Albert Wirz

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Albert Wirz (born January 13, 1944 in Meilen ; † May 7, 2003 in Männedorf ) was a Swiss historian .

Albert Wirz studied history as well as Russian language and literature at the University of Zurich from 1963 to 1969 . He received his doctorate there in 1972 with a thesis on the economic history of Cameroon before the First World War. His habilitation took place in Zurich in 1982 on the war in Africa . In Zurich he was the senior assistant to Rudolf von Albertini . Due to the difficult job market for Africa historians, he switched to journalism. Wirz worked for the Tages-Anzeiger in Switzerland from 1985 to 1991, the last three years as editor-in-chief. This was followed by a research stay at the Center for European Studies at Stanford University . He took on a teaching position in Basel. Wirz taught from 1993 to 2003 as a professor for African history at the Humboldt University in Berlin . From 1994 to 1996 he was Managing Director of the Institute for Asian and African Studies.

In his dissertation on economic history, he took into account the perspective of the colonizing and colonizing, before this was demanded by historical scholarship two decades later. The book Slavery and the Capitalist World System , published in 1984, offered a German-language synthesis for the first time on the subject of “slave trade and slavery”. His last monograph, The Moral on the Plate (1993) is a cultural and social history of food and nutrition. He could no longer complete a planned presentation of the history of the rainforest.

Fonts

  • The moral on the plate. Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-905311-10-0 .
  • War in africa. The post-colonial conflicts in Nigeria, Sudan, Chad and Congo. Wiesbaden 1982, ISBN 3-515-03752-7 .
  • From slave trade to colonial trade. Economic areas and economic forms in Cameroon before 1914. Zurich 1972, ISBN 3-7611-0396-4 .

literature

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personal data
SURNAME Wirz, Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss historian
DATE OF BIRTH January 13, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH miles
DATE OF DEATH May 7, 2003
Place of death Männedorf