Frances (Fineman) Gunther, 1897-1964

Frances (Fineman) Gunther, journalist and writer, was born in 1897 in New York, the younger of two children of Sonia (Paul) and Dennis Fineman, both Russian Jews. FFG maintained a friendship with her brother, Bernard, into adulthood. FFG attended Barnard College, with a year (1919 1920) at Radcliffe, and was graduated in 1921. She began psychoanalysis in New York in 1923, continuing in Vienna and other places where she lived over the next four decades. During the 1920s, she went to the Soviet Union, and studied Russian theatre.

FFG met John Gunther in 1925, and they were married in 1927. JG became well known for a series of books, including Inside Europe (1936) and Inside Asia (1939). They had two children, both of whom died in childhood: Judy in 1929, before her first birthday, and John, Jr. (Johnny) at 17, in 1947. Johnny's fifteen month struggle with a brain tumor was the subject of JG's Death Be Not Proud, of which FFG wrote the last chapter.

The Gunthers lived in Europe (London, Paris, Rome, Vienna) from 1925 to 1936. As foreign correspondent for the London News Chronicle, FFG covered the establishment of a fascist regime in Austria in 1934. She worked in association with JG for many years, in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and for the News Chronicle and the Chicago Daily News . Her contribution to JG's writings are suggested by annotated drafts of Death Be Not Proud, and a 1934 letter of recommendation in which he stated that "she does most of my work even when I am here [in Vienna]."

In 1937 1938, the Gunthers travelled in the Middle East and Asia, meeting Chaim Weizmann, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawahar lal Nehru, the Chiang Kai sheks, and T.V. Soong; this trip resulted in a continuing friendship between FFG and Nehru. FFG and JG were divorced in 1944, but maintained some contact.

During World War II, FFG wrote articles and made speeches critical of British imperialism and advocating independence for India. Among other organizations, she spoke before the Washington Press Club, the Quaker Institute of International Relations, and the Post War Council in New York. Her speeches were collected in a book, Revolution in India (1944).

After her wide and varied experiences as a journalist, FFG continued to observe major world events, and, absorbed with the idea of world peace, tried to understand and to propose solutions to global conflicts and tensions. Look ing for explanations of political behavior through introspection, she continued to seek enlightenment through relevant courses and lectures. In 1943 1944 she attended the Graduate School of International Relations at Yale to learn more about foreign policy. As a result, she began a study, never completed, entitled "Empire: Notes for a Study of the Theory and Practice of Empires." In 1948 1949 she attended lectures by Karen Horney and others at the New School in New York City, and herself spoke, on "Psychoanalysis and the News World," before the Asso ciation for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis. In 1960 1961 she returned to New York from Israel to take courses on religion, linguistics, and sociology at Columbia University.

Increasingly conscious of her Jewishness and resent ful of its suppression, in late 1949 she joined other Zionists in settling the newly established state of Israel. She took Hebrew lessons and, inspired by Martin Buber and other provocative thinkers whom she met there, began a long range study of Arab Israeli relations. Her interest in the connections between religion and politics culminated in an unpublished work entitled "A Study of Theo Politics."

Her travels continued; in 1950 she visited India as guest of the Nehru family, and the following year met JG in Egypt on his "Inside Africa" trip. She was living in Jerusalem at the time of her death in 1964.

For additional biographical information, see the Frances P. Fineman file in RGXXI, Series 1 (Radcliffe College student files, 1890-1985).