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H-SHGAPE:
In Memory of Robert H. Wiebe

Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 00:21:49 -0500
From: Automatic digest processor 
Subject: H-SHGAPE Digest - 11 Jan 2001 to 12 Jan 2001 (#2001-7)
Sender: H-Net Gilded Age and Progressive Era List 
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Date:    Fri, 12 Jan 2001 11:06:01 -0500
From:    Kriste Lindenmeyer 
Subject: Robert Wiebe

Dear H-SHGAPE subscribers:

Robert Wiebe, author of _The Search for Order_ and many other important books, died on December 10, 2000 after suffering a stroke. The SHGAPE Council observed a moment of silence in his memory at its recent meeting in Boston and I am sure that H-SHGAPE subscribers join us in mourning the loss of this wonderful scholar who contributed so much to the study of Gilded Age and Progressive Era history.

H-SHGAPE honored Professor Wiebe at the AHA in 1997. The papers from that panel session are available on the H-SHGAPE website at: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~shgape/wiebe/

I'd like to thank Wendy Plotkin of H-Urban for sharing the following obituary with us. Like H-Urban, we welcome comments from H-SHGAPE subscribers about the influence of Robert Wiebe on the study of American history.

Obituary on Robert Wiebe, author of THE SEARCH FOR ORDER

Posted by Wendy Plotkin H-Urban

Robert Wiebe, author of The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), passed away on December 10, 2000, in Evanston, Illinois, after suffering a stroke. The December 26 New York Times published an obituary, available from the NY Times WWW Archives for a minimal charge.

The Search for Order was a landmark book for synthesizing the history of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, deemed a crucial period over which significant changes in political, social, and economic culture occurred, with urbanization and the spread of urban networks at the core. In a summary of the book in a 1993 retrospective review in Reviews in American History, Kenneth Cmiel wrote:

"By the 1870s, the United States was a distended society. The eruption of modern social and economic forces brutally undermined the autonomy of small-town America. International markets, a national credit system, the railroads, the mass movements of peoples from all over the globe to urban areas -- these were some of the forces trampling what Wiebe called 'island communities,' those small self-contained towns and neighborhoods that had organized the life experience of most Americans until the years after the Civil War. The story of the book is how the United States eventually shed its nostalgia for the island community and began constructing the bureaucratic nexus needed to order a modern society (The Search for Order, p. xiv). Central to the change, according to Wiebe, was "the new middle class," those professionals and modernizing businessmen intent on curbing the unruly disorder but at the same time not fogged by any romantic ennui for the older ways of life.

Reviews in American History (2) June, 1993, 352-368.

Those interested in Professor Wiebe's work may also wish to consult the set of papers on the H-SHGAPE WWW site associated with a 1997 American Historical Association panel on "In Search of Order" with comments by Robin Muncy, Leon Fink, and Martin Sklar, at http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~shgape/wiebe/

I welcome comments to H-Urban on how Wiebe's work influenced the outlook of urban historians, and whether other views have served to add to or "correct" any of his assumptions.

Professor Wiebe had retired from Northwestern University in 1997, after being a member of the Department of History since 1960. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in 1957, and a bachelor's degree from Carleton College in 1951.

Wendy Plotkin

H-Urban Editor

Date:    Fri, 12 Jan 2001 11:37:05 -0500
From:    Kriste Lindenmeyer 
Subject: Robert Wiebe's Student Bob Marcus

From: bruce leslie 

Dear H-SHGAPE,

Robert Wiebe's student (and our chair at SUNY-Brockport) Robert Marcus died of a heart attack in October. Bob's dissertation was published as "The Grand Old Party".

After several decades in administration Bob returned to teaching in the mid-1990s and approached his first OAH meeting feeling like a beginner. Bob snuck into a session that Robert Wiebe was participating in. When his old advisor acknowledged Bob's work in his comments, he felt been accepted back into the profession.

How sad to lose two lovely people and fine historians in such short order.

Bruce Leslie End of H-SHGAPE Digest - 11 Jan 2001 to 12 Jan 2001 (#2001-7)

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