Benedict Bilgeri

Benedikt Bilgeri (* 1906 in Hard ; † 1993 ) was an Austrian teacher and historian .

Life

Benedikt Bilgeri's family ran a farm in Hard.

After finishing school, Benedikt Bilgeri received his doctorate in 1932 from the University of Innsbruck with a history of settlements in the Bregenzerwald. Then he entered the school service. From 1942 to 1945 he did military service and then worked as a high school teacher in Bregenz - first at the girls ' secondary school Sacré Coeur Riedenburg and later also at the boys' grammar school. Bilgeri devoted himself primarily to the medieval settlement history of Vorarlberg and was released from teaching duties to carry out scientific research in the school years 1946/47 and 1947/48. In 1964 Benedikt Bilgeri received a special contract from the state of Vorarlberg to write about the history of the state. Until 1979 he was part of the staff of the Vorarlberg State Archives.

Vorarlberg historians' dispute

At the end of the 1980s a discussion broke out as to whether the contents of his historical works were historically or ideologically inspired. On one side stood the regional archivist Benedikt Bilgeri, author of the five-volume history of Vorarlberg , on the other hand the director of the Vorarlberg regional archive Karl Heinz Burmeister , author of a one-volume short version of the history of Vorarlberg .

After Burmeister, as director of the Vorarlberg State Archives, critically viewed Benedikt Bilgeri's controversial Vorarlberg state history in a radio interview in the late autumn of 1986 , the editor-in-chief of the influential Vorarlberger Nachrichten demanded Burmeister's expulsion from Vorarlberg in a glossary .

When an action committee Heimat Vorarlberg (anti-Burmeister initiative) was formed, professors, assistants and students from the Institute for History of the University of Innsbruck showed solidarity with Burmeister. In a newspaper advertisement, 182 public figures finally called on the politicians in the state of Vorarlberg to counter threats against the state archivist.

Fonts (selection)

• Alpine skiing and ski mountaineering. 1934
• The federal government above the lake: Vorarlberg in the Appenzell War. 1968
• Vorarlberger Landesgeschichte (here the history of the state of Vorarlberg is presented in five volumes with over 2700 pages; the first volume appeared in 1971, the second volume in 1974 and the fifth and last volume in 1987)
  • History of Vorarlberg (Volume I): From the free council to the state of the Montforters
  • History of Vorarlberg (Volume II): Bavaria, Habsburg, Switzerland - self-assertion
  • History of Vorarlberg (Volume III): Class power, common man: Emser and Habsburgs
  • History of Vorarlberg (Volume IV): Between absolutism and half autonomy
  • History of Vorarlberg (Volume V): Canton or State - Fall and Return
• City history of Bregenz
• City history of Feldkirch
• Liechtenstein document book

Articles available online:

• Hörbranz. A study of the history of the land and settlement. In: Writings of the Association for the History of Lake Constance and its Surroundings. 67th year, 1940, pp. 197–255 ( digitized version )
• The Arlberg and the beginnings of the city of Bludenz. In: Writings of the Association for the History of Lake Constance and its Surroundings. Vol. 90, 1972, pp. 1–17 ( digitized version )

Awards

• 1982 Upper Rhine Culture Prize
• 1985 Toni Russ Prize

Web links

• Literature by and about Benedikt Bilgeri in the catalog of the German National Library
• Benedikt Bilgeri (laudation for Professor Dr. Benedikt Bilgeri; Hofrat Dr. Arnulf Benzer on the award of the Upper Rhine Culture Prize 1982)

Footnotes

1. ↑ Christa Dietrich: "I did not paint for posterity" . In: Vorarlberger Nachrichten . October 2000
2. ↑ Markus Barnay: fairy tale uncle against nest dirtiers. Comments on the “Historikerstreit” in Vorarlberg . In: Commons. An Alemannic magazine . Issue 18/19, 1987, pp. 210-218
3. ↑ Alois Niederstätter : Comments on Vorarlberg regional historiography after 1945. Lecture given on June 29, 2005 in Bregenz ( PDF; 195 kB ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) 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 note. )