Bernd Sösemann

Bernd Sösemann (born October 8, 1944 in Göttingen ) is a German historian .

Life

Bernd Sösemann studied history , German philology , philosophy and education at the University of Göttingen . He passed the first and second state exams for teaching at grammar schools. It was founded in 1974 on the subject of liberal journalism in the final phase of the Weimar Republic to the Dr. phil. PhD. For four years he worked for the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , for which he edited Theodor Wolff's diaries . In 1985 the Free University of Berlin primo loco appointed him as founding director to the chair for the history of public communication and journalism. He taught and researched there until his retirement in March 2010. He continued to head the Department for Communication History and Intercultural Journalism (AKiP) at the Friedrich Meinecke Institute of the Free University of Berlin . He was visiting professor in Cagliary, Trento, Sydney and Rome. From 1988 to 2010 he was a member of the Prussian Historical Commission . From 1989 to 2009 he was chairman of the Working Group on the History of Prussia . From 1991 to 2010 he published the yearbook of the “ Berlin Scientific Society ”. In 2014 he was a Senior Fellow at the Historical College in Munich.

In his in the Historical Journal (1983 and 2014), in Böhlau-Verlag (1996, 2006) and in the Yearbook of Communication History (2008) published research on the diaries of Kurt Riezler from the First World War ( Karl Dietrich Erdmann ), the estate of Prussian reformer Theodor von Schön and the diaries of Joseph Goebbels (ed. Horst Möller , Elke Fröhlich ), he found editorial weaknesses, errors and factual falsifications of these editions.

In 2010, History, Public, Communication was published in his honor . Festschrift for Bernd Sösemann on his 65th birthday (edited by Patrick Merziger and others). He is a member of the board of trustees of the Theodor Wolff Prize , board member of the Erhard Höpfner Foundation (Berlin), the Working Group on Prussian History and the Berlin Scientific Society, and chairman of the "Friedrich Meinecke Society" in Berlin.

Sösemann's main research areas are the history of public communication and the media, the life and work of the editor-in-chief of the Berliner Tageblatt Theodor Wolff , (biography and 7 volumes of documents), German history from the German Empire to the early Federal Republic, the history of Prussia, the history of the Liberalism, the history of propaganda in modern dictatorships and the edition sciences.

Works (selection)

• The end of the Weimar Republic in the criticism of democratic publicists. Theodor Wolff, Ernst Feder, Julius Elbau, Leopold Schwarzschild (= treatises and materials on journalism , vol. 9). Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-7678-0410-7 . At the same time dissertation at the University of Göttingen under the title Liberal Democratic Publicists in the Dissolution Crisis of the Weimar Republic , Göttingen 1977.
• (Ed.): Theodor Wolff: Diaries 1914–1919 - The First World War and the emergence of the Weimar Republic in diaries, editorials and letters from the editor-in-chief at the “Berliner Tageblatt” and co-founder of the “German Democratic Party” . In two volumes. Boldt, Boppard am Rhein, ISBN 3-7646-1835-3 (= German historical sources of the 19th and 20th centuries , vol. 54).
• Theodor Wolff - a life with the newspaper . Econ, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-430-18569-6 . In a completely revised version and with selected articles by Wolff's new edition under the title:

Theodor Wolff - A life with the newspaper. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-515-10174-5 .

• Edited with Jürgen Frölich , Centrum Judaicum : Theodor Wolff. Journalist, citizen of the world, democrat. In cooperation with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation . Hentrich & Hentrich , Teetz 2004, ISBN 3-933471-62-1 (= Jewish miniatures . Vol. 10).
• Edited with Marius Lange: Propaganda. Media and the public in the Nazi dictatorship . 2 volumes, Steiner, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-515-09635-5 .
• Edited with Gregor Vogt-Spira : Friedrich the Great in Europe - History of an eventful relationship. Steiner, Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-515-10387-9 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Bernd Sösemann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Bernd Sösemann  in the German Digital Library
• Portrait of Bernd Sösemann on the website of the Office for Communication History and Intercultural Journalism of the Free University of Berlin