Rüdiger Bilden seems to be a rather inconspicuous character. Born in 1893 in Eschweiler, Germany, he immigrated to the United States in 1914, where he died in 1980. He graduated in political science and history from Columbia University, where he established close academic and personal ties with scholars keen on Latin American history, slavery, and racial relations such as Franz Boas, Francis Butler Simkins, Gilberto Freyre, and his PhD supervisor William Robert Shepherd. In the 1920s, although highly regarded among his peers, Bilden was not able to complete his doctoral thesis, which he intended to be an ambitious and revolutionary work on the influence of slavery on Brazilian development. Despite his long life, he did not achieve a tenured academic position and only published a handful of virtually unknown articles.
O triunfo do fracasso: Rüdiger Bilden, o amigo esquecido de Gilberto Freyre is a biographical work that aims to lift...
