Personal Thread: Today, one year ago my dad, Peter Bergmann, died at 75. He has a remarkable story and lived a truly interesting life. He was born in Kobe, Japan in 1942 - an American born behind enemy lines. 1/ legacy.com/obituaries/gai…
His father was German, mother was British and - by chance also American. And therefore, so was my dad – a citizen of the Reich, the British empire, and the USA. He was the product of the first era of globalization and was born in the midst of its collapse. 2/
The Bergmann’s hailed from Hamburg. But his grandfather became part of the German commercial and colonial expansion into Asia, spurred by Bismark. They set up in Manila in the late 19th century. And Max, his father, was born there in 1907. 3/ lougopal.com/manila/?p=1869
My dad’s mom, Elizabeth Mahoney, was English, her father was in the British sugar industry. He was posted by his company to Puerto Rico and that’s where my grandmother was born in 1916. After a period in Peru they eventually ended up in Manila. 4/
Betty and Max met and married in Manila in the 30s; a German-British marriage, just as war was breaking out. Eventually, they relocated to then "neutral" Japan. Betty’s parents were eventually interned in Santo Tomas, the notorious Japanese internment camp in Manila. 5/
In Japan, in May 1941, just seven months before Pearl Harbor, my grandma went to the US embassy to claim US citizenship, resulting from being born in Puerto Rico. 6/
A year later, in May 1942 my father was born. They lived out the war, hunkered down in a small, isolated, German expat community. 7/
After the war, my grandmother created a home goods shop that was frequented by many American serviceman. My uncle even had play date w/ McArthur's son; Arthur McArthur. 8/
My dad and his older brother were soon sent off to boarding school in England, while Max and Betty came to America to establish themselves, settling in San Francisco. 9/
After years w/o seeing their parents, in 1951 my dad, 9 years old, and his brother Richard, 12, travelled as unaccompanied minors in a boat across the Atlantic. Here he is arriving in NYC in 1951. 10/ 
They then took the transcontinental railway by themselves across the country to San Francisco to be reunited w/ parents. 11/
He went to UC Berkeley and was arrested in the first mass arrest of the Free Speech Movement in 1964 en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Spee… 12/
At Berkeley, he eventually married my mom – she is the daughter of survivors of Dachau and Auschwitz. Her parents had lost everything, but found a new life in America, with their American daughter and their shoe store in North Hollywood. 13/
My dad went on to become a German historian where he sought to understand causes of WWII, this led him to the philosopher oft blamed for facilitating Nazism, Nietzsche. 14/
His book sought to contextualize Nietzsche in his time. Poetically, my dad died on August 25th, same day Nietzsche died. amazon.com/Nietzsche-Anti… 15/
He taught @UCBerkeley @BatesCollege @colgateuniv @Wellesley @Huskers @UConn and @UF We even spent a summer in East Berlin in 1985 beyond the wall as German archives were in the east. 16/
He never finished his last book, his life's work. He never really seemed to want to! Why finish what you love. 17/
It was on the interplay b/w German and American Exceptionalism and the problem of German defeat. Provides a grt basis for understanding US-German relations. Read this article in International History 18/ tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108… …
I think one the lesson of my dad’s life is that he was born at probably one of the worst times to be born. When everything was falling apart. When it seemed like there would be no future. Yet there was. And it was wonderful. Miss you dad. 19/
