A Century in the Making: Revisiting the Memoirs of Peter Lindenfeld ’50

Peter Lindenfeld ’50 led a remarkable life, and on January 22, his story continued at I-House.

Peter passed away at the age of 100 in November 2025, but not before finishing and publishing his memoir, “A Century in the Making: A Hundred-Year Journey from Refugee to American.” Prior to his passing, he had intended to visit I-House for a book reading with residents, but the visit never came to pass. In his stead, I-House welcomed Peter’s son, Tom Lindenfeld, for a reading and a fireside chat about his father’s life and legacy.

After being driven from Austria as a teenager, Peter’s path led through Switzerland, England, and Vancouver before his studies at Columbia and a long career at Rutgers. The book recalls his journey, “illuminating a time and reflecting its spirit, describing places where I lived and what was special about them.” Among those special places was International House, where he called home from 1948 to 1950.

In his memoir, Peter writes that I-House was “as good of a base as [he] could imagine” for his adventures in and around New York City. The book recalls interactions with I-House contemporaries like Nobel Prize-winning physicist Aage Niels Bohr ’50 and famous American opera singer Leontyne Price ’52.

One passage recalls that an I-House roommate, Bill Hardy ’50, once interrupted Peter’s studying to drag him out of his room and to the 8th Street Club. It was there that Peter met his future wife, Lore Kadden.

After the reading, Tom shared stories and reflections on the wisdom his father imparted on family and friends. Residents inquired about Peter’s life and the lessons learned across an incredible 100-year journey.

“The most important value any of us can have, and the one I got from my father, is empathy,” Tom said. “To feel that connection with another person—he made it very clear that there wasn’t anything in life that has more value than that.”

Tom ended the evening with the closing passage of his father’s memoir: “I’ll leave you there, with the words of my mother’s mentor Alfred Adler, when he left for his last journey: ‘Macht’s gut, Kinder!’ Literally, ‘Do it well, children,’ with its universal meaning. Good luck to all of us. For a new and better time.”