Peter Blickle (historian)

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Peter Blickle (born November 26, 1938 in Berlin ; † February 20, 2017 in Saarbrücken ) was a German historian specializing in the early modern period . He was professor of modern history at the Universities of Saarbrücken (1972–1980) and Bern (1980–2004). Blickle is one of the leading researchers of the German Peasant War .

Life

Peter Blickle was born in Berlin in 1938, but grew up in Upper Swabia . He attended school in Biberach , Leutkirch and Wangen im Allgäu . He passed the Abitur in Wangen. He studied history, politics and German at the universities of Munich and Vienna . Blickle received his doctorate in 1964 at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich under Karl Bosl , the subject of his dissertation was The power-building forces in the area of ​​today's Memmingen district. The revised version of the dissertation was published three years later as part of "Memmingen" in the Historical Atlas of Bavaria . As a research assistant for the Commission for Bavarian State History , he also worked on the “Kempten” section of the Historical Atlas. In Munich he met his wife, who was also working on the atlas project. In 1965 he became Günther Franz's assistant at the chair for agricultural history at the University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim . In 1969 he went to Saarbrücken as assistant to Ernst Klein .

In 1971 he completed his habilitation at Saarland University on the subject of landscapes in the Old Kingdom. The state function of the common man in Upper Germany . In Saarbrücken he was Professor of Modern History and State History from 1972 to 1980, and from 1980 to February 2004 he held a professorship for Modern History at the University of Bern. In 1974, he turned down an appointment to the Free University of Berlin . After his retirement he returned to Saarbrücken for family reasons. There he took on an honorary professorship in 2007. His academic students included André Holenstein , Claudia Ulbrich and Andreas Würgler .

Peter Blickle was married to the historian Renate Blickle-Littwin. Together with her he published a source edition.

Research priorities

Blickle was one of the very few early modern historians who sought exchange with their specialist colleagues from the GDR over the decades. He tried to find counter-terms and counter-concepts to historical materialism . With the German Peasants' War, the history of human and civil rights and communalism , he had three major thematic priorities. As a student of Karl Bosl, Blickle initially worked on regional history. He dealt in depth with the regional history of Upper Swabia. Influenced by the agricultural historian Günther Franz, he concentrated on the rural world. Out of his “interest in nameless people in history”, Blickle has presented a large number of studies. He was one of the most productive historians on the early modern German Peasant War; He published on this topic for decades. In his habilitation, he set himself the goal of “questioning territories as to the political co-responsibility of the ruled”. In this common with Tyrol , Vorarlberg , landscape Kempten treated three territories detail. He was able to prove that in the small territories of Upper Germany the farmers were represented with seats and votes. On the 450th anniversary of the German Peasants' War, he and Winfried Schulze brought the event into public awareness. To mark the occasion, in 1975 he published a basic and repeated presentation. The work was translated into American by Thomas A. Brady and HC Erik Midelfort . Translations into Italian and Chinese followed in 1983 and 2008. Also in 1975 he organized a symposium on the peasant war in Memmingen and put the event in a European context. Leading Marxist historians also took part in this event: Adolf Laube , Max Steinmetz and Günter Vogler . Blickle interpreted the German Peasants' War as a revolution of the common man. He contrasted his redefinition of the event with the interpretation of the Reformation and the Peasants' War as an “ early bourgeois revolution ”. For Blickle, the Peasants' War was an attempt to overcome the crisis of feudalism through a fundamental revolutionary reshaping of social and manorial conditions on the basis of the “gospel”. In Blickle's opinion, the carrier of this revolution was not the peasant, but the "common man". Blickle tried to do justice to the involvement of townspeople and miners in the peasant war mentioned in sources with his term “revolution of the common man” City dwellers excluded from imperial city offices, the miner ”) wanted to understand as subjects of all kinds who were incapable of ruling before the authorities. The term was criticized in East and West as too vague because of its ambiguous source base. In the meantime, Blickle's thesis of the “common man's revolution” has been widely accepted.

In 2004 Blickle and Thomas Adam published an anthology on the Bundschurebellions , which have long been neglected in research since the work of Albert Rosenkranz . The anthology bundles the contributions that go back to a conference in 2002 in Bruchsal . In 2015 Blickle published a biography of Georg Truchsess Freiherr zu Waldburg, known as "Bauernjörg" . However, it is less a biography than a story of the Peasants' War. Blickle consistently treats the disputes of 1525 as “war”. In one of his most important works, Blickle described the peasant war as a "revolution". But through the inclusion of further structural factors such as foreign policy, urban-rural relations or the urban elites and their role in the conflicts, “the question matures [...] whether the term peasant war disguises and misrepresents a situation that is better with civil war would be reproduced ".

Another research focus was the social unrest that rocked Germany, France and England since the late Middle Ages. The consistent inclusion of actors from all social classes also ensured a change in perspective from the history of rule to the history of the structure and constitution. Blickle was the editor of the Encyclopedia of German History . His volume Unrest in the Estates Society, 1300–1800 opened the hundred-volume encyclopedia of German history. According to Heinz Schilling, the first volume had a “model character” for all other volumes. In the series he was responsible for the early modern period and co-editor of the publication series "Early Modern Research". Nonetheless, Blickle was not a believer in the idea that the early modern period represented a separate era. He viewed German and especially southern German history from 1300 to 1800 as a unit and understood this period as the old Europe .

Blickle coined the term “ communalism ”: Between around 1300 and 1800 the vertical structure of rule (“feudalism”) in urban and rural areas was confronted with a communal structure that was characterized by “relative-functional freedom, independent work [...] and political Authorization of the householder is characterized. The institutional framework that enables and ensures this is the community. ”According to Blickle, communalism“ is limited in its temporal scope. Prior to it is the structuring of human relationships through the rule of the clan, followed by the construction of social and state relationships around the individual. In this respect, communalism is an epochal term. ”In March 1979 Blickle organized a conference on the concept of communalism he had developed. In addition to Vogler, Karlheinz Blaschke and Evamaria Engel came from the East German area . As a research fellow at the Historical College in Munich , he made communalism the focus of his research in the 1993/1994 college year. The colloquium held in May 1994 was devoted to theories of communal order in Europe.

In his research, Blickle always put regional peculiarities in connection with German, but above all European history. He concentrated on processes of change and political-sociological issues. Blickle published conference volumes on the metaphysical justification of social coexistence and political order in the corporate society, on landscapes and estates in Upper Swabia in the context of the early history of European parliamentarism, on subsidiarity as a principle of order, on the Reformation iconoclasm in the context of European history, on the emergence of public space in Upper Germany, on the mediatization of the Upper Swabian imperial cities in the European context and on secularization in the process of secularization of Europe.

Blickle was editor of the nine-volume handbook of the history of Europe (HGE). The handbook covers European history over the past three thousand years. Blickle became first chairman in 1996 and after his departure in 2002 honorary chairman of the Upper Swabian Society for History and Culture . In 1999 he was awarded the Friedrich Schiedel Science Prize for the History of Upper Swabia . In 2000 he was accepted as a foreign member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences .

Fonts

Monographs

  • The Bauernjörg. General in the Peasants' War. Georg Truchsess von Waldburg. 1488-1531. CH Beck, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-406-67501-0 .
  • Old Europe. From the high Middle Ages to the modern age. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57171-8 .
  • From serfdom to human rights. A history of freedom in Germany. CH Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50768-9 (2nd, revised edition. Ibid 2006, ISBN 3-406-50768-9 ).
  • Communalism. Sketches of a form of social organization. 2 volumes. Oldenbourg, Munich 2000;
  • The peasant war. The revolution of the common man (= Beck'sche series 2103 CH Beck Wissen ). CH Beck, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-43313-8 (4th, updated and revised edition. Ibid 2012, ISBN 978-3-406-43313-9 ).
  • Unrest in the corporate society, 1300–1800 (= Encyclopedia of German History. Vol. 1). Oldenbourg, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-486-54891-3 (3rd, updated and expanded edition. Ibid 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-71413-5 ).
  • Reformation and communal spirit. The answer of the theologians to the constitutional change in the late Middle Ages (= writings of the historical college. Lectures. Vol. 44). Historisches Kolleg Foundation, Munich 1996 ( digitized version ).
  • Church Reformation. The people of the 16th century on the way to salvation. Oldenbourg, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-486-52811-4 .
  • The Reformation in the Empire (= UTB 1181). Ulmer, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-8001-2505-6 (4th edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2015, ISBN 978-3-17-022435-3 ).
  • German subjects. A contradiction. CH Beck, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-406-08164-9 .
  • The revolution of 1525. Oldenbourg, Munich et al. 1975, ISBN 3-486-44261-9 (4th, reviewed and bibliographically expanded edition. Ibid 2004, ISBN 3-486-44264-3 ).
  • Landscapes in the Old Kingdom. The state function of the common man in Upper Germany. CH Beck, Munich 1973, ISBN 3-406-04743-2 (also: Saarbrücken, Universität, habilitation paper, 1971).
  • Memmingen (= Historical Atlas of Bavaria. Swabia. Row 1, Issue 4). Commission for Bavarian State History, Munich 1967 ( digitized version ).

Editorships

  • with Rudolf Schlögl: The secularization in the process of the secularization of Europe (= Upper Swabia - history and culture. Vol. 13). libraryca academica, Epfendorf 2005, ISBN 978-3-928471-58-9 .
  • with Thomas Adam: Bundschuh. Untergrombach 1502, the restless empire and the revolutionizability of Europe. Steiner, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 978-3-515-07761-3 .
  • with Andreas Schmauder: The mediatization of the Upper Swabian imperial cities in the European context (= early modern research. Vol. 11). libraryca academica, Epfendorf 2003, ISBN 978-3-928471-38-1 .
  • Theories of communal order in Europe (= writings of the Historisches Kolleg. Vol. 36). Oldenbourg, Munich 1996, ISBN 978-3-486-56192-0 ( full text as PDF ).

literature

  • Patrick Bahners : Test for the Revolution. Despair, hope, struggle and victory of farmer and citizen: on the death of the historian Peter Blickle. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . February 23, 2017, No. 46, p. 11.
  • Wolfgang Behringer : Peter Blickle (1938-2017). In: Historical magazine . 305, 2017, pp. 717-728.
  • Oliver Junge: In the name of the common man. Servile subjects have only existed in Germany since 1789: the Bernese modern and regional historian Peter Blickle for his seventieth. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. November 26, 2008, No. 277, p. 31.
  • Beat Kümin: Farmers and Citizens in Old Europe - In memory of Peter Blickle (1938–2017). In: sheets for German national history . 153, 2017, pp. 483-490.
  • Johan Schloemann: Peter Blickle died. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . February 22, 2017, p. 13 ( online ).

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Peter Blickle: Memmingen. Munich 1967.
  2. ^ Renate Blickle: Griesbach Regional Court. Munich 1970.
  3. ↑ See the reviews of Peter Baumgart in: The Journal of Modern History 47, 1975, 747 f .; Gerald L. Soliday in: The American Historical Review 79, 1974, 1373 f .; Steven W. Rowan in: Speculum 51, 1976, p. 312 f .; Karl Josef Speidel in: Historische Zeitschrift 224, 1977, pp. 444–448.
  4. ↑ Peter Blickle, Renate Blickle (ed.): Documents on the history of state and society in Bavaria, Section 2, Franconia and Swabia from the early Middle Ages to 1800, Vol. 4: Swabia from 1268 to 1803. Munich 1979.
  5. ↑ Michael Borgolte: Social history of the Middle Ages. A research balance sheet after German reunification. Munich 1996, p. 180.
  6. ^ Peter Blickle: Memmingen. Munich 1967; Peter Blickle: Kempten. Munich 1968.
  7. ↑ Peter Blickle: Landscapes in the Old Kingdom. The state function of the common man in Upper Germany. Munich 1973, p. XIV.
  8. ↑ Peter Blickle: Landscapes in the Old Kingdom. The state function of the common man in Upper Germany. Munich 1973, p. 23.
  9. ^ Peter Blickle: The Revolution of 1525. The German Peasants' War from a New Perspective. Translated by Thomas A. Brady, HC Erik Midelfort. Baltimore 1982.
  10. ↑ Peter Blickle (Ed.): Revolte and Revolution in Europa. Lectures and minutes of the International Symposium in Memory of the Peasants' War of 1525. Munich 1975.
  11. ↑ Peter Blickle: The Revolution of 1525. 4th, reviewed and bibliographically expanded edition. Munich 2004, p. 195.
  12. ↑ Peter Blickle: The Revolution of 1525. 4th, reviewed and bibliographically expanded edition. Munich 2004, p. 194 f.
  13. ^ Wolfgang Reinhard : Problems of German History 1495–1806. Imperial reform and Reformation 1495–1555 (= Gebhardt. Handbook of German History. Vol. 9). 10th, completely revised edition. Stuttgart 2001, p. 308. Cf. for example: Adolf Laube: Comments on the thesis of the “revolution of the common man”. In: Journal of History . Vol. 26, 1978, pp. 607-614, here p. 612.
  14. ^ Günter Vogler : Revolt or Revolution? Comments and questions on the revolution problem in the early modern period. In: Stefan Ehrenpreis, Ute Lotz-Heumann, Olaf Mörke , Luise Schorn-Schütte (eds.): Ways of the Modern Age. Festschrift for Heinz Schilling on his 65th birthday. Berlin 2007, pp. 381-413, here p. 398.
  15. ↑ See the reviews of Jens Schöne in: Das Historisch-Politische Buch. 64 (2016), p. 374 f .; Frank Ganseuer in: Military History Journal . Vol. 75 (2016), H. 1, pp. 193-196; Axel Gotthard in: Historical magazine . 301 (2015), pp. 794-796; Horst Carl in: see points . Vol. 15 (2015), No. 11 [15. November 2015] ( online ); Robert Kretzschmar in: Journal for Württemberg State History . Vol. 75 (2016), pp. 494-497; Martin Zürn in: Jahrbuch für Regionalgeschichte 37 (2019), pp. 213–215; Robert von Friedeburg in: Journal for Historical Research 45, 2018, pp. 587-592 ( online ).
  16. ↑ Peter Blickle: The Bauernjörg. General in the Peasants' War. Georg Truchsess von Waldburg. 1488-1531. Munich 2015, p. 16.
  17. ↑ Peter Blickle: The Bauernjörg. General in the Peasants' War. Georg Truchsess von Waldburg. 1488-1531. Munich 2015, p. 209, also 242, 321.
  18. ↑ Peter Blickle: Unrest in the corporate society, 1300-1800. Munich 1988; 3rd, extended edition Munich 2012.
  19. ^ Review by Heinz Schilling in: Historische Zeitschrift 251, 1990, pp. 642–644.
  20. ^ Wolfgang Behringer: Peter Blickle (1938–2017). In: Historical magazine. Vol. 305, 2017, pp. 717–728, here: p. 723.
  21. ^ Peter Blickle: German subjects. A contradiction. Munich 1981, esp. P. 113 and 139.
  22. ↑ Peter Blickle: Communalism. Sketches of a form of social organization. Vol. 1, Munich 2000, p. VII.
  23. ↑ Michael Borgolte: Social history of the Middle Ages. A research balance sheet after German reunification. Munich 1996, p. 181.
  24. ↑ Peter Blickle (Ed.): The curse and the oath. The metaphysical justification of social coexistence and political order in the corporate society. Berlin 1993.
  25. ↑ Peter Blickle (Ed.): Landscapes and estates in Oberschwaben. Rural and bourgeois representation in the context of early European parliamentarism. Tübingen 2000.
  26. ↑ Peter Blickle (Ed.): Subsidiarity as a legal and political principle of order in church, state and society. Genesis, principles of validity and perspectives on the threshold of the third millennium. Berlin 2002.
  27. ↑ Peter Blickle (Ed.): Power and powerlessness of images. Reformation iconoclasm in the context of European history. Munich 2002.
  28. ↑ Peter Blickle (Ed.): Good Policey as Politics in the 16th Century. The emergence of public space in Upper Germany. Frankfurt am Main 2003.
  29. ↑ Peter Blickle, Andreas Schmauder (ed.): The mediatization of the Upper Swabian imperial cities in the European context. Epfendorf 2003.
  30. ↑ Peter Blickle, Rudolf Schlögl (Ed.): The secularization in the process of secularization of Europe. Epfendorf 2005.
  31. ↑ Rolf forest Vogl: Obituary: historian Peter Blickle died . In: Schwäbische Zeitung . February 21, 2017.
  32. ^ Finnish Academy of Science and Letters: Ulkomaiset jäsenet - Foreign Members. ( Memento from July 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ).
personal data
SURNAME Blickle, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian with a focus on the early modern period
DATE OF BIRTH November 26, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 20th February 2017
Place of death Saarbrücken