Thomas Goldstein

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Thomas Goldstein (born June 23, 1913 in Berlin ; † November 19, 1997 in New York ) was a German-Jewish historian who was able to emigrate to the USA in 1941.

Life

Thomas Goldstein (also Thomas E. or Thomas Eugen Goldstein) is the son of the writer Moritz Goldstein . As a schoolboy he was Erwin Piscator's assistant director in a political theater group and as a student in Berlin belonged to a socialist-revolutionary student group. He studied in Berlin from 1931 to 1933 and then emigrated to Florence .

Thomas Goldstein came to Italy to continue his studies here. At the same time, however, he was also a member of the college of the rural school in Florence, which his father co-founded . In 1936 he received his doctorate from the University of Florence and was then also employed here. Due to his earlier political activities in Berlin, however, he was also under observation in Florence by the NSDAP foreign organization and the German consulate. Goldstein's emigration odyssey began, probably against the background of the increasing repression against foreign Jews in Italy.

In 1938 Thomas Goldstein first traveled to Norway via Switzerland. When the German troops invaded there on April 9, 1940 , he emigrated to neighboring Sweden . His escape then took him via Russia and Spain to Cuba and the Dominican Republic, where he was interned. From the Dominican Republic he was finally able to travel to the USA in 1941.

Thomas Goldstein became a research assistant at New York University in 1942 and worked in the following years for the United States Office of War Information , for the Office for German Affairs in the US State Department and as a political commentator for the German service of the Voice of America .

From 1955 Thomas Goldstein continued his scientific career. He was first a lecturer for history at Brooklyn College in New York and parallel to this (until 1965) a lecturer at the New School for Social Research . In 1959 he became a faculty member in the Department of History of the City College of New York as a lecturer , where he was subsequently appointed professor. In 1978 he retired.

Thomas Goldstein's specialty was research into the common historical roots of the Renaissance and geographical thinking and the discovery of this time. He was a member of several scientific societies in the USA.

Works

  • Dawn of Modern Science: From the Arabs to da Vinci. Boston 1980, and new: Da Capo Press, 1995, ISBN 0-306-80637-1 .
  • Geography in Fifteenth-Century Florence. In: John Parker (Ed.): Merchants and Scholars. Minneapolis 1965.
  • Conceptual Patterns Underlying the Vinlund Map. In: Renaissance News. Volume 19, No. 4, 1966.
  • The Renaissance Concept of the Earth in its Influences Upon Copernicus. In: Terrae Incognitae. Volume 4, 1972.
  • The Role of the Italian Merchgant Class in Renaissance and Discoveries. In: Terrae Incognitae. Volume 8, 1976.
  • Impulses of Italian Renaissance Culture Behind the Age of Discoveries. In: Fredi Chiappelli (Ed.): First Images of America. Berkeley 1976.

literature

  • Klaus Voigt: Refuge on Revocation. Exile in Italy 1933–1945. First volume, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-608-91487-0 .
  • Biographical handbook of German-speaking emigration after 1933. Edited by the Institute for Contemporary History under the overall direction of Werner Röder, Volume 2: The arts, sciences, and literature. Part 1: A – K. Saur, Munich 1983, pp. 398-399 (reading sample, books.google.de ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Legacies - German Exile Archive 1933–1945 of the German National Library - archive materials. culturegraph.org, accessed on November 6, 2019 (Thomas Goldstein (June 23, 1913– November 19, 1997) call number: EB 98/178, the place of death is not noted).
  2. ^ Klaus Voigt: Refuge on revocation. ... p. 79.
  3. ^ Klaus Voigt: Refuge on revocation. ... p. 611.
  4. ^ Klaus Voigt: Refuge on revocation. ... p. 487.
  5. ↑ All of the following biographical information, if no other source is explicitly cited, comes from: Biographical Handbook of German-speaking Emigration after 1933. Volume 2: The arts, sciences, and literature. Part 1: A – K.
personal data
SURNAME Goldstein, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Goldstein, Thomas Eugen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American historian, lecturer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 19, 1997
Place of death New York City