Press Release

Professor Peter Gay, Director of the Library’s Center for Scholars and Writers, Wins Geschwister-Scholl-Prize

November 15, New York City ­ Professor Peter Gay, Director of The New York Public Library’s Center for Scholars and Writers and Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University, has been awarded the prestigious Geschwister-Scholl-Prize for the German edition of his book My German Question: Growing Up in Nazi Germany (Meine deutsche Frage: Jugend in Berlin 1933 - 1939). In his book, an autobiographical account of his youth in 1930s Berlin, Professor Gay explores the emotional scars left by the trauma of growing up under the Nazi regime and attempts to come to terms with his mixed feelings towards Germany and the Germans. He will accept the prize in Munich on November 22.

Professor Gay is the 20th recipient of the Geschwister-Scholl-Prize. He will accept the award at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, the same university at which Hans and Sophie Scholl, for whom the award is named, were students. (The siblings Scholl were arrested for dropping anti-Nazi leaflets from the balcony of the university and were later executed for their active resistance). The eminent German historian and essayist Karl Dietrich Bracher will deliver the “Laudatio,” or laudatory introduction. The Geschwister-Scholl-Prize is presented jointly by the Verband Bayerischer Verlage und Buchhandlungen e.V. (Booksellers Bavaria) and the city of Munich.

The Geschwister-Scholl-Prize is presented annually and honors a book that has demonstrated original, independent thinking; that has the potential to influence and advance social freedom and moral and intellectual courage; and that raises public consciousness of important current issues. An eight-member committee selected Meine deutsche Frage as this year’s winner. “Unpretentiously, without self-pity and often with humor, the author describes his youth in Berlin in the 1930s and how he and his family were able to emigrate, literally, at the last minute,” the committee wrote in its summary. “By showing how full of contradictions everyday life was under the Nazi dictatorship, he is able to provide an answer to the question of why so many German Jews decided to leave the country so late (or not at all).” Previous award winners include Saul Friedländer, Ernst Klee, Grete Weil, and Christa Wolf.

A prolific author, distinguished professor, and one of the world’s most respected scholars, Peter Gay has been Director of The New York Public Library’s Center for Scholars and Writers since 1997. An author of more than twenty books, he has written extensively on the subjects of the Enlightenment, the Weimar Republic, Sigmund Freud, and bourgeois culture. Among his most recent publications are The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud: Vol.V, Pleasure Wars (1997), My German Question: Growing up in Nazi Berlin (1998), and Mozart (1999).

Professor Gay’s work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the National Book Award; the first Amsterdam Prize for Historical Science from The Hague, 1990; and the Gold Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1992. In addition, he was a Guggenheim Fellow from 1967 to 1968, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin, Germany, and an Overseas Fellow of Churchill College University from 1970 to 1971. In 1988, he was honored by The New York Public Library as a Library Lion, and the following year he was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
 

Return to Press Releases
 

thoerenz: pro: 11-17-99