Benjamin Carter Hett

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Benjamin Carter Hett , also BC Hett, (* 1965 in Rochester , New York ) is an American historian and professor at Hunter College, City University of New York .

Life

Hett's academic training initially took place at the University of Alberta , where he received his bachelor's degree (BA) in political science in 1987 . In 1990, after studying law at the University of Toronto , he obtained the degree of Juris Doctor (JD). He then worked for four years as a lawyer, before he also obtained a Master of Arts (MA) in modern European at the University of Toronto in 1995 History reached.

Hett received his doctorate in 2001 from David Blackbourn at Harvard University with a study of judicial processes in Berlin around 1900, for which he was awarded the Harold K. Gross Prize for the best historical dissertation of the year from Harvard University in 2002. The work was also praised by Frank Bösch in H-Soz-u-Kult . It has "many advantages" and represents a "study on the social and cultural history of the courtroom that is well worth reading". Since 2003 he has taught at Hunter College at the City University of New York (CUNY). From 2003 to 2008 as assistant professor , from 2008 to 2012 as associate professor and since August 2012 as full professor.

For his biography on Hans Litten , published in 2008 under the title Crossing Hitler , Hett received the Ernst Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History .

Hett's monograph Burning the Reichstag , published in early 2014 . An investigation into the Third Reich's enduring mystery, the 2016 extended German edition under the title Der Reichstagbrand. Re-trial was published , both consent learned and criticism. Uwe Soukup, for example, sees in his detailed review in the volume a convincing presentation of evidence and arguments against the thesis of the sole perpetrator Marinus van der Lubbe in the Reichstag fire in 1933. The British historian Richard J. Evans, on the other hand, attests in his extensive review of Hett's monograph a broad one Source and literature base, and it is also well written. But he criticizes that it is not written as a balanced historical study, but rather as a one-sided indictment directed against the lone perpetrator thesis. Fritz Tobias was put in the corner of right-wing extremism by Hett and the relevant work by Sven Felix Kellerhoff , The Reichstag Fire: The Career of a Criminal Case , was hardly discussed.

Ian Kershaw told the Tagesspiegel that after reading this book he would write the comments on the Reichstag fire in his biography of Hitler "today differently" and praised Hett's study as an "meticulous investigation". The work was awarded the Hans Rosenberg Book Prize by the Central European History Society (CEHS) for the best English-language book on European history published in North America.

Works

  • Death in the Tiergarten. Murder and criminal justice in the Kaiser's Berlin . Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts / London 2004, ISBN 0-674-01317-4 (also dissertation Harvard University 2001)
  • Crossing Hitler. The man who put the Nazis on the witness stand . Oxford University Press, New York / Oxford 2008, ISBN 978-0-19-536988-5 . (Biography of Hitler's opponent Hans Litten, murdered by the National Socialists)
  • Burning the Reichstag. An investigation into the Third Reich's enduring mystery . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-932232-9 .
Revised and expanded version in German: Der Reichstagbrand. Retrial. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-498-03029-2 .
  • with Michael Wala: Otto John. Patriot or Traitor: A German Biography . Rowohlt, Hamburg 2019, ISBN 978-3-498-03030-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Page of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation on Benjamin Hett
  2. ↑ Frank Bösch: Review of: Hett, Benjamin Carter: Death in the Tiergarten. Murder and Criminal Justice in the Kaiser's Berlin . Cambridge / Mass. 2004, in: H-Soz-u-Kult , July 5, 2006.
  3. ^ Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History
  4. ↑ Uwe Soukup: The fire . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung . May 11, 2014, p. 8; ders .: Burning questions, in Tagesspiegel , January 2, 2015, with a detailed presentation online ; also Wigbert Benz : Review by: Benjamin Carter Hett, Burning the Reichstag . In: Archive for Social History (online), October 14, 2014; Sean O'Grady: Burning the Reichstag by Benjamin Carter Hett, book review . In: The Independent . February 14, 2014; Robert Swan: Burning the Reichstag: An Investigation into the Third Reich's Enduring Mystery . In: Washington Independent. Review of Books, March 11, 2014.
  5. ^ Sven Felix Kellerhoff: Reichstag fire . The career of a criminal case . be.bra, Berlin 2008, ISBN 3-89809-078-7 .
  6. ^ Richard J. Evans: The Conspiracists . In: London Review of Books . Vol. 36, No. 9, May 8, 2014. On the pages of the London Review there is a reply from Carter Hett and one from Alexander Bahar and Wilfried Kugel against Evans ( online )
  7. ↑ Uwe Soukup: Burning questions. In: Tagesspiegel , January 2, 2015.
  8. ^ Hans Rosenberg Book Prize 2014
personal data
SURNAME Hett, Benjamin Carter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American historian and author
DATE OF BIRTH 1965
PLACE OF BIRTH Rochester , New York , United States