When he died Gombrich’s credentials as an anticommunist were impeccable. Hauser, according to Gombrich, was caught in the “mousetrap of dialectical materialism.” He was highly critical of the left-wing art historian Arnold Hauser, who had been a member of the Sunday Circle that formed around György Lukács in Budapest. He always saw his own work on art history as a vindication of Popper’s positivist theory that knowledge proceeded through a process of hypothesis and refutation.
Gombrich was known as “Saint Ernst” by those who appreciated his role in establishing Popper’s reputation as a Cold War philosopher.
Along with Hayek, Gombrich found a publisher for Popper’s book the Open Society and Its Enemies and helped him get this anti-Marxist work through the press. Gombrich was the friend of Karl Popper and, along with the economist Friedrich Hayek, had been one of his closest intellectual associates since their early days as young Viennese exiles in London. When he died in 2001 at the age of 92 Gombrich was widely hailed as the greatest art historian of the age, but no one suggested he was a communist. Gombrich that wrote The Story of Art, Art and Illusion and The Sense of Order. Roberts’ article in the Financial Times declares it “a tragedy that a writer as impressive as Gombrich, with the gift of being able to communicate with children, should have prostituted his talents in the service of so foul a creed as Marxism-Leninism.” Gombrich’s A Little History of the World, which Roberts condemned as “an unrestrained paean to Marxism-Leninism.” The right-wing British historian Andrew Roberts recently reviewed a history book for children that, he warned, “ought to be kept well away from schools.” The book in question was E.H. Gombrich, A Little History of the World, translated by Caroline Mustill, Yale, £14.99
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