Inter-American Notes
- Inter-American Notes
In Memoriam Friedrich Katz (1927–2010)
Editor’s Note: Friedrich Katz, the eminent historian of Mexico, died of cancer on October 16, 2010. Among many accolades, Dr. Katz received the Distinguished Service Award from the Conference on Latin American History at its annual meeting in January of 2010. For many years, The Americas has published the remarks delivered by the award recipient. This year, due to the circumstances of Dr. Katz’s health, a complete text of his speech was not completed. However, the editors of the journal are honored to provide here two remembrances of Friedrich Katz. One is from his long-time colleague John Coatsworth. The other is a eulogy delivered at his memorial service by his son, Leo Katz, professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania.
On Friedrich Katz
Friedrich Katz was born on June 13, 1927, the only son of Austrian Communists. Katz’s father, the well-known writer Leo Katz, published numerous denunciations of Adolf Hitler and Nazism. In 1933, warned by a discrete but sympathetic policeman who appeared at their apartment door shortly after Hitler became Chancellor, the Katz’s fled the country just in time to avoid arrest. Friedrich Katz was only six years old when his world turned upside down for the first time.
The family’s refuge in France, long enough for young Friedrich to learn another language, ended abruptly in 1938. The letter from the Interior Minister to his father, who by this time was working to support the Spanish Republic, could not have been more elegant. “Mon cher Monsieur,” it began, “J’ai l’honneur de vous informer que vous êtes expulsé de la France.” It concluded with a request that Leo Katz accept “mes sentiments les plus distinguées.”
The Katz family left quickly for New York with only tourist visas, hoping to secure permission to stay longer. They stayed long enough for Friedrich to learn English, but the United States government at that time routinely rejected requests for permanent visas for European refugees from fascism, particularly Jewish refugees. This policy reflected both the influence of southern racists in the U.S. Congress and the traditional anti-Semitism [End Page 399] of the U.S. consular service. Meanwhile, Katz’s father had learned that the Mexican government of President Lázaro Cárdenas was accepting European refugees, including Spanish republicans as well as anti-fascists of all kinds. To avoid possible deportation back to Germany, the Katz family left the United States for Mexico. And so it was, that in 1940, at the age of 13, Friedrich Katz arrived in Mexico—the first country from which he would never have to flee.
In Mexico, Katz attended the Liceo Franco-Mexicano. The family chose the Liceo because Friedrich was already fluent in French but had only begun to learn Spanish. The German language schools were still pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic and thus closed to him. Friedrich Katz’s love of Mexico and his fascination with Mexican history and culture first developed while he was still speaking German at home and French in school and while he lived among European refugees preoccupied with a world war that never touched Mexico directly.
Katz graduated from the Liceo in 1945. Friends of the family in New York City helped him apply to Wagner College on Staten Island from which he graduated in only three years. He then returned to Mexico for a year of post graduate courses at the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, thus beginning his professional training as an historian. The following year, he returned to Austria—a country he could scarcely remember—to begin doctoral studies at the University of Vienna. Katz received his doctorate in 1954 for a thesis, published in German in 1956 and in Spanish translation in 1967, entitled Las relaciones socio-económicas de los Aztecas en los siglos XV y XVI. This work broke new ground by placing the available anthropological and archeological evidence on Aztec society in an historical context. Katz asked fundamental questions about the evolution of Aztec society that invited comparisons to the history of...
