HENRY PACHTER (1907-1980)
Plastrik, Stanley & Brandt, Willy
Last year, on the night of December 10, our friend and long-time member of the Dissent editorial board Henry Pachter died of a heart attack at the age of seventy-three. His "rich and...
...Most of all, he was a master of the middlelength essay...
...But he would accept restraining influences in his polemics and was not above criticizing himself in the guise of his alter ego (Henri Rabasseire), a pseudonym he sometimes employed...
...In the last few years I saw him rarely and yet was well aware of the fertile way in which he imparted his insights...
...He became a mainstay among our writers, and in my opinion produced some of our finest essays...
...Many of his students became long-time friends and admirers, feel130 ing that he had put into practice effectively the classical notion of education as a "leading out" of ignorance into critical knowledge...
...I remarked once to Henry that in one respect he reminded me of Trotsky (whom he detested because of his "Leninism" and statist views...
...1974...
...Three Economic Models: Capitalism, the Welfare State, and Socialism" (1965...
...Simply to list a few of Henry's better known essays will give a sense of his impressive scope and range: "Confessions of an Old-Timer" (1958...
...All this was part of the broad tradition of the West European democratic and socialist culture of which he felt himself a part...
...With me mourn others who had his confidence and the privilege of sharing in his critical intelligence...
...He lived in the finest tradition of democratic socialism...
...it certainly had that impact upon us...
...Beginning in 1939 in Paris (with Fspagne: Creuset Politique), Henry published seven books, one in French, one in German, and five in English—the last, in 1978, his Modern Germany: A Social, Cultural, and Political History...
...One side of Henry Pachter's thinking always retained a libertarian, even quasi-anarchist cast...
...Henry was a sharp polemicist as well...
...Both had succeeded despite everything in keeping to the end the initial enthusiasm and idealism that had first brought them into the socialist movement...
...Invariably lively and written in an English requiring little editing, Pachter's essays covered a broad territory of history, economics, the social sciences and—particularly--the meaning of socialism and socialist morality...
...Stimulating and forthright, Henry Pachter built a reputation as a respected writer and thinker...
...Freedom, Authority, Participation" (1978...
...but he was a shy and diffident man who concealed this with an outward aggressiveness...
...Perhaps most significant of all in his life was his success in retaining his original idealism, his belief in the possibility of a socialist future...
...Revisionist Historians and the Cold War" (1968...
...Conventional cynicism and weariness never touched his mind or spirit...
...Henry started writing regularly for Dissent several years after it began...
...He participated actively in a number of socialist and democratic movements of his time, always asserting his independence from dogma and cliche, often in ways that seemed aggressive and provoking...
...I believe his association with his fellow editors—often critical and controversial —stimulated him...
...The Right to be Lazy" (1974...
...I once reproached him, saying that when he sat down at his typewriter it became an instrument of warfare...
...STANLEY PLASTRIK Cabled from Bonn Heinz Pachter was a man who kept the culture of Weimar alive in New York, and who explained to some of us in Europe things about America that otherwise we would not have known or understood...
...He believed in democracy, decentralized and within reach of all...
...He would remain here the rest of his life...
...In the classroom he was generous, warm-hearted, and patient, reserving his more harsh judgments of the academic world (toward which he had rather a critical and traditional approach) for elsewhere...
...This, understandably, was a sensitive question with him...
...Many of his friends, among whom I include myself, felt that Henry Pachter was not given his proper due, particularly in the academic world...
...His wide culture, his love of scholarship, research and critical thought went unrewarded...
...His "rich and active life," in the words of his family, had brought him from the streets of Weimar Berlin, where as a university student and a member of the Communist youth movement he opposed the rise of the Nazis, in flight to New York by way of Paris...
...Henry had a wide range of interests besides his academic work...
...WILLY BRANDT 131...
...Henry Pachter was capable of loyalty and generosity toward his friends...
...Given the opportunity to teach (at the New School for Social Research, City College of New York, Rutgers University), he was received in a more respected and profound way by students than "popular" teachers...
...He was charming and considerate with women, and particularly warm and playfully awkward with young children...
...George Kennan: The Perils of History" (196 1...
...Who are the Palestinians...
...Over the years he wrote a politically sophisticated journalism —in English, and also in German for a number of Swiss and German newspapers—which revealed a first-rate, often original and dissenting intelligence grappling with increasingly complex issues...
...He was an excellent amateur pianist, and I recall his embarrassment when I accidently came upon him playing a Beethoven sonata...
Vol. 28 • April 1981 • No. 2
