Alfred Meusel

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Alfred Meusel (born May 19, 1896 in Kiel , † September 10, 1960 in East Berlin ) was a German sociologist and historian . He was director of the Museum of German History .

Life

The son of a student councilor attended elementary school and high school in Kiel. In 1914 Meusel volunteered for the war, but at the front he soon distanced himself from the empire and came into contact with socialist ideas for the first time. In December 1917 he was buried on the Aisne , seriously injured and suffered from a nervous problem as a long-term consequence.

From 1918 to 1922 he studied economics , sociology and history in Kiel . He received his doctorate in 1922 under Bernhard Harms with "Investigations into the object of knowledge in Marx " and devoted himself to many other socialist-inspired topics in his subsequent essays.

In 1922 he became a research assistant, in 1925 an associate professor, in 1930 a full professor of economics and sociology at RWTH Aachen University .

Politically, Meusel had joined the USPD in 1919 and when it was dissolved in 1922 he converted to the SPD . In 1925 he left the SPD and approached the positions of the KPD , but without joining it. Together with Carl Max Maedge and Gertrud Savelsberg , he also belonged to the circle of friends and students around Ferdinand Tönnies , whom he had known from his time in Kiel.

In the spring of 1933, denunciation measures by the student body began at RWTH Aachen University . The ASTA ( General Student Committee ) and the student leaders sent the denunciation committee specially appointed for this purpose, consisting of Hermann Bonin , Hubert Hoff , Felix Rötscher , Adolf Wallichs , and Robert Hans Wentzel , about which lecturers and professors were not "Aryan" descent or supposedly or actually had an undesirable political attitude. According to the law to restore the civil service from September 1933, Meusel's teaching license was to be withdrawn. The Nazis finally took Meusel into “ protective custody ” in April – May and June – September 1933 due to his political views and then released him from civil service.

In 1934 he emigrated with his wife Meta via Denmark to Great Britain, where he undertook intensive sociological and historical studies. Among other things, he examined the situation of German emigrants in several countries. In 1937 he joined his colleagues Jürgen Kuczynski the exile organization of the KPD, was involved in the Free German Cultural Association and from 1942 in the by Arthur Liebert constructed Free German College in London.

In 1936 Meusel was involved with a contribution on " The family in the German conception of society since 1933 " in the joint project Studies on Authority and Family , initiated by Max Horkheimer among others .

In 1946 he returned to Germany, specifically to Berlin , and became a member of the SED . In 1947 he was a member of the First German People's Congress , later a member of the German People's Council . In 1947 he became a member of the Presidential Council of the German Cultural Association and a full professor of modern history at the later Humboldt University in Berlin . Since he was one of the few professors from the Weimar Republic who worked in the GDR , he enjoyed a high reputation in the East German university landscape and among SED science politicians. In 1951 he was the founding director of the Institute for German History at Humboldt University, and in 1952 also director of the Institute for the History of the German People there and the newly founded Museum for German History , which became part of the German Historical Museum after reunification in 1990 . In 1953 he was one of the co-founders of the Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft (ZfG). His lectures covered a wide range of topics, from the Reformation to the 1848 revolution, Bismarck, the First World War and the Weimar Republic. The historians Fritz Klein and Joachim Streisand were among his students . During his work at the university, at the museum and in the centrally controlled aspirant training, Meusel shaped a whole generation of younger historians in the GDR.

Burial place

From 1954 he was Vice President of the German Cultural Association. Meusel was a member of the Kulturbund faction from 1949 until his death in the People's Chamber of the GDR.

He was buried in the Pergolenweg grave in the Friedrichsfelde central cemetery in Berlin.

Awards

Works

  • Investigations into the knowledge object in Marx , Kiel 1922
  • The renegades. In: "Kölner Vierteljahreshefte für Sozialwissenschaften", Vol. 3, 1923, H. 2/3, pp. 152–169
  • List and Marx: A comparative consideration , G. Fischer Verlag, Jena 1928
  • Karl Marx. In: Fritz Karl Mann (ed.), Founder of sociology. A series of lectures , Gustav Fischer, Jena 1932, pp. 96-108 [= Social Science Building Blocks, Vol. IV]
  • Thomas Müntzer and his time , Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1952

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Meusel, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sociologist and historian, MdV, director of the Museum for German History
DATE OF BIRTH May 19, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Kiel
DATE OF DEATH September 10, 1960
Place of death East Berlin