Pierre Nora

Pierre Nora ( born November 7, 1931 in Paris ) is a French historian who is well known for his work on French identity and for his merits in the social sciences. His name is often associated with the discipline of history of mentalities in conjunction.

Life

Nora is the son of a middle-class non- practicing Jewish family, he himself admits to have " no religious feeling ."

Nora studied at the prestigious Lycée Louis -le- Grand in the Latin Quarter in Paris, but did not visit it - how often to read is - the École Normale Supérieure. Finally to the University, he earned a license in philosophy. After his Agrégation d' histoire he worked until 1960 as a high school teacher in Oran (Algeria). Since 1977 he is Director of Studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.

At the same time Pierre Nora was very successful and later influential in the publishing industry, especially since he has been working at the prestigious Éditions Gallimard since 1965. In 1980 he founded at Gallimard together with the philosopher Marcel Gauchet the magazine Le débat, which in the wake of Les Temps Modernes quickly became one of the most important intellectual journals of France. He was elected member of the Académie française in 2001, in which he was solemnly received on 6 June 2002.

2014 Nora was awarded the Dan David Prize.

Work

Pierre Nora always takes a critical look at the history of France and of the collective identity of the French. Importance was his idea of ​​"lieu de mémoire ", the memorial, which he connects the idea that the collective memory of a social group ( the French nation for Nora usually ) crystallizes in certain places. The term site is not geographically to understand; in any case, has such a place a special symbolic power that has an identity function for the respective group.

A first German translation of excerpts from his seven -volume work Les Lieux de mémoire was published in 1990 under the title " Between history and memory." The initiative for this translation came from the publicist and historian Ulrich Raulff and the publisher Klaus Wagenbach. More translated into German Les Lieux de mémoire excerpts from published under the title Remembrance places in France in 2005.

Nora was over years less by his own works, but through his work as editor of the most influential historians of France. He was one of today responsible for publishing respected as groundbreaking titles, such as Raymond Aron, Michel Foucault and Jacques Le Goff. In addition, he was responsible for the translation of in France until then largely unknown German authors such as Ernst Kantorowicz Thomas Nipperdey or Karl Polanyi. Some of his decisions came here with incomprehension, he refused in the 1990s, a French translation of Eric Hobsbawm's " Age of Extremes " because of the Marxist orientation of the author, this finally appeared in a Brussels publisher.

Publications in German language

  • (Ed. :) memorials in France. Beck, 2005, ISBN 978-3-406-52207-9.
  • The era of remembrance. On: idem (ed. :) memorials in France. Munich 2005. 543-575.
  • Gaullists and Communists. In: idem (ed. :) memorials in France. Munich 2005. 214-252.
  • (Ed. :) Between history and memory. Fischer, 2001, ISBN 978-3-596-12295-0.

Literature in French (excerpt)

  • Les Français d' Algérie ( Julliard )
  • Vincent Auriol. Journal du Septennat 1947-1954 ( Armand Colin )
  • Faire de l' histoire ( Gallimard )
  • Essais d' ego- histoire ( Gallimard )
  • Les Lieux de mémoire ( Gallimard )
Latin Quarter, Paris Integrated Authority File
650073
de