LERNER, Gerda

Born 30 April 1920, Vienna, Austria

Daughter of Robert and Ilona Neumann Kronstein; married Carl Lerner, 1941 (died); children: Stephanie, Daniel

Gerda Lerner, an only child, came of age in Nazi-dominated prewar Europe. She became involved in her teens with the Austrian underground, and was captured and imprisoned by German officials before fleeing to the U.S. in 1939. Lerner was the only member of her family to escape the ravages of Nazism during World War II. She married a Philadelphia-born filmmaker and editor in 1941 and became a U.S. citizen two years later. Lerner did not undertake higher education until she was in her forties. She received a B.A. from the New School for Social Research in New York in 1963, an M.A. in 1965 from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1966. Lerner taught at the New School for Social Research, Long Island University, and Sarah Lawrence College before becoming a professor of American history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1980.

Lerner's first important historical work was based upon her doctoral dissertation. The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina: Rebels Against Slavery (1967) is a biography investigating the origins of the sisters' abolitionist sentiments in their youth on a South Carolina plantation. It chronicles their movement northward to escape from the influence of slavery and the problems they faced as female activists in the abolitionist movement. More than a biography of two women reformers, The Grimké Sisters investigates the development of both the abolitionist movement and the women's rights movement that grew out of it. Lerner picked up the Grimké sisters' story 20 years later with The Feminist Thought of Sarah Grimké (1998).

Lerner's study of the activities of women in the abolitionist movement naturally led her to investigate the history of American women. The Woman in American History (1971) is a textbook outlining the history of women in American life over the past three centuries. Organized into four major chronological periods, the text discusses women as homemakers, workers, and citizens in each of these periods. Throughout this work, Lerner demonstrates Mary Ritter Beard's thesis that women have always been a force in history, but their involvement has always been overshadowed by that of men. Yet Lerner is careful to point out that the history of American women has been one of accomplishments followed by setbacks. In Lerner's belief, by understanding how this progress of history is so uneven, the challenges and problems faced by women today can be better met.

To make black women, a group particularly neglected by most historians, more visible in American history, Lerner published Black Women in White America: A Documentary History (1972). Consisting of unmined primary documents, most of which had never been published before, the book tells the story of America's black women, from the early years of the American republic to the 1960s. This history of black women provided the groundwork for many excellent works on the subject written during the past three decades.

The Female Experience: An American Documentary (1977) represents Lerner's attempt to create a new philosophy of history more sympathetic to the values of women. She points out in the foreword that, in order for a universal, undistorted history of America to be written, the patriarchal value system from which American history has been written by men and for men must be countered with a female value system of history. Only by studying women in history according to their own value systems and on their own terms will we arrive at an accurate history of the American woman.

Lerner's two-volume Women and History charts the evolution of women's roles in society from prehistory to 1870. In volume one, The Creation of Patriarchy (1986), Lerner attempts to track the beginnings of male dominance in the ancient civilizations of Sumer, Egypt, and Greece. She cites evidence from such diverse sources as literature, art, and archaeology to support her claims that patriarchy is a cultural invention and male dominance is the first instance of—and thus the model for—oppression. Lerner has been criticized by reviewers and colleagues for using such fragmentary evidence, although she herself notes her supporting documentation is "fragile." Other scholars praise Lerner for providing new information about women's roles throughout history.

In The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to 1870 (1993), volume two of Women and History, Lerner examines European history from the 7th through the 19th centuries and shows the constraints imposed upon women by the patriarchal society. Among the areas she explores in detail are the lack of education available to women and their inability to participate in important traditions reserved exclusively for men. Lerner also looks at the scattered resistance to male domination as expressed by women, particularly through their writings and their roles as mothers, and theorizes on the failure of these early seeds of feminism to take root.

Why History Matters: Life and Thought (1997) is a collection of essays and speeches, partly autobiographical and partly scholarship. Lerner begins with her memories of life in post-World War I Austria and continues with her family's escape from the Nazis and subsequent relocation to the U.S. She recalls her inability to reconcile her Judaism with women's exclusion from full participation in temple services and her abandonment of her faith for over five decades. She also traces her path to academic success and her views on broader topics like class, race, and feminism.

Lerner writes that "all human beings are practicing historians," and we need not only remember history but remember it accurately, since she notes that what is left out of history may be as telling as what is recorded. She underscores the power of those who are charged with writing the history—how they are usually the victors and how their versions of history affect individuals and nations. In this collection of essays, Lerner teaches the reader how our own personal history also matters, because it tells us who we are, where we have been, where we are going, and what we have won or lost along the way. Knowing our own histories is the only way to achieve our goals, right wrongs, and remember the suffering that we or others have caused.

In addition to these notable contributions in the fields of American, social, and women's history, Lerner has also written short stories and screenplays. Lerner's literary abilities, however, have found their most praiseworthy outlet in A Death of One's Own (1978), a beautifully sensitive account of the death of her husband. A combination of narrative, journal entries, and poetry, the book is best summarized in a poem by Howard Nemerov, which Lerner herself quotes: "Their marriage is a good one. In our eyes / What makes a marriage good? Well, that the tether / Fray but not break, and that they stay together. / One should be watching while the other dies."

A Death of One's Own illustrates Lerner's attempts to come to terms not only with her marriage and the death of her husband, but with her own past. She is true to her historical training when she recounts memories of her childhood and family to give insight and meaning to her relationship with her husband and his death. In this work, as demonstrated by the personal tragedy and experience of Lerner, we truly see the value of history in our lives.

In 1981 Lerner, a founding member of the National Organization of Women, became the first woman president of the Organization of American Historians in 50 years. Among her awards are a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship in 1976, a Ford Foundation fellowship in 1978, a Guggenheim fellowship in 1980, Sarah Lawrence College established the Gerda Lerner Scholarship Fund in her honor in 1983, an Educational Foundation Achievement award from the American Association of University Women in 1986, the Lucretia Mott Award in 1988, and the Austrian Cross for Science and Art in 1996. Lerner has also won several awards for individual works, including a Special Book award from the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians in 1980 for The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History (1979), and a Joan Kelly Award from the American Historical Association in 1986 for volume one of Women and History.

As a historian and a writer, as a teacher and a scholar, Lerner has had a profound influence on a generation of students, both male and female. Lerner, determined to "make women's history respectable," founded several graduate programs in the field and helped train many women's studies scholars. Her work, both historical and literary, has had one major goal: to humanize and universalize the American experience.

Other Works:

No Farewell (1955). Singing of Women (musical, with Eve Merriam, 1956). Black Like Me (screenplay, with Carl Lerner, 1964). Women Are History: A Bibliography in the History of American Women (1975). Teaching Women's History (1981). A History of the Coordinating Committee on Women in the Historical Profession—Conference Group on Women's History (with Hilda Smith and Nupur Chaudhuri, 1989.

Bibliography:

Reference works:

CA (1971). CANR (1989, 1999). CBY (1998). Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States (1995).

Other references:

America (4 Dec. 1993). Journal of American History (June 1983, Sept. 1990). Ms. (May 1986). Nation (12 May 1997). NYTBR (17 Nov. 1985, 20 Apr. 1986, 2 May 1993). Progressive (May 1997). PW (3 Feb. 1997). Signs (Summer 1988). WRB (Jan. 1987).

—PAULA A. TRECKEL,

UPDATED BY LEAH J. SPARKS