Amann, Peter H., 1927-....

Professor of history, University of Michigan--Dearborn.

From the description of Papers, 1929-1980. (Wayne State University). WorldCat record id: 28419029

Peter Amann

Peter Amann was born in 1927 in the Penzig district of Vienna, Austria. His father Paul Amann was a teacher and a noted writer and translator of English and French authors, including Romain Rolland and others. In 1939 Peter Amann fled with his family to France, and eventually reached New York via Portugal in 1941. After a few itinerant years following their arrival in the United States, Peter Amann graduated high school in Ohio and then continued his education at Oberlin College. In 1947 he completed his studies at Oberlin College and married Enne Niemi in Kentucky.

For the next half decade Amann worked various jobs and wrote fiction in New York City and Milwaukee, before settling in Chicago in 1952 to work on a Ph.D. in History at the University of Chicago. Soon afterwards his first child Paula was born, and two other children, Sandra and David, were born within the following 7 years. Aside from an initial stint at Bowdoin College in Maine (1956-1959) and a few years on the faculty of the State University of New York Binghamton (1965-1968), Amann spent his entire professional career at various campuses of the University of Michigan. From 1971-2004 he was a Professor Emeritus of History at the Ann Arbor campus.

Peter Amann is arguably most noted for his major work Revolution and Mass Democracy: The Paris Club Movement in 1848, but he also authored several other well-regarded scholarly books and articles on a variety of topics covering both European and American history. He has been awarded a Fulbright fellowship (1963-1964), a Guggenheim fellowship (1963-1964), and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship (1982); for all of these awards he traveled to France for research.

Paul Amann

Paul Amann, born in Prague in 1884, studied German and Romance languages, as well as philosophy, at Karl-Ferdinand-University in Prague, and then at the University of Vienna. He graduated in 1907 as a doctor of philosophy. In 1910 he accepted a position as a teacher at a Gymnasium in Vienna. In 1924 he married Dora Iranyi, a concert singer. From 1911 to 1938, Amann taught at the Gymnasium in Vienna; during World War I, he served in the Austro-Hungarian army. Paul Amann was the author of fiction and non-fiction works and a translator. After the occupation of Austria by the Nazis, Amann immigrated to Paris in 1939 and later to Montpellier. When the war ended in 1945, he immigrated to the United States. During the following years, he taught at various colleges in New York State. He died in Fairfield, Connecticut in 1958.

Dora Amann

Dora Amann, nee Israel, was born in 1894 in Vienna. Along with her immediate family, she converted to Protestantism and changed her name to Iranyi; her extended family kept the name Israel. She received a musical education in Vienna, Uppsala (Sweden), and Norway, and sang professionally. She married Paul Amann, a translator, with whom she had two children, Peter and Eva (later Eva Irrera). In 1939 she emigrated to France and then in 1941 to the United States. After Paul Amann’s death, she spent much of her life in New Paltz, New York, and died in 1993 near Washington, D.C.

From the guide to the Peter Amann Collection, 1919-2009, (Leo Baeck Institute)