especially in individual stories of experience that have been archived in transcribed form. Brucker illustrated the possibility of analyzing individual narratives in one of his most famous books, " Giovanni and Lusanna: The Story of a Love in Renaissance Florence ". Brucker counts his work in the genre of micro-history .

reception

Brucker is described by numerous authors as a leading historian in the field of the Italian Renaissance. Former colleagues speak of him as a Florentine historian "par excellence". Even Elizabeth Welles admired the broad knowledge of Brucker about the history of Florence and the archival documents which he used the work "Giovanni and Lusanna".

Brucker himself defines micro-history as a narrative form of portraying previously unexplored individuals and milieus. Since these are mostly people from lower social classes, according to Brucker, files from secular and ecclesiastical courts are particularly suitable as sources. By reconstructing the world of that time on the basis of archival files, the reader can be given the feeling of immediacy and closeness.

In a review of the book “Giovanni and Lusanna”, Guido Ruggiero praises Brucker's approach to micro-history using narrative historiography based on the model of Lawrence Stone . He describes his approach as exemplary and compares Brucker's work with classics of microhistory such as Carlo Ginzburg's The Cheese and the Worms and Nathalie Zemon Davis The True Story of the Return of Martin Guerre . Ruggiero recognizes Brucker's ability to work with the archives and the complexity of the political, social and cultural contexts behind the story of Giovanni and Lusanna. At the same time, however, Ruggiero also warns of the dangers of narrative historiography, such as a lack of research and archival skills, insufficient elaboration of the background of a story.

However, Thomas Kuehn criticizes Brucker with regard to “Giovanni and Lusanna” and denies the work's classification as a micro-history. Compared to other microhistorians, such as Judith Brown , Natalie Zemon Davis or Carlo Ginzburg , Brucker lacks a theoretical basis. While Davis, for example, uses anthropology and literary criticism , Brucker just seems to want to tell a good story. Kuehn sees numerous methodological problems in a narrative micro-story . No social history can be written on the basis of the files of a court case alone. This would require a wider range of different sources, which in turn would have to be subjected to a context analysis. The sources that Brucker used only made it possible to reconstruct the functioning, practices and discourses of a court case, but not to draw conclusions about society beyond that.

Awards

Gene Brucker acquired in 1954 at the Princeton University degree Ph.D. He received a Rhodes grant , a Guggenheim grant , was supported by the Fulbright program and was a fellow at National Endowment for the Humanities . In 1979 he was accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 2000 he won the Paul Oskar Kristeller Lifetime Achievement Award . In 2004 he was elected a corresponding member of the British Academy .

Works

• Jean-Sylvain Bailly, Revolutionary Mayor of Paris . University of Illinois Press, Urbana 1950, ISBN 978-0313244575 .
• Florentine Politics and Society, 1343-1378 . Princeton University Press, New Jersey 1962, ISBN 978-1-4008-4786-0 .
• The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence . Princeton University Press, New Jersey 1977, ISBN 978-0-691-05244-1 .
• Giovanni and Lusanna - The Story of a Love in Renaissance Florence . Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1988, ISBN 3-499-55466-6 .
• Renaissance Florence: Society, Culture, and Religion . Keip, Goldbach 1992, ISBN 978-0-520-04695-5 .
• The Society of Renaissance Florence: A Documentary Study . University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1998, ISBN 978-0-8020-8079-0 .
• Living on the Edge in Leonardo's Florence . University of California Press, Berkeley 2005, ISBN 978-0-520-24134-3 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Gene Brucker in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ History department professor emeritus Gene Brucker dies at 92 , The Daily Californian , accessed July 26, 2017
2. ^ "Gene Adam Brucker" on the website of The Renaissance Society of America
3. ^ "Gene Brucker (1924-2017)" on the website of Perspectives on History
4. ^ Brucker Gene: Giovanni and Lusanna: The story of a love in the Florence of the Renaissance . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1988, p. 11.
5. ↑ Martines Lauro: Reviewed Work (s): Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence. by Gene Brucker . In: The Sixteenth Century Journal , 18/1987, p. 288.
6. ^ "Gene Brucker (1924-2017)" on the website of Perspectives on History
7. ↑ Welles Elizabeth: Reviewed Work (s): Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence by Gene Brucker . In: "Italica", 65/1988, p. 265.
8. ^ Brucker Gene: Giovanni and Lusanna: The story of a love in the Florence of the Renaissance . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1988, pp. 11-12.
9. ^ Ruggiero Guido: Review of Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence . In: Speculum , 10/1987, pp. 910-912.
10. ↑ Kuehn Thomas: Reading Microhistory: The Example of Giovanni and Lusanna . In: The Journal of Modern History , 61/1989, pp. 512-534.
11. ↑ http://thecenter.berkeley.edu/pdf/ucbeajanuary03.pdf
12. ^ "Gene Adam Brucker" on the website of The Renaissance Society of America
13. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed May 10, 2020 .