Dieter Fricke (historian)

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Dieter Fricke (born June 21, 1927 in Frankfurt (Oder) ) is a German historian. In the GDR from 1962 he set up a “working group on the history of the bourgeois parties” at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena , which established an undisputed special position within GDR history. As head of the editorial collective and author of most of the individual articles, he was responsible for the main publications of the working group, the two-volume handbook on the history of bourgeois parties and other bourgeois interest organizations from Vormärz to 1945 (1968 and 1970) and the four-volume encyclopedia on the history of parties (1983–1986 ). Despite their Marxist-Leninist orientation, these works were also recognized by Western historians as important academic achievements. Fricke's two-volume handbook on the history of the German labor movements (1987) is also considered a standard work. Fricke was also active in university politics. He significantly influenced the III. Higher education reform of the GDR (1965–1971), in which the FSU Jena served as an “example university ”.

Life

Fricke was drafted into the Wehrmacht from high school in November 1944 and took part in World War II . From 1944 he was also listed as a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 10.100.015). In May 1945 he was taken prisoner by the French , from which he returned to the Soviet occupation zone in November 1946 . In 1947 he graduated from high school and joined the SED . He completed a corresponding training course and worked as a new teacher until 1949 . Then he began studying history and education at the Potsdam University of Education , which he graduated with the state examination in 1953.

From 1952 to 1957 Fricke headed the “Distance Learning” department for historians at the PH Potsdam and at the Humboldt University in Berlin . In 1953/54 he had a scheduled scientific traineeship at the Humboldt University. In September 1954 he did his doctorate under Karl Obermann on the Ruhr miners' strike of 1905 . Until 1957 he worked as a senior scientific assistant and lecturer.

After Fritz Klein was withdrawn from the editor-in-chief, Fricke became editor-in-chief of the Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft (ZfG) in 1957 . He completed his habilitation in May 1960 on The Berlin Political Police in the Fight Against the German Labor Movement (1878–1890) and in September 1960, as successor to Max Steinmetz, was appointed professor with a teaching position for German history in modern times and the most recent at the Friedrich-Schiller- University of Jena appointed. At this point in time he was officially one of the “most capable and clearest junior cadres” in GDR history. After his appointment to Jena, Fricke handed over the editor-in-chief of the ZfG to Rolf Rudolph in 1961 and moved to the editorial board, to which he belonged until 1990.

In September 1962, Fricke became professor for German history of modern times and the most recent at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (FSU Jena) with a full teaching assignment. In 1966 his chair was also dedicated to the history of the labor movement . From 1960 to 1970 Fricke also served as director of the Historical Institute of the FSU Jena. From 1966 to 1968 he was also dean of the philosophy faculty. He was considered an ideologically trained speaker and an energetic representative of Marxism-Leninism. The III. He played a decisive role in shaping the university reform of the GDR, through which the faculty was dissolved in 1968, by taking part in the 4th University Conference in February 1967 and the 7th party congress of the SED , where the relevant resolutions were made. In 1973 he was a visiting professor in the USSR .

His Jena colleague Peter Schäfer describes Fricke in his memoirs as “absolutely true to the line”. Fricke had "tolerated no deviation from the pure doctrine or the wisdom of the party" and "even in the Gorbachev era of glasnost and perestroika up until the end he defended the rigid course of Erich Honecker and Kurt Hager ". Fricke's activity in Jena ended a few months after the political reunification and peaceful revolution in the GDR .

plant

Fricke belonged to a new generation of Marxist historians who had received their academic training in the GDR. He published overview presentations on the history of the workers' movement, which culminated in 1987 in the two-volume handbook on the history of the German workers' movement and was a central contributor to the eight-volume history of the German workers' movement , where he headed the working group for the period from imperialism to the October revolution . For this he was awarded the National Prize of the GDR , 1st class [collective] in 1966 . In 1963 he had already received the Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze. While Walter Ulbricht valued Fricke's work, Fricke was feared among colleagues because of its sharp reviews.

In Jena, Fricke became a leader. He pursued personnel policy and used his creative scope to set up an academic working group on party history that existed from 1962 to 1990. As early as 1961, he had ensured that Jena became the “leading institute for research into the history of bourgeois parties”. He justified the establishment of the working group politically by stating that successful research on the history of the labor movement also requires research on its opponents. In this respect, Fricke understood the research of civil organizations as "research on opponents", which at the same time aimed at dealing with West German historians who were also understood as "opponents". Scientifically, Fricke based himself on Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's party concept , according to which the parties can be traced back to the class . He rejected other party definitions. He characterized the multi-party system of the Federal Republic of Germany as a farce and the party law as the codification of an “openly military-fascist dictatorship in West Germany”.

The multi-volume handbook on the history of parties (1968, 1970), on which a total of around 60 authors worked, nonetheless became a standard work due to its clarity and wealth of facts, which also found recognition in West German historical studies. GDR party research, as Gerhard A. Ritter said in 1973, had promoted historical party research in Germany. Criticism that Ritter also exercised on the socio- historical deficits of the first volumes was taken into account in further work on the later lexicon of party history , without, however, being able to connect to the new social, mentality and cultural-historical approaches of party research in the West.

In mid-1970 Fricke also formed the research group “History of Non-Proletarian Democratic Forces in Germany” in Jena , which was supposed to oppose the history of democratic forces outside the labor movement in a more differentiated and positive way. In 1981, the anthology German Democrats was published.

The lexicon on party history , which is clearly differentiated and politically and ideologically more cautious than the manual , was also published as a licensed edition by Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1983 , where it was also recognized as a standard work for which there is no West German counterpart.

Both Dieter Fricke and Manfred Weißbecker admitted deficits in their research project after 1990, but did not address the fact that in the section of historical sciences deviating theses of employees could block their scientific careers. Fricke let Hans Herz's habilitation process fail.

Fricke's personality and academic performance are judged differently. While the Marburg political scientist Georg Fülberth regrets that Fricke's scientific achievements were not sufficiently appreciated in view of his GDR career after the end of the GDR, Lutz Niethammer reports that Fricke's employees "hated" their boss. Fricke exploited his team for works that could have been seen and appeared as an exemplary collective effort, without having been a role model themselves. He was driven out by his own employees at the turn, while West German historians would have rated him rather positively. Peter Schäfer , one of Fricke's employees, remembers that he was able to design teaching and research according to his own ideas and that Fricke gave him a lot of free hand. Fricke let him "generally work in peace". Hans-Werner Hahn and Tobias Kaiser appreciate that the working group owed its creation and success largely to Fricke's administrative and scientific skills.

Fonts (selection)

Monographs

  • The Ruhr miners' strike of 1905. 1st edition. Rütten & Loening, Berlin, Berlin 1955.
  • Bismarck's Praetorian. The Berlin political police in the fight against the German labor movement (1871–1898). Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1962.
  • On the organization and activities of the German labor movement (1890-1914): documents and materials. Publishing house encyclopedia, Leipzig 1962.
  • The German labor movement 1869–1890. Your organization and activity. Publishing house Enzyklopädie, Leipzig 1964.
  • Julius Schaxel (1887–1943): Life and struggle of a Marxist German natural scientist and university professor. Urania-Verlag, Jena FSU 1964.
  • Student and nation. Friedrich Schiller Univ. Jena 1966.
  • The German labor movement from 1869 to 1914. A manual on its organization and activity in the class struggle. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1976 (licensed edition: The European Book, Berlin 1976, ISBN 3920303644 ).
  • "... and laughed at that too!" Cheerful and serious news from the struggle of the German working class against the Socialist Law 1878-1890. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1978.
  • Little story of May Day. May celebrations in the German and international labor movement. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1980.
  • Handbook on the history of the German labor movement 1869–1917. In two volumes. Dietz, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-320-00847-1 .

Essays

  • The Reich Association against Social Democracy from its foundation to the Reichstag elections of 1907. In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft 7, No. 2 (1959), pp. 237–280.
  • The bourgeois parties and the vital questions of the German nation. For researching and presenting the history of the bourgeois parties in Germany. In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft 11, No. 1 (1963), pp. 29-77.
  • Problems of the organization and management of a research collective. In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft 13 (1965), pp. 957–972.
  • Methodological problems of researching and presenting the history of the bourgeois parties and other bourgeois interest organizations in Germany . In: Scientific journal of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (social and linguistic series) 14 (1965), pp. 177–190.
  • The importance of Lenin for research into the non-proletarian democratic, anti-militarist and anti-imperialist forces in Germany from the mid-19th century to 1945 . In: Jenaer Contributions to the history of parties 26–27 (1970), 3–42.
  • On some questions of the relationship between party and class in the German labor movement before the First World War . In: Scientific journal of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (social and linguistic series) 23 (1974), pp. 753–769.
  • Methodological problems of research into the struggle of the bourgeois parties for influence among the working masses . In: Jenaer Contributions to the history of parties 39 (1976), pp. 1-54.
  • About the weird and the humor in the story. Reflections on a subject both serious and cheerful . In: Politics and Society in Old Austria. Festschrift for Rudolf Neck for his 60th birthday . Volume 2. Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, Vienna 1981, ISBN 3-7028-0189-8 , pp. 315–326.
  • The political organization of civil society in Germany from 1789 to the present in the FRG. Tasks and problems of their historical research . In: Jenaer contributions to the history of parties 49 (1988), pp. 14–50.
  • The development and expansion of the party organization of the German social democracy 1875–1914. Problems of their further exploration and representation. In: Gerhard A Ritter u. Elisabeth Müller-Luckner (ed.): The rise of the German labor movement. Social democracy and free trade unions in the party system and social milieu of the empire. Oldenbourg, Munich 1990, pp. 145-160.
  • The "Deutschbund". In: Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz, Justus H. Ulbricht (eds.): Handbook on the “Völkische Movement” 1871–1918. Saur, Munich 1996, pp. 328-340.
  • The overviews of the Berlin political police on the situation of the social democratic and anarchist movement from 1878 to 1913. At the end of their publication. In: Eva Schöck-Quinteros , Hans Kloft, Franklin Kopitzsch and Hans-Josef Steinberg (eds.): Civil society - idea and reality. Festschrift for Manfred Hahn. trafo, Berlin 2004, pp. 133–142.
  • History of political parties at the University of Jena: First attempts at a balance not only related to research . In: Contributions to the history of the labor movement 49 (2007), pp. 5-18.
  • Social Observatories - The first German workers' secretariat in Nuremberg (1894–1904) . In: Contributions to the history of the labor movement 50 (2008), pp. 3–48.

Editorships

  • (as leader) et al .: The bourgeois parties in Germany. Handbook of the history of the bourgeois parties and other bourgeois interest organizations from Vormärz to 1945; in 2 volumes. Verl. Encyclopedia, Leipzig 1968, 1970.
  • Documents on German history 1910–1914. German Science Publishing House, Berlin 1976.
  • German Democrats. The non-proletarian democratic forces in Germany from 1830 to 1945. Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1981, ISBN 3760905900 .
  • (as leader) et al .: Lexicon on party history. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties and associations in Germany (1789–1945): in four volumes. 1st edition. Bibliographer. Institute, Leipzig 1983–1986.

literature

  • Contributions to the history of the labor movement 49th year 2007, issue 2 (= themed issue "party research").
  • Michael Eckardt: Complete bibliography of the “Jena Contributions to Party History” (1963 to 1988) . In: Contributions to the history of the labor movement 49 (2007), pp. 47–75.
  • Hans-Werner Hahn and Tobias Kaiser: The working group on the history of the bourgeois parties 1962–1990. A major humanities project. In: Uwe Hossfeld , Tobias Kaiser u. Heinz Mestrup (Ed.): College in Socialism. Studies at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (1945–1990). Vol. 2, Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2007, ISBN 9783412345051 , pp. 1686-1714.
  • Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk : Historiography in the dictatorship. On the change in historical science at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. In: Uwe Hossfeld, Tobias Kaiser and Heinz Mestrup (eds.): University in Socialism. Studies at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (1945–1990). Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-34505-1 , pp. 1642–1685.
  • Lothar Mertens : Lexicon of the GDR historians. Biographies and bibliographies on the historians from the German Democratic Republic . KG Saur, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-598-11673-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The reviewers were Karl Obermann , Gerhard Schilfert and Helmuth Lötzke. ( Bismarck's Praetorians. The Berlin Political Police in the Fight Against the German Labor Movement (1871–1898 , p. 14.))
  2. ↑ Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk: Historiography in the dictatorship. On the change in historical science at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. In: Uwe Hossfeld, Tobias Kaiser and Heinz Mestrup (eds.): University in Socialism. Studies at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (1945–1990). Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2007, p. 1665.
  3. ↑ Hans-Werner Hahn and Tobias Kaiser: The working group for the history of the bourgeois parties 1962–1990 , p. 1688 f.
  4. ↑ Peter Schäfer: “Write that down, Mr. Schäfer!”. Memories of a historian at his universities in Berlin and Jena. Thuss & van Riesen, Jena 2007, p. 111.
  5. ^ A b Hans-Werner Hahn and Tobias Kaiser: The working group for the history of the bourgeois parties 1962–1990 , p. 1688.
  6. ^ Hans-Werner Hahn and Tobias Kaiser: The working group on the history of the bourgeois parties 1962–1990. A major humanities project. In: Uwe Hossfeld, Tobias Kaiser and Mestrup Heinz (eds.): University in Socialism. Studies at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (1945–1990). Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2007, p. 1691.
  7. ↑ Hans-Werner Hahn and Tobias Kaiser: The working group for the history of the bourgeois parties 1962–1990 , p. 1694 f.
  8. ↑ Hans-Werner Hahn and Tobias Kaiser: The working group for the history of the bourgeois parties 1962–1990, p. 1695.
  9. ↑ Hans-Werner Hahn and Tobias Kaiser: The working group for the history of the bourgeois parties 1962–1990, pp. 1695 f., 1697–1699.
  10. ↑ Hans-Werner Hahn and Tobias Kaiser: The working group for the history of the bourgeois parties 1962–1990 , p. 1701.
  11. ↑ Hans-Werner Hahn and Tobias Kaiser: The working group for the history of the bourgeois parties 1962–1990, p. 1703.
  12. ^ A b Hans-Werner Hahn and Tobias Kaiser: The working group on the history of the bourgeois parties 1962–1990 , p. 1689.
  13. ↑ Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk: Historiography in the dictatorship. On the change in historical science at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena , p. 1668.
  14. ↑ Peter Schäfer: “Write that on Mr. Schäfer!” , P. 111.
personal data
SURNAME Fricke, Dieter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt (Oder)