Viereck, << VEER ehk, >> Peter (1916-2006), an American poet and historian, won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Viereck received the award for his first collection of verse, Terror and Decorum: Poems 1940-1948. Critics are divided about the merit of Viereck’s poetry, but he has been praised for the wit of his verse and his willingness to engage in ideas about culture, morality, and society. His poetry has been collected in New and Selected Poems, 1932-1967 (1967) and Archer in the Marrow: The Applewood Cycles of 1967-1987 (1987).
Viereck gained attention with his first historical work, Metapolitics: From the Romantics to Hitler (1941), an analysis of Nazism in Germany. Viereck revised the book as Metapolitics: The Roots of the Nazi Mind (1961, 1965, 1982). His other historical works explore political and historical conservatism. They include Shame and Glory of the Intellectuals (1953), Conservatism: From John Adams to Churchill (1956, 1962), and Conservatism Revisited and the New Conservatism: What Went Wrong? (1962).
Peter Robert Edwin Viereck was born on Aug. 5, 1916, in New York City. He received B.A. and M.A. degrees from Harvard University in 1937 and 1939 and a Ph.D. from Oxford University in England in 1942. Viereck taught history at Mount Holyoke College from 1948 to 1998. Viereck died on May 13, 2006.
