Remembering Aviation Historian Peter Grosz

Peter Grosz with a Drawing by His Father

I never had the chance to meet Peter Grosz, but a surprising number of my friends from the Aviation sub-culture of WWI Land considered him the prime inspiration for their interest in the aircraft and aviators of the Great War.  I recently ran across an article mentioning that a museum dedicated to his father, the artist George Grosz, who was famous for his savage post-World War I caricatures of German society, opened last year in Berlin. Pere Grosz has been mentioned in several Roads articles in the past, but I was reminded that I have never given his son the attention he deserves. 

 

I found that one of the best pieces on Peter's life is his obituary from the New York Times. It does not discuss his aviation work to any extent, so I've included Amazon links to three of his best known works (out of dozens) at the bottom of the page.  MH

Example of the Many Aircraft
Monographs Produced by Peter Grosz

By Carol Vogel

Oct. 7, 2006

Peter M. Grosz, an engineer and authority on German aircraft from World War I who was also the son of the German Expressionist painter George Grosz, died on Sept. 29. He was 80 and lived in Princeton, N.J. The cause was brain cancer, his wife, Lilian, said.

In recent years Mr. Grosz also drew attention for a lawsuit he filed, as executor for the estate of his father, against Serge Sabarsky, a Manhattan art dealer, arguing that Mr. Sabarsky had deprived it of appropriate compensation for the sale of hundreds of Grosz works he had acquired. The lawsuit was settled two months ago, Mrs. Grosz said yesterday, but she declined to provide specifics.

George Grosz at His Berlin Studio

As a small boy growing up in Berlin, Peter Grosz spent hours looking at the Templehof airport from the fifth-floor window of his aunt’s apartment, eager to learn more about airplanes and how they worked, Mrs. Grosz said.

He emigrated to the United States in 1933, a year after his father moved to New York to teach at the Art Students League. He graduated from Harvard University in 1950.

Mr. Grosz worked as a consultant to an assortment of American companies, including the Ford Motor Company, helping them obtain patents and permissions in European markets. He was also an adviser to the aviation department of the German Technical Museum in Berlin and the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.

Mr. Grosz wrote three books and hundreds of articles and monographs about early Central European aircraft. His first book, The German Giants, focused on the development and combat service of the multiple-engine, long-range bombers that struck London during World War I.

Last year he was awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit by the German government in recognition of his work as an aviation historian.

Mr. Grosz was also immersed in the legacy of his father (1893–1959), who was best known for his harrowing depictions of life in Berlin in the aftermath of World War I and for portraits of grotesquely fat businessmen, soldiers, and prostitutes.

As the executor of his father’s estate, Mr. Grosz spent years assembling his archives, which he sold to the Academy of Art in Berlin in the late 1980s. [A large law suit over proceeds from sales of his father's work that occupied much of his time in his last years was only recently finalized.] Mrs. Grosz would give no financial details of the settlement, saying only that it was “settled to the estate’s satisfaction.”

Mr. and Mrs. Grosz had a son, Michael, and a daughter, Karin, who both died before him. In addition to his wife, Mr. Grosz is survived by his brother, Martin, of Philadelphia, who as Marty Grosz is a jazz guitarist and singer.