Louis R. Gottschalk

He was born as Louis Gottschalk, the sixth of eight children of Morris and Anna (née Krystal) Gottschalk, Jewish immigrants to Brooklyn from Poland.[2] He graduated from Cornell University with an A.B. in 1919, A.M. in 1920, and the Ph.D. in 1921, under the supervision of Carl L. Becker.[5] During World War I, he served as an apprentice seaman from October 4, 1918 to November 11, 1918, a total of thirty eight days, at the Naval Unit at Cornell in Ithaca, New York.[6] He taught briefly at the University of Illinois,[2][5] and joined the University of Louisville faculty in 1923,[2][5][7][8] but resigned in protest in 1927 after a friend and colleague in the history department was fired as part of an attempt by the university administration to abolish tenure.[2] He joined the University of Chicago in 1927, was promoted to full professor in 1935, and chaired the history department from 1937 to 1942.[4] He was given his endowed chair, the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professorship of History, in 1959.[4] In 1965, facing forced retirement from Chicago, he moved again to the University of Illinois at Chicago so that he could continue teaching.[4][5]

From 1929 to 1943, he served as assistant editor of the Journal of Modern History; for three years following, he was acting editor.[4] He was president of the American Historical Association in 1953[9] and the second president of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.[5]

He met poet Laura Riding, then known by her maiden name, Laura Reichenthal, while she was a student at Cornell and he was a graduate assistant there. They married on November 2, 1920, and he took her last name as his middle name. However, they divorced in 1925.[2][10] He later married Fruma Kasden, in 1930; they had two sons.[2][4] Fruma Gottschalk later taught Russian at the University of Chicago, and died in 1995.[11]

Gottschalk was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1928 and 1954,[4] and a Center for Advanced study of the Behavioral Sciences fellow in 1957. In 1953 he was honored as Chevalier in the Legion of Honor and in 1954 he won a Fulbright award.[4] He received honorary doctorates from the University of Toulouse, Hebrew Union College, and the University of Louisville.[5] In 1965 his students presented him with a festschrift, Ideas in History: Essays Presented to Louis Gottschalk by his Former Students, Duke University Press.[3]

Gottschalk was an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.[12][13]

A series of lectures is named for him at the University of Louisville.[14] The annual $1000 Louis Gottschalk Prize, named in his honor, is given by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies to the author of "an outstanding historical or critical study".[15]

Gottschalk published seven volumes on the history of Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette[3][5] as well as several other books on modern history and revolutions.[5] His books include:

• The Consulate of Napoleon Bonaparte, Haldeman-Julius Co., 1925; Kessinger Publishing, 2007, ISBN 978-1-4325-8611-9
• The Era of the French Revolution (1715–1815), Houghton Mifflin Company, 1929; Surjeet Publications, 1979; online
• Gottschalk, Louis R. (1968) [1931]. "The French Revolution: Conspiracy of Circumstance?". Persecution and Liberty: Essays in Honor of George Lincoln Burr. Ayer Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8369-0783-4. Retrieved June 12, 2015.
• Jean Paul Marat: a study in radicalism New York: Greenberg, Publisher, Inc. 1927; Ayer Company Publishers, Incorporated, 1972, ISBN 978-0-405-08566-6
• "Studies since 1920 of French Thought in the Period of the Enlightenment," The Journal of Modern History Vol. 4, No. 2, June 1932
• Lady-in-waiting: the romance of Lafayette and Aglaé de Hunolstein, The Johns Hopkins press, 1939
• Lafayette comes to America University of Chicago Press, 1935; Kessinger Publishing, 2008, ISBN 978-1-4366-9259-5
• "Carl Becker: Skeptic or Humanist?" The Journal of Modern History Vol. 18, No. 2, June 1946
• "Our Vichy Fumble," The Journal of Modern History Vol. 20, No. 1, March 1948
• Lafayette in America, 1777–1783, L'Esprit de Lafayette Society, 1975
• Lafayette and the Close of the American Revolution The University of Chicago Press, 1942; UMI books on demand, 1998, ISBN 978-0-608-13369-0
• Lafayette between the American and the French Revolution, 1783–1789 University of Chicago press
• Lafayette In the French Revolution, University of Chicago press, 1969
• Lafayette joins the American army, University of Chicago Press, 1974, ISBN 978-0-608-13370-6
• Social Science Research Council. Committee on Historical Analysis
• Lady In Waiting The Romance of Lafayette and Aglae de Hunolstein
• Lafayette : a guide to the letters, documents, and manuscripts in the…
• The Life of Jean Paul Marat (Little blue book No. 433) Kessinger Publishing, 2006, ISBN 978-1-4286-0012-6
• The Foundations of the Modern World [1300–1775], Allen & Unwin, 1969
• Toward the French Revolution: Europe & America in the Eighteenth-Century… Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973, ISBN 978-0-684-13699-8
• The use of personal documents in history, anthropology, and sociology Editors Louis Reichenthal Gottschalk, Clyde Kluckhohn, Robert Cooley Angell, Social Science Research Council, 1945
• Generalization in the Writing of History
• Understanding history; a primer of historical method

His papers are held at the University of Chicago.[4]

• "Louis R. Gottschalk", Year Book 1975, American Philosophical Society, 1976, pp. 55–58.

• The University of Chicago Photographic Archive