Biographical lexicon of the Third Reich

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The Biographical Lexicon for the Third Reich is the title of a reference work on National Socialism that is edited by the historian Hermann Weiß and first published in 1998 by S. Fischer Verlag . It is a largely revised and expanded version of the German edition of Robert S. Wistrich's Who’s Who in Nazi Germany , for whose revision with the title Who Was Who in the Third Reich Weiß was responsible as early as 1983.

content

On 502 pages 566 personalities are listed who “ played a role in the public life of the Third Reich ” and “as leading National Socialists or because they were present in public opinion because of their professional or other importance and willingly - or not - the appearance of National Socialism and its state co-determined ”. In addition to biographies of politicians, those of artists, generals, athletes, scientists, theologians and resistance fighters are also included in the lexicon. In the appendix there is an overview of rankings for the Wehrmacht , SS , Waffen-SS , SA , RAD and Hitler Youth and a list of employees. In addition to Weiß, 18 authors were involved in the writing of the biographical articles, most of whom are or were employees of the Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) in Munich . a. whose book and document collections used.

Reviews

On H-Soz-Kult, Martin Fiedler praised the linguistic revision, the streamlining and expansion of the personal entries in the dictionary compared to its older editions, but above all criticized the selection of entries. On the one hand, mainly "power and function holders from the second row", but also the group of business leaders are clearly underrepresented in the lexicon - for example, Fiedler points to the missing biographies of Karl Rasche , Hermann Schmitz , Albert Pietzsch and Friedrich Reinhart . On the other hand, newly added entries, such as the one on Stefan George , are questionable. Fiedler also criticizes formulations that refer to "little knowledge or care" and regrets the little scientific benefit of the work due to the "waiver of an updated bibliography of prosopographic research on the Third Reich or a documentation of the mainly used finding aids and aids in the appendix" .

expenditure

  • Robert S. Wistrich : Who was who in the Third Reich - supporters, followers, opponents from politics, business, military, art and the like. Science. Translated from English by Joachim Rehork. Harnack, Munich 1983, ISBN 978-3-88966-004-6 . Several paperback editions.
Originally: Who's who in Nazi Germany. Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London 1982.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hermann Weiß (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for the Third Reich . Fischer-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1998, preliminary remark, pp. 7–9.
  2. ↑ Martin Fiedler: H. Weiss (Hg.): Biographisches Lexikon zum Third Reich . On February 1, 1999 on hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de