Gertrude Himmelfarb

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Gertrude Himmelfarb
Born(1922-08-08)August 8, 1922
New York City, New York, U.S.
DiedDecember 30, 2019(2019-12-30) (aged 97)
Washington, D.C., U.S.
EducationBrooklyn College
University of Chicago
Jewish Theological Seminary
Girton College, Cambridge
Spouse
​
(m. 1942)​
Children2, including Bill
RelativesMilton Himmelfarb (brother)

Gertrude Himmelfarb (August 8, 1922 – December 30, 2019),[1] also known as Bea Kristol, was an American historian. She was a leader of conservative interpretations of history and historiography. She wrote extensively on intellectual history, with a focus on Great Britain and the Victorian era, as well as on contemporary society and culture.

Biography

Himmelfarb was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Bertha (née Lerner) and Max Himmelfarb, both of Russian Jewish background.[citation needed] She received her undergraduate degree from Brooklyn College in 1942 and her doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1950. Himmelfarb later went on to study at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.[2]

In 1942, she married

William Kristol, a political commentator and editor of The Weekly Standard. She never changed her last name. Sociologist Daniel Bell wrote that theirs was "the best marriage of our generation" and her husband wrote that he was “astonished how intellectually twinned” the two were “pursuing different subjects while thinking the same thoughts and reaching the same conclusions”.[3]

She was long involved in Jewish conservative intellectual circles.

Graduate School of the City University of New York, she was the recipient of many awards and honorary degrees. She served on the Council of Scholars of the Library of Congress, the Council of Academic Advisors of the American Enterprise Institute, and the Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. She was a Fellow of the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,[5] and a member of the American Philosophical Society.[6] In 1991, she delivered the Jefferson Lecture under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2004, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by the president of the United States of America. She died on December 30, 2019, at the age of 97.[7]

Historiography

Himmelfarb long nurtured the neoconservative movement in U.S. politics and intellectual life; her husband, Irving Kristol, helped found the movement.[8]

Himmelfarb was a leading defender of traditional historical methods and practices. Her book, The New History and the Old (published in 1987 and revised and expanded in 2004), is a critique of the varieties of "

great men" of history);[13] and, later, postmodernist history, which denies even the ideal of objectivity, viewing all of history as a "social construct" on the part of the historian.[14]

Himmelfarb criticized

A.J.P. Taylor for seeking to "demoralize" history in his 1961 book The Origins of the Second World War, and for refusing to recognize "moral facts" about interwar Europe.[15] Himmelfarb maintained that Taylor was wrong to treat Adolf Hitler as a "normal" German leader playing by the traditional rules of diplomacy in The Origins of the Second World War, instead of being a "world-historical" figure such as Napoleon.[15]

Himmelfarb energetically rejected postmodern academic approaches:

[Postmodernism in history] is a denial of the objectivity of the historian, of the factuality or reality of the past, and thus of the possibility of arriving at any truths about the past. For all disciplines it induces a radical skepticism, relativism, and subjectivism that denies not this or that truth about any subject but the very idea of truth – that denies even the ideal of truth, truth is something to aspire to even if it can never be fully attained.[16]

Ideas

Himmelfarb was best known as a historian of Victorian England.[17] Himmelfarb argued "for the reintroduction of traditional values such as shame, responsibility, chastity, and self-reliance, into American political life and policy-making".[18]

In an obituary, David Brooks described Himmelfarb as "The Historian of Moral Revolution".[19]

Bibliography

Books

Edited

Critical studies and reviews of Himmelfarb's work

Past and present

References

  1. ^ "Gertrude Himmelfarb, Conservative Historian of Ideas, Dies at 97". The New York Times. December 31, 2019.
  2. Contemporary Authors Online. Biography in Context. Detroit: Gale
    . 2008. GALE|H1000045749. Retrieved September 3, 2011. (subscription required)
  3. ^ Martin, Douglas, and Slotnik, Daniel, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Conservative Historian of Ideas, Dies at 97 The New York Times, January 1, 2020, Obituary, section B, page 11
  4. ^ Oz Frankel, Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia (2006)
  5. ^ "Gertrude Himmelfarb". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved May 10, 2022.
  6. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved May 10, 2022.
  7. ^ Brooks, David. "The Historian of Moral Revolution", The Atlantic, December 31, 2019.
  8. ISBN 9780844738994
    .
  9. ^ Himmelfarb 2004, pp. 43, 59–64.
  10. ^ Himmelfarb 2004, pp. 88–111.
  11. ^ Himmelfarb 2004, pp. 51–59, 113–25.
  12. ^ Himmelfarb 2004, pp. 96–97.
  13. ^ Himmelfarb 2004, pp. 18–21, 126–138.
  14. ^ Himmelfarb 2004, pp. 15–30.
  15. ^ a b Himmelfarb 2004, p. 193.
  16. ^ Himmelfarb 2004, p. 16.
  17. ^ Levin, Yuval (January 31, 2020). "The Historian as Moralist". National Review. Retrieved January 3, 2020.
  18. ^ Frankel, Oz (2006), "Gertrude Himmelfarb", Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, JWA, retrieved June 30, 2009.
  19. ^ Brooks, David (December 31, 2019). "The Historian of Moral Revolution". The Atlantic. Retrieved January 1, 2020.

Cited source

External links
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