Eckart Kehr

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Eckart Kehr (born June 21, 1902 in Brandenburg an der Havel ; † May 29, 1933 in Washington, DC ) was a German historian and political scientist who dealt with the foreign and economic policy of the German Empire in the late 19th century.

family

Eckart Kehr was the fourth child of five children of the privy councilor Dr. Huldreich JW Kehr (1858–1929), who was director of the Brandenburg Knight Academy on the cathedral , and a grandchild of the educator Carl Kehr and a nephew of the medievalist Paul Fridolin Kehr . The mother Minna Kehr (1870–1963), b. Herminghausen, came from the Siegerland . In the summer of 1932, Eckart Kehr and Hanna Herminghausen (1905–1959) married. His wife was a cousin of the maternal line.

Life

Eckart Kehr obtained his Abitur at the Knight's Academy in 1921, and he revolted early on against the discipline at the Landjunkergymnasium. A clear aversion to the Prussian ruling class developed. He studied history, sociology, economics and politics at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin . His most important academic teacher and doctoral supervisor was Friedrich Meinecke , but he also studied with Hans Rothfels and others. Kehr received his doctorate in 1927 with a thesis on battle fleet construction and party politics 1894-1901 , which is considered to be his main work.

“My studies began under the auspices of political history and philosophy. In the course of the course, however, especially during the preparatory work for the Fleet Book, the problem of the influence of pure politics through the economy and the social structure came to the fore, and the investigation of the relationship between the two became the focus of my scientific interests. "

- Eckart Kehr, 1931.

In his dissertation, Kehr dealt with the relationship between foreign and domestic policy in the German Reich. Kehr denied the prevailing view at the time that German foreign policy had primarily reacted to influences from abroad. Rather, it was mainly influenced by differences between the Junkers and the bourgeoisie at home. For example, the building of the fleet had been promoted in order to strengthen capitalism, which was strongly represented politically in the Reichstag . This domestic political development had a strong influence on foreign policy. His teacher Meinecke expressed concerns about Kehr's career prospects because of the then radical thesis:

“[Very] good, very interesting [...] but terribly radical. How can the young man get on if he does not moderate himself? "

- Friedrich Meinecke, 1927.

In numerous essays in the following years, Kehr dealt with the Prussian and German social and constitutional history since the beginning of the 19th century. After its publication in 1930, his dissertation was received very positively internationally (especially by Charles A. Beard , Wladimir Chwostow and Wilhelm Mommsen ), but in Germany there was rejection. An attempt to do a habilitation with Hans Rothfels in Königsberg in 1931 with a thesis on economics and politics in the Prussian reform period , which is considered lost , failed because the leftist Kehr was considered too politically exposed. Kehr applied for the Freiherr-vom-Stein-Preis with the same work : The historical commission at the Reichsarchiv determined the “superior quality” of the work against the objections of Gerhard Ritter and awarded Kehr the prize money, but refused him the actual award Price with reference to the "unorthodox conclusions".

Kehr, who was shaped by the thoughts of Max Weber and Karl Marx , exerted a strong influence on the historian Wolfgang Hallgarten , who was almost the same age , with whom he had a lively correspondence from their first meeting in autumn 1930 until his untimely death, in which the two Marxist-oriented outsiders of the German history of the time strengthened and supported each other.

From 1929 Kehr taught at the German University of Politics in Berlin. The subjects of his lectures and seminars ranged from the 19th century to the Weimar Republic. He applied for a research grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to continue his international comparative studies on the connection between economics and politics , which was granted to him at the end of 1932 through the efforts of Friedrich Meinecke, his uncle Paul F. Kehr and Friedrich Schmidt-Ott . This enabled him to travel to the USA in January 1933, where he first began a short lecture tour. On May 29, Eckart Kehr died in a Washington hospital of heart failure in connection with a congenital heart defect and as a result of exhaustion from the trip to the USA. His ashes were buried in Glückstadt on the Elbe.

effect

Hermann Oncken called Kehr an " enfant terrible " among the German historians of the Weimar Republic. Gerhard Ritter went even further in 1931:

“This gentleman should, it seems to me, rather do his habilitation in Russia than in Konigsberg. Because that's where he belongs, of course: one of the 'noble Bolsheviks' who are very dangerous for our history. "

- Gerhard Ritter to Hermann Oncken, September 24, 1931.

Plans to hand over Kehr's estate, which Charles A. Beard , Walter Dorn and Alfred Vagts had pushed, had to be discontinued after the family resisted. During the time of National Socialism and the post-war period , Kehr was almost completely forgotten in Germany, while in the USA he continued to be received, especially by emigrants such as Alfred Vagts and George WF Hallgarten . Kehr's publications have been taken up again by German historians since the mid-1960s - under the influence of Hans-Ulrich Wehler .

Kehr's historical work on the genesis of the Royal Prussian reserve officer , about the "social system of reaction in Prussia under the Ministry Puttkamer " as well as the coalition of big landowners and heavy industry to Schlachtflottenbau were however already by political scientist Franz Neumann in the chapter The collapse of the Weimar Republic, his Behemoth used.

Fonts

  • Battle Fleet Construction and Party Politics, 1894–1901. Attempt to cross-section the internal political, social and ideological preconditions of German imperialism. At the same time dissertation Berlin 1927. Ebering, Berlin 1930. Reprinted by Kraus Reprint, Vaduz 1965.
  • The primacy of domestic politics. Collected essays on Prussian-German social history in the 19th and 20th centuries . Edited and introduced by Hans-Ulrich Wehler , with a foreword by Hans Herzfeld . De Gruyter, Berlin 1965 a. second, revised edition Berlin 1970
  • Processing: Prussian financial policy 1806–1810. Sources for the administration of the Stein and Altenstein ministries. Edited by Hanna Schissler u. Hans-Ulrich Wehler. With an introduction by Hanna Schissler. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. Göttingen 1984, ISBN 3-525-36181-5 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Wehler: Kehr, Eckart. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie 11 (1977), p. 395 f.
  2. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Wehler: Introduction. In: Eckart Kehr: The primacy of domestic policy. Collected essays on Prussian-German social history in the 19th and 20th centuries . De Gruyter, Berlin 1970², p. 1 u. 19th
  3. ^ Work plan for a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship, December 1931; quoted from: Hans-Ulrich Wehler : Eckart Kehr . 1971, p. 102.
  4. ^ So in a letter by Eckard Kehr to M. Kehr, January 22, 1927; quoted from: Hans-Ulrich Wehler: Eckart Kehr . 1971, p. 103.
  5. ↑ Heiner Karuscheit: The First World War and the Errors of Lenin's Theory of Imperialism , Chapter Conclusion: History and Class Politics ( Memento of the original from August 16, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Communist Debate , November 14, 2003, accessed April 7, 2012. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kommunistische-debatte.de
  6. ↑ The correspondence is published in excerpts in: Joachim Radkau / Imanuel Geiss (eds.): Imperialism in the 20th century. Commemorative publication for George WF Hallgarten . Munich 1976, pp. 265-278. Ibid, p. 268, Kehr ends his letter of December 8, 1931 with the request: "Bite through!"
  7. ^ Letter from the Oncken estate in the Lower Saxony State Archives in Oldenburg, 271-314, No. 462. Quoted from Hans-Ulrich Wehler: Eckart Kehr . 1971, p. 100.
  8. ^ Franz Neumann: Behemoth. Structure and Practice of National Socialism 1933–1944 . Edited and with an afterword by Gert Schäfer. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1988, ISBN 3-596-24306-8 , p. 27 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Kehr, Eckart
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Brandenburg on the Havel
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 1933
Place of death Washington, DC