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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Reviews
Review of Was man Alles Lernt
"I fully share your life experiences of education, good and bad authority, and such role models, as well as the sorrow over the perversion of the good teachings of all the great founders of the faith by subsequent zealots, fanatics. The role of women in your upbringing, socialization, value formation has touched me deeply. As you let us see again and again in different forms: they are the bearers - in childbirth as well as in everyday life; they are the ones who suffer – in wars as well as other evolutionary ruptures; they are the permanent workers, watchdogs, guardians; they are the revolutionaries."
Gerhard Waldheim, Email dated 16 April 2023.
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"'Language as the Key.' INTERVIEW: PETER PETSCHAUER spent his childhood in Afers during the Second World War. In his latest book, he describes life on the (Egarter) farm at that time and talks about transgenerational trauma."' Anina Vontavon editor in chief of Brixner.
"I find it fascinating to analyze the circumstances in which one is born. How one's own life develops is … decided even before birth without our power to influence it – the world into which you, Anina, were born is very different from the one I was born into."
Brixner, No. 400, p. 43.
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Reviews of An Immigrant in the 1960s
"Experiencing New York in the 60s, in Manhattan, through Peter’s eyes as he writes about it in an easy to read and incredibly personally revealing and humble autobiography, has been a reminiscent and an eye-opening experience."
Susan Hein, MPS, LP, NCPsyA, psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, professor, historian, author.
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"The story of how [Peter] overcame numerous obstacles to gain a Ph.D. and become a professor and an author is engrossing and inspirational. It is also a good humored, well written coming of age story truly in the mold of fairy tales, Horatio Alger's success sagas, and Ben Franklin's autobiography."
Zohara Boyd, a former colleague, professor emerita of English, Appalachian State University.
Reviews of A Perfect Portrait:
In her review of A Perfect Portrait in Clio's Psyche (23, 1, Fall 2016: 82) and NYC psychoanalyst and psychohistorian Merle Molofsky wrote:
"In his historical novel, Petschauer uses his deeply attuned, intuitive, psychologically resonant storytelling gift to create for the reader memorable characters in a richly detailed menu, life in 18th century Weimar, Germany. He evokes the specifics of home work, social status, social mores and relationships so that we very well may be walking the streets, frequenting the taverns, or working side-by-side people living in everyday lives. Most importantly, you feel the nuances of the interval in lives and social expectations of women."
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Paul Elovitz, psychohistorian and editor of Clio's Psyche emailed in a personal email on April 3rd, 2016:
"Congratulations Peter, I enjoyed your Perfect Portrait, which I finished the day before yesterday. Your ending caught me unawares."
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Zohara Boyd, a former colleague at Appalachian State University, wrote in a personal email on June 19th, 2016:
"I have read A Perfect Portrait and enjoyed it thoroughly, though I had hoped you might end it differently. Of course, when I was a kid, I read Tale of Two Cities several times in hopes that ending might somehow change too. The revisions are very good. The dates put everything in its proper time frame and make the flashbacks much clearer. And Johann seems less of a lout, still nowhere near the perfect husband but much more tolerable, snoring and all. I do love the clarity of the language and the real sound of the dialogue. It was a great read at the seashore last month. "
Reviews of Wounded Centuries: A Selection of Poems
Ken Fuchsman, “Wounded Centuries,” Psychohistory News; Newsletter of the International Psychohistorical Association, 35, 3 (Summer, 2016): 4.
“One of Peter (Petschauer's) poems in Wounded Centuries is about a Hungarian Jew with his own family’s last name and who had the same occupation as his father, a journalist. He found out about this man searching on the Internet. This Hungarian, Attila Petschauer, who was also a fencer in the 1928 and 1932 Olympics, was “tortured to death by his former comrades in a concentration camp.”
For Peter, the only way to deal with his anguish
was through poetry:
"Attila, how dare you disturb
my peace with your heritage?
A heritage that questions my own?"
I leave this review of a book that is not available, but which shows the sorts of issues I dealt with.