Martin Gilbert (historian)

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Martin Gilbert (middle, May 30, 2011)

Sir Martin Gilbert CBE , PC (born October 25, 1936 in London , † February 3, 2015 ibid) was a British historian. Gilbert was best known as the co-author of the official biography of the British statesman Sir Winston Churchill , which he completed after the death of Churchill's son Randolph , who had begun the work.

Life and work

Gilbert grew up in London and partly in Canada. After attending Highgate School, he studied modern history at Magdalen College, Oxford University , from which he graduated in 1960 with a bachelor's degree.

At the end of the 1960s, Gilbert took over the mammoth project begun by Randolph S. Churchill of a broad, multi-volume monumental biography of his father Winston Churchill, which remains Gilbert's best-known work to this day. Other areas of research in which Gilbert excelled are the study of the Holocaust and the history of Judaism in Eastern Europe and in the Arab-Islamic world to the present day.

His Atlas of the Holocaust , published in 1982 and equipped with 314 maps, was translated into German in the same year by Nikolaus Hansen for the series rororo aktuell published by Freimut Duve . Gilbert began work on this atlas in 1974.

His achievements as a specialist historian earned Gilbert, among other things, the honors of being appointed Honorary Fellow at Merton College (Fellow 1962) at Oxford University and in 2002 Distinguished Fellow at Hillsdale College , Michigan .

In June 2009 he was appointed to a commission of inquiry by the British government to review the country's role in the Iraq war ; The chairman of the commission was Sir John Chilcot .

Gilbert, who was the third wife of the Shoah researcher Esther Goldberg and father of two sons, lived last in London. He died of cancer after a long illness and left three grown children.

Works (selection)

Honors

  • 2012 Dan David Prize
  • 2003 Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize (University of Tübingen)
  • 1999 Honorary Doctorate (Literature, for the “totality of his published work”) from the University of Oxford
  • 1995 Knight Bachelor for “services to British history and international relations” (CBE, MA, DLitt, FRSL)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Martin Gilbert dies at 78; British historian wrote Churchill biography. In: Los Angeles Times of January 5, 2015 (accessed January 7, 2015).
  2. Iraq was inquiry to be in private , BBC News Online , June 15, 2009
  3. IRAQ - 1583 TO 1960 (pdf, 13 p., Prepared by Gilbert)
  4. http://www.juedische-allgemeine.de/article/view/id/21449
  5. http://www.juedische-allgemeine.de/article/view/id/21449