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Welcome!

My books range from European History of the eighteenth century through the twenty-first century. They include three poetry books, a novel, monographs including about my immigrant experience in New York City, farm and urban women during two wars and German women's elementary education from Martin Luther to the 1980s. Some works are autobiographical.

The upper photograph on the right in the center shows the farm on which I grew up and on which I learned to walk and speak the local Middle-High German dialect. It is in the Dolomite mountains of Italy. I was not born there, but, like so many children who are born into a war, my parents were able to place my brother on I on this farm; we were safer there than in any city in Germany or even Italy. It makes me empathise with children in Ukraine and Gaza.

The lower photograph is of Bass Lake near Blowing Rock, NC, where my wife and I live and where we like to walk on competently maintained gravel roads.

The women on the farm and farm life centered me and became the focal point in life.

A rigorous education in gymnasiums became my home away from home before I emigrated....Latin, Greek, history, etc. When you read my texts, I hope you will do that, especially the poetry, you will detect my background ... the beauty of nature, the love of animals, the drive to work hard, the determination to understand the past (and thus teaching of and writing about history), the disdain for pompacity and overbearing, and falsehood, the lure of beauty (as in art and music).

These points are well represented in the Festschrift in my name in the journal Clio's Psyche." (vol. 30, #2, Winter, 2024). There my colleagues talk about me as a historian,

psychohistorian really; that is the reason for my photograph on the left of a small section of the bishop's castle in Salzburg, Austria. Psychohistorians dig with the psychologist's tools below the surface stories of the past to discover what is underneath and then and bring it forward to our listeners and readers.

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Publications available

Seasons -- of Life and of Understanding (2024)
This is my third poetry book. With it, I honor Matsuo Basho, the seventh-century Japanese poet; his tight argued and unadorned style even today offers an excellent example about how to present the most pleasant, unusual, even the most complex topics succinctly and powerfully. Better in some ways even than an essay or a book.

Was man so Alles lernt; Südtiroler Rückblick auf die moderne Welt (All the Things One Learns; A South Tyrolean's Reflections) (2023)
My parents deposited my brother and I in an isolated Dolomite mountains village of Afers/Eores for our safety during WWII; it brought the modern world to this community with its Middle-High German dialect during my lifetime. I gained the values I hold tightly in the context of the family of the Egarter Hof (farm) that took us in. The book interweaves the story of a farm and a village with my own.

Listen to Rarely Heard Voices (2022)
The publisher writes that "[Peter's] oneness and joy of nature is constantly apparent." That's my reason for writing poetry: Nature as we see it "outside," in our lives, and in the troubles that can surround us in a complex word.

An Immigrant in the 1960s. Finding Hope and Success in New York City
This is an attempt at an autobiography about my arrival as a teen from Germany and advancing from elevator operator to university professor. You will be surprised how easy and pleasant it was to become an American. Being white helped enormously.

Hopes and Fears: Past and Present
My first poetry book ranges from the beauty of nature to the historical, the soft blossoms of spring to the aggression and oppression of autocrats.

A Perfect Portrait: A Historical Novel
This novel is about an aspiring female artist in Weimar, one of the most exciting cities of 18th-century Germany. She was/is not a real person, but she definitely could have been.

In the Face of Evil
The complex lives of my four "mothers"are the topic of this book. it deals with two farm women of the Italian Dolomites, my birth mother, and my step-mother. Steady with their values may be the best way to describe their approach to an extremely difficult times.

Der Vater und die SS
My struggle to understand my father in reflected in this attempt to understand the man and his time. Out of print

The Eduction of Women in Eigheenth-Century Germany
As far as I can determine, the only in depth study of German women's education from Martin Luther to the end of the 18th century. Expensive, but worth it.

Human Space
This is an early attempt to understand an increasingly problematic situation across our world; a study about how we use and abuse our space/s.

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