Louis R. Gottschalk

Louis Reichenthal Gottschalk (February 21, 1899 in Brooklyn – June 23, 1975 in Chicago) was an American historian, an expert on Lafayette and the French Revolution. He taught for many years at the University of Chicago, where he was the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of History.

He was born as Louis Gottschalk, the sixth of eight children of Morris and Anna (née Krystal) Gottschalk, Jewish immigrants to Brooklyn from Poland. 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. 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. He taught briefly at the University of Illinois, and joined the University of Louisville faculty in 1923, 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. He joined the University of Chicago in 1927, was promoted to full professor in 1935, and chaired the history department from 1937 to 1942. He was given his endowed chair, the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professorship of History, in 1959. In 1965, facing forced retirement from Chicago, he moved again to the University of Illinois at Chicago so that he could continue teaching.

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

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. He later married Fruma Kasden, in 1930; they had two sons. Fruma Gottschalk later taught Russian at the University of Chicago, and died in 1995.

Gottschalk was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1928 and 1954, 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. He received honorary doctorates from the University of Toulouse, Hebrew Union College, and the University of Louisville. In 1965 his students presented him with a festschrift, Ideas in History: Essays Presented to Louis Gottschalk by his Former Students, Duke University Press.

Gottschalk was an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

A series of lectures is named for him at the University of Louisville. 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".

Gottschalk published seven volumes on the history of Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette as well as several other books on modern history and revolutions. 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.