Alfons Dopsch

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Alfons Dopsch (born June 14, 1868 in Lobositz ; † September 1, 1953 in Vienna ) was an Austrian historian ( Medievalist ) and diplomat .

Photo by Ferdinand Schmutzer

Life

Natural economy and money economy in world history , 1949

Alfons Dopsch studied at the University of Vienna from 1886 , where he received his doctorate in 1890. His dissertation The Meeting of Lobositz (1756) , the topic of which is apparently chosen on the basis of the local historical reference, remains one of the few contributions by Dopsch to the history of modern times.

From 1889 to 1891 he worked at the Institute for Austrian Historical Research. From May 1892 Dopsch was a member of the Diplomata department of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica , which had set itself the task of issuing the Carolingian diplomas. In doing so, he acquired an immense familiarity with document research. Several editions of documents appeared in quick succession, which are considered exemplary (including selected documents on the constitutional history of the Austrian hereditary lands , 1895; Landesfürstliche Urbare Österreichs , 1904/10).

In 1893, at the age of 25, Dopsch completed his habilitation at the University of Vienna. In 1898 he was appointed associate professor and in 1900 full professor of history at the University of Vienna. In 1916/17 he was dean of the philosophical faculty and in 1920/21 rector of the university. He turned down an appointment to Berlin in 1921. In 1922 he founded the Seminar for Economic and Cultural History in Vienna. In 1936 he was retired.

Dopsch was one of the few German-speaking and the only Austrian historians who had contacts with the French Annales School . His major works have been translated and he has been awarded honorary memberships and honorary doctorates abroad. So he received honorary doctorates from the universities of Prague and Oxford. From 1908 to 1951 Dopsch was a member of the State Historical Commission for Styria . Since 1909 Dopsch was a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences . He became an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Historical Association in Washington, DC in 1949

Politically, Dopsch had always understood himself in Greater German . He was marked by anti-Slavic resentment and had been in favor of connecting Austria to Germany since the end of the Habsburg monarchy . Dopsch was a member of the influential German national to Nazi -influenced German Club and the anti-socialist and anti-Semitic secret society, the German Community . But his seminar was also attended by many social democrats. Next to Ludo Moritz Hartmann , he is considered the only reference figure of the left in history. In 1934, under the Austro-Fascist government of Dollfuss , he was threatened with dismissal and closure of his seminar. Dopsch then joined the Patriotic Front . In spite of this, Minister of Education Hans Pernter initiated the dissolution of the seminar and Dopsch's retirement in 1934 without resistance in the faculty, in which there were strong personal rivalries and resentments against Dopsch , especially among Heinrich von Srbik and Otto Brunner .

From 1933 to 1936 Dopsch was a member of the National Socialist University Teachers' Association at the University of Vienna. His application for reparation, made after the annexation of Austria in 1938, was nevertheless rejected. Dopsch was forced to resign from the International Committee of Historians . However, he remained involved in non-university committees and networks. He seems to have turned down an offer to teach after the intercession of his assistant and partner Erna Patzelt . In 1943 he received the Goethe Medal for Art and Science .

After the end of the Second World War , Dopsch campaigned unsuccessfully in 1945 to exclude all NSDAP members from the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In 1953 Dopsch received the Ring of Honor from the City of Vienna . He was buried at the Sieveringen cemetery . In 1954, Dopschstrasse in Vienna- Floridsdorf (21st district) was named after him.

His main field of work was the early Middle Ages , primarily the Austrian territorial history. Based on the territorial economic history, Dopsch tried to demonstrate a continuity between antiquity and the Middle Ages and critically examined the theses on the decline of Roman civilization during the Great Migration. His presentation on "Economic and social foundations of European cultural development" (1918/20) is considered a classic. Nonetheless, his works were characterized by polemics against homogenizing doctrines that made their reception difficult.

Fonts

  • The economic development of the Carolingian era (1912/13).
  • Economic and social foundations of European cultural development from Caesar to Charlemagne (1918/20).
  • The historical position of the Germans in Bohemia . In: Rudolph Lodgman : Deutschböhmen , Ullstein & Co, Berlin (1919).
  • Natural Economy and Money Economy in World History (1930).
  • Rule and peasant in the German Empire (1934).

literature

  • Economy and culture. Festschrift for the 70th birthday of Alfons Dopsch . R. Rohrer, Baden near Vienna / C. Fr. Fleischer, Leipzig 1938. (Reprint Sauer and Auvermann, Frankfurt am Main 1966).
  • Hanna Vollrath : Alfons Dopsch . In: Hans-Ulrich Wehler (ed.): German historians . Volume 7, Göttingen 1980, pp. 39-54.
  • Thomas Buchner: Alfons Dopsch (1868–1953). The "multiplicity of relationships". In: Karel Hruza (ed.): Austrian historians 1900–1945. CVs and careers in Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia in portraits of the history of science. Böhlau, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-205-77813-4 , pp. 155–190.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Klaralinda Ma-Kircher: Dopsch - Redlich - Srbik. To the "constituent part of a life story". In: Kai Luehrs-Kaiser and Gerald Sommer (eds.): "Wing and Extreme". Aspects of the intellectual development of Heimito von Doderers. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1999, ISBN 9783826015144 (= writings of the Heimito-von-Doderer-Gesellschaft . Vol. 1), p. 138.
  2. ↑ Tamara Ehs, Thomas Olechowski, Kamila Staudigl-Ciechowicz: The Vienna Faculty of Law and Political Science, 1918–1938 . V&R unipress, 2014, ISBN 978-3-89971-985-7 , p. 70–71 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  3. ↑ a b c d Klaralinda Ma-Kircher: Dopsch - Redlich - Srbik. To the "constituent part of a life story". In: Kai Luehrs-Kaiser and Gerald Sommer (eds.): "Wing and Extreme". Aspects of the intellectual development of Heimito von Doderers. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1999, ISBN 9783826015144 (= writings of the Heimito-von-Doderer-Gesellschaft . Vol. 1), p. 139.
  4. ↑ Thomas Buchner: Alfons Dopsch (1868-1953). The "multiplicity of relationships". In: Karel Hruza (Ed.): Austrian Historians. CVs and careers 1900–1945. Böhlau, Vienna 2008, ISBN 9783205778134 , p. 166.
  5. ↑ Alfons Dopsch grave site , Vienna, Sieveringer Friedhof, Group 17, No. 1.
  6. ↑ Thomas Buchner: Alfons Dopsch (1868-1953). The "multiplicity of relationships". In: Karel Hruza (Ed.): Austrian Historians. CVs and careers 1900–1945. Böhlau, Vienna 2008, ISBN 9783205778134 , p. 168.
personal data
SURNAME Dopsch, Alfons
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian historian and medievalist
DATE OF BIRTH June 14, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Lobo seat
DATE OF DEATH September 1, 1953
Place of death Vienna