Gertrude Himmelfarb (August 8, 1922 – December 30, 2019), 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.
Background
Himmelfarb was born in
Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Bertha (née Lerner) and Max Himmelfarb, both of
Russian Jewish
The history of the Jews in Russia and areas historically connected with it goes back at least 1,500 years. Jews in Russia have historically constituted a large religious and ethnic diaspora; the Russian Empire at one time hosted the largest pop ...
background. She received her undergraduate degree from
Brooklyn College
, mottoeng = Nothing without great effort
, established =
, parent = CUNY
, type = Public university
, endowment = $98.0 million (2019)
, budget = $123.96 m ...
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.
In 1942, she married
Irving Kristol
Irving Kristol (; January 22, 1920 – September 18, 2009) was an American journalist who was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism". As a founder, editor, and contributor to various magazines, he played an influential role in the intellectua ...
, known as the "godfather" of
neoconservatism
Neoconservatism is a political movement that began in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party and with the growing New Left and co ...
, and had two children, Elizabeth Nelson and
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”.
She was long involved in Jewish conservative intellectual circles. Professor Emerita at the 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
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
, and a member of the
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
. 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.
Historiography
Himmelfarb long nurtured the
neoconservative movement in U.S. politics and intellectual life; her husband, Irving Kristol, helped found the movement.
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 "
new history" that have sought to displace the old. The "New Histories" she critiqued include:
quantitative history
Quantitative history is a method of historical research that uses quantitative, statistical and computer resources. It is considered a type of the social science history and has four major journals: ''Historical Methods'' (1967– ), ''Journal of ...
that presumes to be more "scientific" than conventional history, but relies on partial and dubious data;
Marxist historiography
Marxist historiography, or historical materialist historiography, is an influential school of historiography. The chief tenets of Marxist historiography include the centrality of social class, social relations of production in class-divided soc ...
derived from economic assumptions and class models that leave little room for the ideas and beliefs of contemporaries or the protagonists and events of history; psychoanalytic history dependent on theories and speculations that violate the accepted criteria of historical evidence; analytic history that reduces history to a series of isolated "moments" with no overriding narrative structure;
social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...
, "history from the bottom", that denigrates the role of politics, nationality, and individuals (the "
great men" of history); 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.
Himmelfarb criticized
A.J.P. Taylor
Alan John Percivale Taylor (25 March 1906 – 7 September 1990) was a British historian who specialised in 19th- and 20th-century European diplomacy. Both a journalist and a broadcaster, he became well known to millions through his televis ...
for seeking to "demoralize" history in his 1961 book ''
The Origins of the Second World War
''The Origins of the Second World War'' is a non-fiction book by the English historian A. J. P. Taylor, examining the causes of World War II. It was first published in 1961 by Hamish Hamilton.
Origins
Taylor had previously written ''The Struggl ...
'', and for refusing to recognize "moral facts" about
interwar Europe. Himmelfarb maintained that Taylor was wrong to treat
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then ...
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.
Himmelfarb energetically rejected postmodern academic approaches:
Ideas
Himmelfarb was best known as a historian of
Victorian England, but she put that period in a larger context.
Her book, ''The Idea of Poverty'', opens with an extended analysis of
Adam Smith
Adam Smith (baptized 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the thinking of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Seen by some as "The Father of Economics"——� ...
and
Thomas Malthus, who helped shape debate and policies through much the nineteenth century and beyond. Nominated for the National Book Award, ''Victorian Minds'' features such eighteenth-century "proto-Victorians" as
Edmund Burke and
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham (; 15 February 1748 Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates">O.S._4_February_1747.html" ;"title="Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New Style dates">O.S. 4 February 1747">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.htm ...
, concluding with the "last Victorian",
John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir
John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (; 26 August 1875 – 11 February 1940) was a Scottish novelist, historian, and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since Canadian Confederation.
After a brief legal career ...
, whose novels depict a twentieth-century imbued with
Victorian values. ''The Moral Imagination'' ranges from Burke to
Winston Churchill and
Lionel Trilling, with assorted Victorians and non-Victorians in between. ''On Looking into the Abyss'' has modern culture and society in the forefront and the Victorians in the background, while ''One Nation, Two Cultures'' is entirely about American culture and society. ''The Roads to Modernity'' enlarges the perspective of the
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...
, both chronologically and nationally, placing the British Enlightenment in opposition to the French and in accord with the American. ''The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot'' and ''The People of the Book'' focus on attitudes to Jews, Judaism, and
Zionism
Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after ''Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...
in England from their readmission in the seventeenth century to the present.
In scores of essays she demonstrated that Victorian "values" ("virtues", she calls them) were not unique to that time and place. "The Victorian Ethos: Before and after Victoria" is the title of one essay; "Victorianism before Victoria" are the opening words of another. Today, the word "Victorian" may have a disagreeable and crabbed connotation, conjuring up repressive sexual and social mores. Himmelfarb humanized and democratized that concept. In an interview after receiving the National Humanities Medal, she explained that the Victorian virtues –
prudence,
temperance
Temperance may refer to:
Moderation
*Temperance movement, movement to reduce the amount of alcohol consumed
*Temperance (virtue), habitual moderation in the indulgence of a natural appetite or passion
Culture
* Temperance (group), Canadian dan ...
,
industriousness
Diligence—carefulness and persistent effort or work—is one of the seven heavenly virtues. It is indicative of a work ethic, the belief that work is good in itself.
In students
Bernard et al. suggest that diligence in students is define ...
,
decency,
responsibility – were thoroughly pedestrian. "They depended on no special breeding, talent, sensibility, or even money. They were common, everyday virtues, within the capacity of ordinary people. They were the virtues of citizens, not of heroes or saints – and of citizens of democratic countries, not aristocratic ones". Himmelfarb has argued "for the reintroduction of traditional values (she prefers the term 'virtues'), such as
shame, responsibility,
chastity
Chastity, also known as purity, is a virtue related to temperance. Someone who is ''chaste'' refrains either from sexual activity considered immoral or any sexual activity, according to their state of life. In some contexts, for example when ma ...
, and
self-reliance
"Self-Reliance" is an 1841 essay written by American transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. It contains the most thorough statement of one of Emerson's recurrent themes: the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false con ...
, into American political life and policy-making".
One of her most outspoken admirers is
Gordon Brown
James Gordon Brown (born 20 February 1951) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Tony B ...
, the former
Labour Party Prime Minister. His introduction to the British edition of ''Roads to Modernity'' opens: "I have long admired Gertrude Himmelfarb's historical work, in particular her love of the history of ideas, and her work has stayed with me ever since I was a history student at Edinburgh University."
In an obituary,
David Brooks described Himmelfarb as "The Historian of Moral Revolution".
Bibliography
Books
* ''Lord Acton: A Study of Conscience and Politics'' (1952)
* ''
Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution'' (1959)
online free* ''Victorian Minds'' (1968)
* ''On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill'' (1974)
* ''The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age'' (1984)
online free* ''Marriage and Morals Among the Victorians'' (1986
online free* ''The New History and the Old'' (1987, 2004)
online free* ''Poverty and Compassion: The Moral Imagination of the Late Victorians'' (1991)
online free* ''On Looking into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society'' (1994)
online free* ''The De-Moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values'' (1995)
* ''One Nation, Two Cultures'' (1999)
*
* ''The Moral Imagination: From Edmund Burke to Lionel Trilling'' (2006)
* ''The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot'' (2009)
* ''The People of the Book: Philosemitism in England, from Cromwell to Churchill'' (Encounter Books, 2011)
*
;Edited
* Lord Acton, ''Essays on Freedom and Power'' (Free Press, 1948)
* Milton Himmelfarb, ''Jews and Gentiles'' (Encounter Books, 2007)
* Irving Kristol, ''The Neoconservative Persuasion'' (Basic Books, 2011
online free* Thomas Robert Malthus, ''Essay on Population'' (Modern Library, 1960)
* John Stuart Mill, ''Essays on Politics and Culture'' (Doubleday, 1962)
* John Stuart Mill, ''On Liberty'' (Penguin, 1974)
* Alexis de Tocqueville, ''Memoir on Pauperism'' (Ivan Dee, 1997)
* ''The Spirit of the Age: Victorian Essays'' (
Yale University Press, 2007)
Critical studies and reviews of Himmelfarb's work
;''Past and present''
*
References
Cited source
*
External links
*
*
* also
Paul Johnson,
Brian Lamb
Brian Patrick Lamb (; born October 9, 1941) is an American journalist. He is the founder, executive chairman, and the now-retired CEO of C-SPAN, an American cable network that provides coverage of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Sena ...
,
Frank McCourt
Francis McCourt (August 19, 1930July 19, 2009) was an Irish-American teacher and writer. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his book ''Angela's Ashes'', a tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood.
Early life and education
Frank ...
,
Robert D. Richardson, Jr.,
Cornel West
Cornel Ronald West (born June 2, 1953) is an American philosopher, political activist, social critic, actor, and public intellectual. The grandson of a Baptist minister, West focuses on the role of race, gender, and class in American society a ...
,
Simon Winchester
Simon Winchester (born 28 September 1944) is a British-American author and journalist. In his career at ''The Guardian'' newspaper, Winchester covered numerous significant events, including Bloody Sunday and the Watergate Scandal. Winchester ha ...
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Himmelfarb, Gertrude
1922 births
2019 deaths
20th-century American historians
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21st-century American historians
21st-century American women writers
Alumni of Girton College, Cambridge
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American Trotskyists
American women historians
Brooklyn College alumni
Charles Darwin biographers
City University of New York faculty
Communist women writers
Critics of Marxism
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy
Historians of the United Kingdom
Historiographers
Jewish American historians
Jewish Theological Seminary of America alumni
National Humanities Medal recipients
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