Henry Adams

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Henry Adams

Henry Brooks Adams (born February 16, 1838 in Boston , Massachusetts , † March 27, 1918 in Washington, DC ) was an American historian and cultural philosopher . He was a member of the well-known Adams family .

Life

Henry Brooks Adams was born the second oldest of four brothers into a leading family in the United States. Grandfather John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) and great-grandfather John Adams (1735–1826), a signatory to the Declaration of Independence, had been presidents of the country. His father, Charles Francis Adams, Sr. , was Lincoln's ambassador to London during the Civil War .

His older brother John Quincy Adams II (1833-1894) studied at Harvard (1853), was a lawyer and for several terms a Democratic member of the court in Massachusetts. In 1872, the presidential candidate Horace Greeley nominated him as Vice President of the Democratic Party.

Another brother was Charles Francis Adams, Jr. (1835-1915) - this also studied at Harvard (1856) and fought on the side of the northern states in the Civil War. In 1865 he received an award as brigadier general in the army. Before he became President Union Pacific Railroad from 1884 to 1890 , he was first known to the general public as an authority on train management. Among his publications is the work Railroads: Their Origin and Problems .

His youngest brother Brooks Adams (1848-1927) was also a lawyer and after the death of his brother Henry published the book The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma , which was provided with a short biography of his brother Henry and three essays by Henry Adams on his philosophy of history . Brooks Adams has also published The Law of Civilization and Decay , America's Economic Supremacy, and The New Empire .

After studying at Harvard (until 1858), Henry Brooks Adams spent a year in Germany, including attending legal lectures at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin and numerous trips, including to the Bayreuth Festival and the Munich Hofbräuhaus undertook. He met Garibaldi in Italy (1860). From 1861 to 1868 he was the private secretary of his father Charles Francis Adams (1807-1886), who was ambassador to England during the Civil War.

After Adams returned to the United States in 1868 and settled in Washington, he turned to journalism. He saw himself as a traditionalist who called for the democratic ideal of the 17th and 18th centuries. Accordingly, he tried to expose political corruption with his writings. From 1870 to 1877 he taught medieval history at Harvard University and published the magazine North American Review (1870-1876). In 1872 he married Marian Clover Hooper (1843-1885) in Boston, where they lived after returning from their honeymoon through Europe and Egypt. Adams was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1875 and to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1898 . In 1877 Adams and his wife moved to Washington. Adams continued to work as a journalist and historian. In 1877 he edited Documents Relating to New England Federalism in defense of his grandfather's anti-federalist policies, John Quincey Adams. The biography of Albert Gallatin , Jefferson's Secretary of the Treasury, originated (1879) and is a distorted account of John Randolph, an opponent of John and John Quincey Adams (1882). The novels Democracy (1880) and Esther (1884) appeared, where he published the first, quite successful, anonymously and the second under the pseudonym Francis Snow Compton . Adams compiled his studies of the Jefferson and Madison governments in his nine-volume History of the United States of America During the Administration of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison . The book is one of the most important works of American historiography.

The suicide of his wife Marian Hooper Adams (1885), after the death of her father, hit Adams hard. He gave up his passion for American history and traveled the world for many years. With the artist John La Farge (1835-1910) he visited Japan in 1886 and in 1890/1891 the South Seas, Hawaii, Samoa, Tahiti and Fiji, Australia, Java and Ceylon. With Clarence King he visited the Yellowstone and Teton Range in the west of the country, with John Hay 1894/1895 Cuba. Stays in Normandy alternated with trips to Mexico, with the Hays he toured Europe, Egypt, Turkey, Greece and the Balkans. He spent the winters in Washington, DC and the summers in Paris . In 1904 he wrote “Mont San Michel and Chartres”, an aesthetic study of medieval art. In 1907 he first published his posthumous Pulitzer Prize- winning autobiography The Education of Henry Adams as a private print .

After a severe stroke in 1912, Henry Adams died in Washington in 1918.

The grounds of the Adams family home in Quincy near Boston, where five generations of the politically influential family lived, is designated as the Adams National Historical Park .

Adams' anti-Semitism

Adam's attitude towards Jews has been portrayed as one of disgust. John Hay noted that "when [Adams] saw Vesuvius begin to glow ... looked for a Jew to stir the fire."

According to the historian Robert Michael, his writings were “peppered with a variety of anti-Semitic statements”. Adams wrote: “I abhor the Jews and everything related to them, and I only live in the hope of seeing their downfall, with all of their cursed Judaism. I want to see how all the lenders are removed and executed. "

In his American Historians and European Immigrants , Edward N. Saveth quotes from Adam's writings as follows:

"We are in the hands of the Jews," lamented Adams. “You can do what you want with our assets.” He gave advice against investing, except in the form of gold in the safe. “There you have no risk except the burglar. In any other form you have the burglar, the Jew, the Tsar, the socialist, and above all others, the completely incurable, extreme rot of our entire social, industrial, financial and political system. "

Works (selection)

Democracy (1880)

The novel is about the New York society widow Mrs. Lightfood Lee, who travels to the capital Washington and wants to learn about the government. When she arrived in Washington, she finally found out that the entire government was corrupt. Mr. Silas Ratcliffe, the most influential Senator, then persecutes and fights them throughout the book to prevent the truth from coming out and to keep his hold on power. The novel is set in Washington around 1870 and shows a sharp and critical look at the intricate inner workings of politics and the mechanisms of corruption, which is still relevant today.

Adams initially published this novel anonymously, because the book includes many people from the then current government such as Rutherford B. Hayes or James G. Blaine . It was Adam's best-selling work.

Esther (1884)

The novel, published by Henry Adams under the pseudonym "Francis Snow Compton", is about the breakdown of the relationship between the painter Esther Dudley and the clergyman Stephen Hazard. Because of the incompatibility of their religious beliefs, they never found each other. "Esther" can be seen as a commentary on Adam's own wedding.

History of the United States of America During the Administration of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (1889-1891)

In this work, Henry Adams deals with American history and the presidencies of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison , which fell between the presidencies of his two ancestors.

In the first of the two parts, Adams describes the rise of Thomas Jefferson's Republican party during the emergence of American national pride. Adams explains Jefferson's efforts to stay out of the disputes between the two military powers England and France.

In the second part, which deals with the reign of James Madison, Adams describes the emergence of America against the background of the war of 1812 with Great Britain and the Napoleonic occupation of Europe. His connections gave Adams a glimpse into European archives, which enabled him to map the diplomatic chapters very precisely. Adam's nine-volume history has been considered the definitive description of Jefferson's presidency for years. The scientist Paul Nagel calls it the best history book ever written by an American.

  • History of the United States of America During the Administration of Thomas Jefferson . Kessinger Publishing, Whitefish, Mt., 2006 (2 vols., Reprint of 1891 edition)
  • History of the United States of America During the Administration of James Madison . Kessinger Publishing, Whitefish, Mt., 2005 (3 vols., Reprint of 1892 edition)

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

The book is an aesthetic study of late medieval art and culture using the example of two of the most important Gothic buildings. In considering the design of the buildings on Mont-Saint-Michel and the Cathedral of Chartres in northern France, Adams tries to show to what extent art, worldview and daily life in the Middle Ages form an inseparable unit, are mutually dependent and therefore cannot be viewed individually.

  • Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (The library of America; 4). Fitzroy Dearborn, London 2000, ISBN 1-57958-024-6

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

This work is an autobiography by Henry Adams, which was published in February 1907 as a private print and in 1918 for sale. In it, Adams creates an analysis of the modern world through a selected narrative of his own development. In the text he gives A Study of Twentieth-Century Multiplicity as the subtitle of his work, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres has the subtitle A Study of Thirteenth-Century Unity there .

The contradictions of American successes and defeats prompted Adams to write his book, in which he also expresses his skepticism about the possibility of the control and manipulation of history through human action. The work is a retelling of its own development and of the development of the United States of America from 1838, in which Henry Brooks Adams was born, to 1905. The book was a bestseller and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1919 .

  • The Education of Henry Adams. A Centennial Version . Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Mass. 2007, ISBN 978-0-934909-91-4
  • The education of Henry Adams. Told by himself . Manesse, Zurich 1953

literature

  • William M. Decker (Ed.): Henry Adams and the Need to Know . Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Mass. 2005, ISBN 0-934909-87-3
  • Karl F. Morrisson: Henry Adams (1838–1918) , in: Helen Damico, Joseph B. Zavadil (eds.): Medieval Scholarship. Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline, Volume 1: History (= Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, Vol. 1350), Garland Publishing, New York 1995, ISBN 0-8240-6894-7 , pp. 115-130.
  • Michael O'Brien : Henry Adams and the Southern Question . University Press, Athens, Ga. 2005, ISBN 0-8203-2711-5
  • Garry Wills: Henry Adams and the Making of America . Houghton Mifflin, Boston, Mass. 2005, ISBN 0-618-13430-1

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marc Friedlaender: Henry Hobson Richardson, Henry Adams, and John Hay . In: Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, Vol. 81 (1969), pp. 137-166.
  2. ^ Louise Mayo, The Ambivalent Image (London: Associated University Presses, 1988), 58.
  3. ^ A Concise History of American Antisemitism by Robert Michael Rowman & Littlefield, 2005, p. 116
  4. ↑ American Historians and European Immigrants 1875-1925 Edward N. Saveth, Read Books, 2007 p. 74

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Adams, Henry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Adams, Henry Brooks
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American historian and writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 16, 1838
PLACE OF BIRTH Boston , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH March 27, 1918
Place of death Washington, DC