Gonzalo Menéndez-Pidal (April 12, 1911– December 11, 2008) was a

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

historian, cartographer, cinematographer, photographer, and archivist. He was the youngest historian to ever be admitted to the Spanish Royal Academy of History.

Family

He was the son of Ramon Menendez Pidal and Maria Goyri de Menendez Pidal, who was the first woman to officially graduate from a Spanish university, the Universidad de Madrid.

Education and career

Gonzalo Menéndez Pidal travelled to Munich at the age of seventeen to study

Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Colloquial, Popular, Spoken or Vernacular Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. ''Vulgar Latin'' a ...

with

Karl Vossler Karl Vossler (6 September 1872 – 19 September 1949) was a German linguist and scholar, and a leading romance philologist. Vossler was known for his interest in Italian thought, and as a follower of Benedetto Croce. He declared his support of th ...

and

Philosophy of History Philosophy of history is the philosophy, philosophical study of history and its academic discipline, discipline. The term was coined by the French philosopher Voltaire. In contemporary philosophy a distinction has developed between the ''specul ...

with Pinder. Gonzalo Menendez-Pidal combined his family's fascination with the history of the

Iberian Peninsula The Iberian Peninsula ( ), also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in south-western Europe. Mostly separated from the rest of the European landmass by the Pyrenees, it includes the territories of peninsular Spain and Continental Portugal, comprisin ...

with an interest in the latest technologies. Gonzalo Menendez-Pidal studied cinematography at the Film und Bildamt der Stadt Berlin. He filmed his experiences as he travelled through Spain in the time leading up to the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War () was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republicans and the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the Left-wing p ...

. Most of his films were anthropological documentaries; one set chronicles such as “ La Barraca”, which he created with

Federico García Lorca Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936) was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27, a g ...

and others. His other works are Dieciocho de julio, número 2 - Madrid (1936), Guerra en el campo (1936) and Ávila, ayer y hoy (1943). Gonzalo Menendez-Pidal is also known for photography. He catalogued Spanish tools and hardware, among other objects. He lived in the mountains outside of Madrid and maintained a photographic archive of the history of Spain that showed how the country was built, a tribute to the ingenuity of the Spaniards. In the last years of his life, Menéndez-Pidal wrote and published: "Towards a New Image of the World". In this book, he laid out the essentials of human evolution from antiquity to modern times.

References

* En Recuerdo de Gonzalo Menendez-Pidal. Residencia de Estudiantes, Madrid, Spain. 2008

External links

* https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0580051/ * http://www.elpais.com/articulo/Necrologicas/Gonzalo/Menendez/Pidal/historiador/analitico/elpepinec/20081214elpepinec_2/Tes * http://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=3072414 * http://www.lne.es/secciones/noticia.jsp?pRef=2008121500_42_706973__Asturias-Fallece-Madrid-Gonzalo-Menendez-Pidal-historiador-fotografo-hombre-cine * http://www.almendron.com/tribuna/23204/gonzalo-menendez-pidal-y-goyri-in-memoriam/ {{DEFAULTSORT:Menendez-Pidal, Gonzalo Spanish archivists Spanish cartographers Spanish cinematographers 20th-century Spanish historians 20th-century Spanish photographers