Detlef Brandes

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Detlef Brandes (born May 1, 1941 in Berlin ) is a German historian and professor at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf . There he headed the Institute for Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe until mid-2008.

Life

Brandes studied history, Slavic studies , German studies and political science in Munich from 1960 to 1967 , and in 1965 he also obtained the translation diploma in Russian. After receiving his doctorate in 1968, he worked at the Collegium Carolinum , research center for the Bohemian countries, in Munich until 1972 . He then worked at the Free University of Berlin until 1984 , first as a consultant in the presidential office and then as a scientist at the Eastern European Institute , where he also completed his habilitation in 1984. From 1985 to 1988 he worked on a grant from the German Research Foundation on a project on "Colonists in New Russia and Bessarabia 1751-1914". A job at the Federal Institute for East German Culture and History in Oldenburg in 1990/91 was followed in 1991 by an appointment as professor at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, where Brandes set up the Institute for the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe. He also worked as a visiting professor in Italy at the European University Institute in Florence (1984), in the USA at Columbia University (1984/85) and Stanford University (1988/89) and in Japan at the Slavic Research Center in Sapporo (1989). As a professor in Düsseldorf, together with his Czech colleagues, he initiated a funding program of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to set up the Center for German and Austrian Studies (now Chair for German and Austrian Studies) at Charles University in Prague, which was founded in 1993 and was decisive involved in the establishment of the partnership between Heinrich Heine University and Karls University.

Research priorities

Brandes is, among other things, an expert on German-Czech relations. He wrote his dissertation on German occupation policy, collaboration and resistance in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia until 1942, after which he published a sequel on the same topic for the period from 1942 until the end of the war. In his habilitation on Great Britain and its Eastern European allies from 1939 to 1943 he dealt with the politics of the governments-in-exile of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, among other things with regard to the expulsion and forced resettlement of Germans from Eastern Europe - a topic that he addressed in one Study of the plans for the forced resettlement of Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia took up again. In a more recent monograph he is devoted to the history of the Sudeten Germans in the period before the Munich Agreement . Another field of research by Brandes is the history of the Germans in Russia and the Soviet Union , with the German colonists and Balkan settlers in New Russia and Bessarabia in the period from 1751 to 1914 as well as the Siberian Germans in the Soviet Union in the focus.

Memberships (selection)

Brandes is a member of the Collegium Carolinum , research center for the Bohemian countries, in Munich, the German-Czech and German-Slovak historians' commission as well as the German-Czech textbook commission and the scientific commission for Germans from Russia and the CIS .

Honors

In 2001 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Charles University in Prague , and in 2003 he received the Palacký Medal for Services to Social Sciences from the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

Fonts (selection)

literature

  • Dietmar Neutatz and Volker Zimmermann (eds.): The Germans and Eastern Europe. Aspects of a diverse relationship history. Festschrift for the 65th birthday of Prof. Dr. Dr. hc Detlef Brandes. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2006, ISBN 3-89861-629-0 .

Web links


personal data
SURNAME Brandes, Detlef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian
DATE OF BIRTH May 1, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin