Peter Paret

Peter Paret (born April 13, 1924) is an American military, cultural and art historian with a particular interest in German history.

Paret was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of Dr. Hans Paret and Suzanne Aimée Cassirer, who divorced in 1932. His mother, who was born in Brussels, Belgium, was from a Jewish family, and his father was from a Christian background. The mother left Germany in 1932 with her two children to continue her studies with Sigmund Freud, and in 1934 married Siegfried Bernfeld, a prominent Viennese psychoanalyst and educational reformer. After two and a half years in France and six months in London, they emigrated to the United States in 1937. Paret's father remained in Germany.

During World War II, Paret served in the United States Army between 1943 and 1946 in New Guinea, the Philippines, and Korea. During the 1950s, Paret worked as a journalist before turning towards writing history. Paret received a BA from the University of California in 1949 and a PhD in 1960 from the University of London, where he studied under Michael Howard. Paret was a research associate at Princeton University (1960–2), and taught at the University of California, Davis (1962–8), and at Stanford University (1969–86), as the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History. In 1986 he became the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (1986–97). Among his other appointments, he served as a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace (1988–93). At present Paret is an Emeritus Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study. He is also the 2008 Lees Knowles Lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge. His wife, Isabel Harris Paret, is on the faculty of the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick and a child psychoanalyst. The couple have two children, Suzanne Aimée Paret and Paul Paret, who is a professor of art history at the University of Utah.

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