Biography and Scholarship. In Memory of Guenther Roth

AutorLuciana Villas Bôas
Páginas227-241
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5007/175-7984.2020v19n45p227
227227 – 241
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Biography and Scholarship.
In Memory of Guenther Roth
Luciana Villas Bôas
About a year ago, I booked a ight from Rio de Janeiro to NYC to pay
my last visit to Guenther Roth. A few weeks earlier, a friend had told me
that his illness had reached a terminal phase. I was fortunate to nd him
in good shape, ready to take me for lunch in his favorite neighborhood
restaurant, and to the latest exhibition on the history of jewelry in the
Metropolitan Museum. As he grew feebler towards the end of my stay,
instead of taking me to an exhibition on the Hudson River at New York
Historical Society, he invited me for tea and cake at his place on Riverside
Drive. ese were the rituals we followed for over twenty-three years,
from 1996 through 2019, hence from the time I was a young graduate
student at Columbia University until I had become a literature professor,
a mother of two children and, as Guenther’s once remarked, “mature but
still young”. is essay in memory of Guenther Roth is neither an obituary
nor a scholarly appraisal of his sociological and historical work, but rather
the attempt at recording the history of a friendship. Everyone who knew
Guenther personally will always remember, and occasionally wonder at,
the assured way he impersonated the values and issues that concerned him
as a scholar. In writing down this testimony, I wish to remember and share
how I grew to understand Guenther’s personality and intellectual integrity.
Let me begin with a description of the last day of my visit to Guenther,
on February 27th 2019. We both knew, and Guenther said it upfront, that
it would probably be the last time we saw each other. As I walked into the
living room I saw two copies of his thick book, Max Webers deutsch-englische
Familiengeschichte, 1800-1950, one wrapped, the other unwrapped, placed

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