Alfred Hessel

Alfred Hessel (born June 7, 1877 in Stettin , † May 18, 1939 in Göttingen ) was a German historian and librarian .

life and work

The son of a businessman and banker as well as the brother of the writer Franz Hessel studied history, philosophy and economics in Heidelberg, Munich and Berlin from 1895 after graduating from the Joachimsthal School in Berlin, where he received his doctorate in 1899. In the following years Hessel freelancer was Paul Fridolin Kehr in the exploration of the medieval papal documents . From 1901 to 1908 he worked in Strasbourg as an employee of Harry Bresslaus on the publication of the documents of Konrad II for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica . As a further result of his research in Italian libraries and archives, he published a history of Bologna in the 12th and 13th centuries in 1910 , with which he completed his habilitation in Medieval and Modern History at the University of Strasbourg in 1914 . From 1909 to the beginning of the First World War, Hessel edited a regesta volume of the Strasbourg bishops on behalf of the Historical Commission of Alsace .

From 1914 to 1918, Hessel was a soldier, initially as a voluntary nurse, and finally in the art protection department in occupied northern Italy. Since he was unable to return to Strasbourg, which had fallen to France, he completed his habilitation at the University of Göttingen , where he taught as a private lecturer from 1919, since 1922 with the title of "Extraordinary Professor". If Hessel had been economically independent before the war due to his father's inheritance, he was now dependent on a regular income. Because a paid professorship at the university could not be reached, at the suggestion of Karl Brandis he was given a position as librarian in the manuscript department of the Göttingen University Library from 1922 . Hessel was also co-director of the Diplomatic Apparatus, a palaeographic teaching collection, from 1924, and organized the archives of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and the university library. In 1926 he also became an honorary professor at the Philosophical Faculty and in 1928 co-editor of the archive for document research founded by Karl Brandi . He was scientifically active in the fields of palaeography , medieval history and library history.

Due to his Jewish descent, Hessel was released from his teaching duties in 1935 and forced to retire as a librarian. He also had to give up the editing of the Archive for Document Research and was not allowed to use any libraries since 1938. The history of the Göttingen University Library, published for the 200th anniversary in 1937, of which Hessel was to be the editor and the text of which he had largely written, appeared without naming his name. At the end of 1938, Hessel seems to have made the decision to emigrate from Germany and made contacts to Great Britain, which, however, did not lead to any result until his death on May 18, 1939. Although evangelical since 1895, Hessel was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Göttingen. His scientific legacy, which he bequeathed to his housekeeper, was lost.

Alfred Hessel is Stéphane Hessel 's paternal uncle .

In 2012, in memory of Alfred Hessel, the Alfred Hessel Hall was inaugurated in the historic building of the Lower Saxony State and University Library in Göttingen .

Fonts

• “De regno Italiae libri viginti” by Carlo Sigonio . A source-critical investigation . Ebering, Berlin 1900.
• The documents of Konrad II. With supplements to the documents of Heinrich II. With the participation of H. Wibel and A. Hessel ed. by H. Bresslau. Hahn, Hanover 1909 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Diplomata regum et imperatorum Germaniae, 4).
• History of the city of Bologna from 1116 to 1280 . Ebering, Berlin 1910.
  Italian translation: Storia della città di Bologna dal 1116 al 1280 . Alfa, Bologna 1975.
• Alsatian documents, mainly from the 13th century. Trübner, Strasbourg 1915.
• Leibniz and the beginnings of the Göttingen library . Pillai, Göttingen 1924.
• History of the libraries. An overview from its beginnings to the present . Peliens, Göttingen 1925.
  English translation: A History of libraries . Scarecrow Press, New Brunswick 1955. Revised by Don Heinrich Tolzmann: The memory of man. The story of libraries since the dawn of time . Oak Knoll Press, New Castle, Del. 2001.
  Hebrew translation 1962. Serbo-Croatian translation 1977.
• (With Manfred Krebs): Regesta of the bishops of Strasbourg . Wagner, Innsbruck 1928.
• Yearbooks of the German Empire under King Albrecht I of Habsburg . Duncker & Humblot, Munich 1931.
• The font of the Reich Chancellery since the Interregnum and the origin of the Fraktur . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1937 (News from the Society of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class, Section 2, Medieval and Modern History, NF 2,3, pp. 44–59).
• History of the Göttingen University Library. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1937 (author from pp. 9–189, without naming the author).

literature

• Wolfgang Petke: Alfred Hessel (1877–1939), medievalist and librarian in Göttingen . In: Armin Kohnle (Ed.): Between Science and Politics. Studies on German university history. Festschrift for Eike Wolgast for his 65th birthday . Steiner, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-515-07546-1 , pp. 387-414.
• Hessel, Alfred. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 11: Hein – Hirs. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-22691-8 , pp. 269-272.

Web links

• Literature by and about Alfred Hessel in the catalog of the German National Library

Remarks

1. ^ Ceremonial opening of the Alfred Hessel Hall