Julius Kaerst

Julius Kaerst

Julius Kaerst (born April 16, 1857 in Gräfentonna ; † January 3, 1930 in Würzburg ) was a German historian. He was particularly concerned with Hellenism , universal history and the German question .

Life

Kaerst was born the son of a pastor in Gräfentonna near Gotha and attended the Ernestinum grammar school in Gotha from 1869 . As emphasized in his school leaving certificate from Easter 1874, he developed a keen interest in history while still at school. Kaerst moved to the University of Jena to study history, classical philology and philosophy. His academic teachers during his six semesters in Jena included Rudolf Schöll , Carl Nipperdey , Wilhelm Adolf Schmidt , Erwin Rohde and Rudolf Eucken . Alfred von Gutschmid , who came to Jena in 1876 and encouraged Kaerst to make the history of antiquity the focus of his research, was particularly influential . Together with Gutschmid, Kaerst moved to Tübingen in the spring of 1877 , where he received his doctorate for his dissertation, Contributions to the source criticism of Quintus Curtius Rufus , suggested by Gutschmid . After completing his doctorate, Kaerst continued his studies at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin , where he attended three semesters of lectures by Adolf Kirchhoff , Johannes Vahlen , Wilhelm Wattenbach , Karl Wilhelm Nitzsch , Johann Gustav Droysen and Theodor Mommsen . On January 20, 1880, he passed the senior teacher examination in history, geography, Latin, Greek and religion. He completed his pedagogical probationary year at the Gray Monastery high school and returned to his homeland in autumn 1881 after it had expired.

Kaerst worked at the Ernestinum grammar school in Gotha until the spring of 1897 and was also intensively involved in historical and source-critical studies. According to Joseph Vogt's judgment , he speculated on an academic career at the time, but gave up this idea after Gutschmid's death (1887). His health was finally attacked by his strenuous educational and scientific work, so that from 1897 Kaerst devoted himself exclusively to scientific work. On May 6, 1898, he completed his habilitation at the University of Leipzig with the text Studies on the Development and Theoretical Foundation of the Ancient Monarchy . After a few years of lively work, Kaerst was appointed associate professor in Leipzig on August 14, 1902, but only one year later he accepted a call from the University of Würzburg and took up the chair for history there in the winter semester 1903/1904. Here he taught until his retirement on January 14, 1929 and devoted himself to his research work until his death. On February 25, 1927, he was elected a corresponding member of the Society of Sciences in Göttingen .

Kaerst died in Würzburg on the night of January 2-3, 1930.

Services

Kaerst's historical research had three main focuses: the history of Hellenism , the question of the conception and writing of history, and the value and meaning of the German national idea .

His turn to Hellenism happened during his student years. After initial individual investigations that were under the influence of Gutschmids, Kaerst took up the problem of the relationship between Alexander the Great and Hellenism and its position within the history of antiquity. His central works on this are the monograph Research on the History of Alexander the Great (Stuttgart 1887) and the essay Alexander the Great and Hellenism ( Historische Zeitschrift 74, 1895, pp. 193ff.). Kaerst's efforts resulted in the passionate image of Alexander the Great, as it was drawn by Droysen in his Greek history , being revised and viewed in a more differentiated manner. In his habilitation thesis Kaerst dealt with the problem of the monarchy in the philosophical thought and political action of the Greeks and showed the modification of the Greek view of this form of government with regard to the later affiliation to the Roman Empire. Finally he also wrote a history of Hellenism (in the first edition 1901-1909 still history of the Hellenistic era ). Kaerst experienced a second and third edition of the work, but was no longer able to write the planned third volume.

Kaerst's view of history was shaped by German idealism and the romantic movement. In contrast to the Enlightenment, he recognized the power of the unconscious in historical life and formulated the task of historical science to enable a deep understanding of the peculiarities of people and cultures of the past. He followed Leopold von Ranke and Barthold Georg Niebuhr . The essay on the universal historical conception in its special application to the history of antiquity (Historische Zeitschrift 83, 1899, p. 123ff.), In which he combated the endeavor to detach the history of antiquity from the rest of the geographical, is considered the program for his conception of history and temporal spaces. He advocated a universal historical view of the history of antiquity and formulated this concern in the treatise The history of antiquity in the context of the general development of modern historical research (New Yearbooks for classical antiquity 5, 1902, p. 32ff. ). His plan to summarize his scattered historical writings in a monograph under the title Universal History was no longer carried out.

From his preoccupation with the nation and world empire in antiquity and his conception of universal history, he also tried to find a historical foundation for the German national idea. Since the beginning of the First World War Kaerst has been concerned with the emergence of the nation states in Europe and especially with the German question . He highlighted the founding of the empire in 1871 as a happy realization of the German nation-state and characterized it as a “fusion of the Prussian state idea of ​​power with the wealth and internal freedom of German education” . He sought the basis of the German national character in the Reformation and German idealism. Kaerst dealt with the problematic position of Germany in the world between the wars in the essay World History, Antiquity and German Volkstum (Gnomon 1, 1925, 214ff.).

literature

• Joseph Vogt : Julius Kaerst † . In: Gnomon , Volume 6 (1930), pp. 238-240.
• The same (editor): Universalgeschichte: Abhandlungen von Julius Kaerst , Stuttgart 1930, pp. VII – XX (with obituary, portrait and list of publications)

Web links

Wikisource: Julius Kaerst  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Julius Kaerst in the catalog of the German National Library
• Overview of Julius Kaerst's courses at the University of Leipzig (winter semester 1898 to winter semester 1903)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Vogt (1930) IX
2. ↑ quoted from Joseph Vogt (1930) XIX