ABSTRACT
We lost one of our great ones. Gerry had reached seventy years of age, but remained vigorous and mentally
sharp as ever. (As appropriate in this circle amongst friends and close colleagues in the European Association for Banking and Financial History, I will use ‘Gerry’ when speaking in a personal sense – ‘Feldman’ refers to discussions of his scholarly career – even as a graduate student he was simply Gerry to me – which speaks volumes about his accessibility and personability.) As many in the eabh can attest, Gerry’s travel stamina was legendary: he
regularly participated in conferences on both sides of the Atlantic. One historian based in Germany saw him on two consecutive weekends in two different parts of Germany even though Gerry was living in Berkeley and not on one of his many extended visits. How he managed to travel as much as he did, arrive ready to work, run the Center for European Studies at Berkeley, entertain outside visitors, mentor innumerable graduate students, work on the editorial boards of at least eight major journals, participate in conferences and still write as prolifically as he did is one of the great mysteries of his life. At a point when most historians slow down, Gerry went on a remarkable
run of high quality scholarship with the publication of an award-winning book on the insurance company, Allianz and the German Insurance Business 1933-1945 (2001).1 He also edited and co-wrote Networks of Nazi Persecution (2005),2 Österreichische Banken und Sparkassen im Nationalsozialismus (2006),3 and Finance and Modernization (2008),4 the latter appearing posthumously. This pace would tire even a younger scholar. The productivity of this last decade was simply stunning even by standards of Feldman’s distinguished career characterized by quality scholarship and major works that helped to shape the field of German history for nearly five decades. Before illness incapacitated him, he was researching Austrian banks during National Socialism, planning to work at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, and beginning to write about the history of Jewish businessmen before and during the Third Reich. According to his wife (a historian herself), editor, translator and true partner Norma von RagenfeldFeldman, the work on the Austrian Creditanstalt in particular brought the thousands of Jews who lost their property and later their lives to his attention.
‘He wanted to give these people back their voice and place in memory; their stories “broke his heart.”’5
