William L. Langer

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William Leonard Langer (born March 16, 1896 in South Boston , Massachusetts , † December 26, 1977 ) was an American diplomatic and modern historian. He was a professor at Harvard University .

Life

Langer was the son of German immigrants and the older brother of the psychoanalyst Walter Charles Langer and the mathematician Rudolph Ernest Langer . The father died early and the mother had to support the three sons on her own, which is why Langer took part-time jobs at an early age. He attended the Boston Latin School and graduated from Harvard with a bachelor's degree in 1915, then taught German for two years at Worcester Academy and continued his studies at Clark University (International Relations), interrupted by military service in France during World War I. Chemical Warfare Unit. In 1920/21 he researched Vienna archives for his dissertation, learned Russian on the side and received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1923 with Archibald Cary Coolidge . He taught Modern History at Clark University for four years before returning to Harvard. There he taught modern European history (for the period from 1815 to 1914) and gave lectures on Turkish-European relations. In 1931 he became an associate professor and in 1936 a professor in the successor to Coolidge.

During World War II he worked as a senior analyst for the OSS (R&A department) and after the war in 1950 he set up the country analysis for the CIA . Around 1952 he pursued his academic career again at Harvard. As early as the 1930s he had turned increasingly to contemporary history and published a lot in Foreign Affairs. During the war he was commissioned to write the history of the relationship between the USA and Vichy France in World War II, which was published as a book in 1947. This was later followed by S. Everett Gleason, a history of US foreign policy before the US entered World War II in 1941 on behalf of the Council on Foreign Relations .

He dealt with the history of diplomacy in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially the system of alliances of Bismarck and the Wilhelmine period, and edited an English version of the Ploetz , An Encyclopedia of World History , first published in 1940. From 1961 to 1977 he was on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board of the US President . In 1945 he received the Medal for Merit .

In 1953 Langer was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1954 he received the Bancroft Prize for Undeclared War with S. Everett Gleason . This work was also nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for History and a jury favorite in the same year ; In the end, however, the Advisory Board decided on a different awardee. He received honorary doctorates from Yale , Harvard and Hamburg (1955). In 1957 he was the successor to Dexter Perkins President of the American Historical Association . In his Presidential Address he advocated the use of psychoanalytic methods in historical research, taking Martin Luther as an example and applying it to whole peoples in Europe after the plague in the 14th century. Soon afterwards he supported the psychoanalyst Erik H. Erikson in his Luther study.

Langer was editor of The Rise of Modern Europe series . He was married to the philosopher Susanne K. Langer (nee Knauth) (1921), with whom he had two sons. After the divorce, he married Rowena Morse Nelson in 1943 , who had four children from their first marriage.

Fonts

  • With "E" of the First Gas , 1919 (history of his unit in the gas war), new as: Gas and Flame in World War I , button 1965.
  • Editor: An Encyclopedia of World History: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, Chronologically Arranged , 1940, 1972, Boston: Houghton Mifflin 2001.
  • The Franco-Russian Alliance 1890-1894 , Harvard University Press 1929.
  • European Alliances and Alignments 1870–1890 , New York: Knopf 1931.
  • The Diplomacy of Imperialism , 2 volumes, New York: Knopf, 1935, 1951.
  • Our Vichy Gamble , New York: Knopf 1947 (translated into French in 1948).
  • with S. Everett Gleason: The Challenge to Isolation, 1937–1940 , New York, on behalf of the Council of Foreign Relations, 1952.
  • with S. Everett Gleason The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 , New York, on behalf of the Council of Foreign Relations, 1953.
  • Conyers Read , 1881-1959: Scholar, Teacher, Public Servant , M. and V. Dean, 1963.
  • Political and Social Upheaval, 1832–1852 , in The Rise of Modern Europe , 1962.
  • Explorations in Crisis: Papers on international history , Harvard University Press, editors Carl and Elizabeth Schorske, 1969 (articles).
  • In and out of the Ivory Tower , New York: Watson Academic Publ. 1977 (autobiography).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Members of the American Academy. Listed by election year, 1950-1999 ( [1] ). Retrieved September 23, 2015.
  2. ↑ Heinz-D. Fischer, Erika J. Fischer: Complete Historical Handbook of the Pulitzer Prize System 1917-2000. Volume 17: Decision Making Processes in all Award Categories based on unpublished Sources. de Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-093912-5 , p. 313 (accessed via de Gruyter online).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Langer, William L.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Langer, William Leonard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American historian
DATE OF BIRTH March 16, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH South Boston , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH December 26, 1977