Alfred Gottwaldt

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Alfred Bernd Gottwaldt (born October 4, 1949 in Berlin ; † August 16, 2015 in Berlin) was a German lawyer and historian .

resume

Gottwaldt studied law, political science and modern history at the University of Frankfurt am Main . During this time he was already busy with railway history in his spare time and soon after its founding became a member of the DGEG . After completing his studies, he initially worked as a lawyer . At the end of the 1970s he took over Lok Magazin as publisher for several years .

From 1983 to 2014 he was head curator in Berlin of the rail transport department at the Museum of Transport and Technology (since 1996 German Museum of Technology Berlin ). For the first time under him, the role of the Deutsche Reichsbahn in the Holocaust was thematized and processed in an exhibition in a German technology museum. In 1985 he was involved in the development of the exhibition "Train of Time - Time of Trains" for the 150th anniversary of the German railways in Nuremberg . In 2007 he designed the touring exhibition “Special Trains to Death” for Deutsche Bahn . It was in 2010 at the Technical University of Berlin Dr. phil. PhD . Gottwaldt also worked as a speaker and consultant for the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem . Alfred Gottwaldt was also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Bochum Railway Museum Foundation.

Scientific focus

In his numerous publications, Gottwaldt focused primarily on the Deutsche Reichsbahn before 1945 and the time of National Socialism in Germany. In addition to the presentation of the technical development, in particular of the Reichsbahn's vehicle fleet and the cultural history of the railway, the discrimination of Jewish railway workers, the contribution of the Deutsche Reichsbahn to the persecution of Jews and its assistance in the deportation of Jews from Germany and other European countries were a special focus of Gottwaldt's work The trigger for the in-depth study of this topic was his work on the Reichsbahn's war locomotives, first published in 1970 and repeatedly revised and reissued in the following years , whose production was carried out with the significant participation of slave labor . In his works, Gottwaldt looked at the individual life stories of persecuted railway workers such as Ernst Spiro or Paul Levy as well as the legal, logistical and technical issues of deportations and transports.

Further work by Gottwaldt dealt with senior officials and technicians of the pre- and post-war Reichsbahn. So he worked out biographical sketches of the Reich Minister of Transport Julius Dorpmüller , the "father of the standard locomotives ", Richard Paul Wagner and his two successors at the Deutsche Bundesbahn , Friedrich Witte , and the Deutsche Reichsbahn in the GDR, Hans Schulze , each of the construction of the last steam locomotive series significantly influenced in both parts of Germany.

In 2016, the Deutsche Bahn Foundation took over Alfred Gottwaldt's archive on German railway history with the aim of "opening up and preserving the collections and research work for posterity." The estate contains rare photographs, railway documents, brochures, collection items on railway history and documents on biographical research. The estate is to be processed by Deutsche Bahn with the support of the archives of the Topography of Terror Foundation, the German Museum of Technology Berlin, the DB Museum and the historian Diana Schulle.

Publications (selection)

  • War locomotives. Origin and fate of the German locomotive types of the 2nd World War. Frank, Stuttgart 1970, ISBN 3-440-03686-3 .
  • The Lübeck-Büchener Railway. Private railway as a pioneer of new traffic technologies. Alba, Düsseldorf 1975, ISBN 3-87094-029-2 .
  • 100 years of German electric locomotives. A story in 250 photographs from 1879 to 1979. Frank, Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-440-04696-6 .
  • German war locomotives 1939-1945. Locomotives, wagons, armored trains and guns (design, construction and use). Third, heavily changed edition. Stuttgart, Franckh, 1983. Franck's railway library product code "Gottwaldt, Kriegslok 1". ISBN 3 440 05160 9
  • German railways in World War II. Armaments, war and railways (1939-1945). 2nd Edition. Stuttgart, Franckh, 1985. Franck's Railway Library product code "Gottwaldt Kriegslok 2 VH". ISBN 3-440-05161-7
  • (with Hermann Kuom and Karsten Risch): The S-Bahn in Berlin. End and new beginning of a legendary means of transport. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart / Berlin / Cologne / Mainz 1984, ISBN 3-17-008344-9 .
  • German war locomotives 1939–1945. Locomotives, wagons, armored trains and guns. Design, build and use. Frank, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-440-04044-5 . (= The railroad in World War II .)
  • Berlin, Anhalter Bahnhof . Alba, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 978-3-87094-226-7 .
  • with Petra Rösgen: Salon car 10205 . From the rails to the museum . 4th edition, Foundation House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn 2007 (first edition 1994), ISBN 978-3-937086-15-6 .
  • German war locomotives 1939 to 1945. Transpress, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-440-07941-4 .
  • (with contributions by Paul Dost): Heeresfeldbahnen. Construction and use of the military narrow-gauge railways in two world wars. Transpress, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 978-3-613-01080-2 .
  • (together with Diana Schulle): The "Deportations of Jews" from the German Reich from 1941–1945. An annotated chronology. Marix, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 978-3-86539-059-2 .
  • (for the memorial and educational center of the Wannsee Conference): Nazi tyranny. Contributions to historical research and legal processing. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 2005, ISBN 978-3-89468-278-1 .
  • (together with Diana Schulle): "Jews are not allowed to use dining cars". The anti-Jewish policy of the Reich Ministry of Transport between 1933 and 1945. (published version of an expert report commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development) Hentrich & Hentrich, Teetz 2007, ISBN 978-3-938485-64-4 .
  • The German “ cattle wagon ” as a symbolic object in concentration camp memorials , in: Gedenkstättenrundbrief, No. 139 (October 2007), p. 18ff and No. 140 (December 2007), p. 3ff.
  • (with contributions by Ursula Bartelsheim and others): Railway workers against Hitler. Resistance and persecution on the Reichsbahn 1933–1945. Marix, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-86539-204-6 .
  • Dorpmüller's Reichsbahn. The era of the Reich Minister of Transport Julius Dorpmüller 1920–1945. EK-Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 2009, ISBN 978-3-88255-726-8 .
  • On the role of the Reichsbahn within German Jewish policy during the " years of peace" from 1933 to 1939. Dissertation , Technische Universität Berlin , 2010. OCLC 918510740 .
  • The Reichsbahn and the Jews 1933–1939. Anti-Semitism on the railways in the pre-war period. Marix, Wiesbaden 2011, ISBN 978-3-86539-254-1 .
  • Wagner's standard locomotives. The steam locomotives of the Reichsbahn and their creators. EK-Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 2012, ISBN 978-3-88255-738-1 .
  • That was the DB. Part: 1951-1952. (21 volumes in total, 1945–1992) GeraMond, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-86245-005-3 .
  • The Berlin underground and S-Bahn network. A story in route maps from 1888 to today. Transpress, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 3-613-71449-3 .
  • Ernst Spiro. A Jewish Reich Railway Director. (published by the Centrum Judaicum ) Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-95565-044-5 (= Jewish miniatures , volume 150).
  • Paul Levy. Engineer of the Hejaz Railway and the Reichsbahn. Published by the Centrum Judaicum. Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-95565-065-0 (= Jewish miniatures , volume 155).
  • Benno Orenstein . A Jewish locomotive builder. Published by the Centrum Judaicum. Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-95565-090-2 (= Jewish miniatures , volume 166).
  • Witte's new locomotives. The last steam locomotives of the Deutsche Bundesbahn and their creators 1949 to 1977. EK-Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 2014, ISBN 978-3-88255-772-5 .
  • Dunning place Moabit freight yard. The deportation of Jews from Berlin. (= Topography of Terror Foundation , Notes , Volume 8.) Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-95565-054-4 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary notice , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , August 29, 2015
  2. ↑ Press release of the German Museum of Technology from August 20, 2015 , accessed on September 12, 2016
  3. ^ Maria Borgmann: Technology and Responsibility in the Nazi State. Examples of museum presentations. in: Werner Lorenz, Torsten Meyer: Technology and Responsibility in National Socialism. Waxmann, Münster 2004, ISBN 978-3-8309-1407-5 , pp. 159-165, here pp. 159 f.
  4. ↑ TU Berlin, Faculty I - Humanities, doctorates 2010
  5. ↑ a b Kaiser, p. 73.
  6. ↑ One-time historian's legacy is being processed. (No longer available online.) 2016, archived from the original on September 15, 2016 ; accessed on September 9, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.deutschebahnstiftung.de
personal data
SURNAME Gottwaldt, Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gottwaldt, Alfred Bernd (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, historian and author
DATE OF BIRTH October 4, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH August 16, 2015
Place of death Berlin