Eckhard Müller-Mertens

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Eckhard Müller-Mertens (born August 28, 1923 in Berlin ; † January 14, 2015 there ) was a German historian . He is considered one of the most important representatives of medieval studies in the GDR . His work on the ruling structures of the medieval German Empire in the 10th and 11th centuries, on feudalism and on Hanseatic history had a considerable influence in the professional world.

Live and act

Eckhard Müller-Mertens came from a communist family . His father was a KPD functionary, his mother a teacher. His parents' marriage failed in 1930. After the “ seizure of power ” in October 1933, his father emigrated to Sweden via Denmark. His mother was dismissed from school that same year because of her former KPD membership. From then on, the family lived in financial need and fear. Müller-Mertens initially completed a commercial apprenticeship from 1939 to 1941. In the Second World War he was a soldier in the Wehrmacht and was used in the naval flak in Norway. He became a British prisoner of war. In 1945 he graduated from high school in Oslo. He did not see the end of the Second World War as a liberation, but perceived the division of Germany since 1949 as a deep injustice. He blamed the Allies and the Federal Republic for this. Müller-Mertens found no critical words about the crimes committed by Germans. He completely ignored the Holocaust .

After the war he initially worked as a railway policeman and studied history, sociology and philosophy at the Humboldt University in Berlin from 1946 to 1951 . Müller-Mertens became a member of the SED . In 1951 he received his doctorate from the Humboldt University in Berlin under Fritz Rörig on the hoof farmers and rulership in Brandenburg villages according to the land book of Charles IV from 1375 . As early as 1952, he gave a lecture on the history of the Middle Ages at Humboldt University. He is one of those Marxist historians who were the first to teach this subject at a university in the GDR. In 1953 he also taught at the Potsdam University of Education . 1956 took place in Berlin with Heinrich Sproemberg and Fritz Hartung the habilitation with a thesis on the history of Brandenburg cities in the Middle Ages. He then taught for four years as a lecturer in Berlin and in 1960 became professor with a teaching assignment for the history of the Middle Ages at Humboldt University. In 1964 he became a full professor. In 1988 he retired. One of his academic students was Wolfgang Huschner . In December 1989, Müller-Mertens left the SED. Müller-Mertens himself stated in the spring of 1993 that he had been internally breaking away from the SED for decades.

Müller-Mertens took part in international historians' congresses in Stockholm in 1960, in Vienna in 1965 and in Moscow in 1970. From 1966 to 2001 he was head of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica department at the Academy of Sciences of the GDR and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences . In 1963 he was elected to the board of the Hanseatic History Association. From 1966 to 1990 he was Heinrich Sproemberg's successor and head of the Hanseatic Working Group of the GDR Historian Society . After the fall of 1989/90, Müller-Mertens campaigned for the Hanseatic Working Group in the GDR to be dissolved after 35 years and reunited with the Hanseatic History Association . Since 1990 Müller-Mertens has been a full member of the Central Management of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. In 1987 he was awarded the National Prize of the GDR III. Class excellent. In 2001 the Monumenta Germaniae Historica honored him with a commemorative publication. In the same year, Müller-Mertens was presented with the gold doctoral certificate at a colloquium.

Müller-Mertens dealt with the structures and functioning of the empire in the 10th and 11th centuries, with the Brandenburg and Berlin regional history of the late Middle Ages and with Charles IV of Luxembourg and Bohemia. Müller-Mertens wrote the fundamental itinerary studies The structure of the empire as reflected in the practice of Otto the Great and integration of the empire as reflected in the practice of Emperor Conrad II. Due to their methodical approach and their reliable results, these works have received great attention and international recognition. Müller-Mertens improved the older method in Königsitinerar research by including not only the whereabouts but also the landscapes and tracking the whereabouts in their duration and sequence from one area to the other. When making the stays, he also took the length of stay into account. To do this, he thought about roads and travel speeds. With the help of his method, he was able to record around 60% of the entire itinerary of Otto I. instead of 3% previously. In his analysis of the structure of the Ottonian Empire, Müller-Mertens distinguished three types of regions: the “central and core landscapes”, the “transit areas” and the “far zones”. According to Carlrichard Brühl , Müller-Mertens provided "an interpretation of the King's itinerary closer to the source" with this new methodological approach and placed the itinerary research on a new basis. Michael Borgolte was critical . He saw in this methodical approach "traits of positivism", which resulted in an "objectivism" from historical materialism . Müller-Mertens' work on Otto I was continued for other rulers by other historians: for Arnulf of Carinthia by Elfie-Marita Eibl, for Otto II by Dirk Alvermann and for Konrad II by Wolfgang Huschner. Müller-Mertens' study on the medieval names of the German Empire (Regnum Teutonicum) , published in 1970, also became fundamental . He was concerned with "how the German conception of the Reich became naturalized, who its bearers and what their motives were to form their conception of the Reich on the German people or to relate the Reich to the German people." Müller-Mertens provided all Evidence for a Regnum Teutonicum together with the result that the name appeared in Italy in the 11th century and then gradually gained acceptance. Especially by Pope Gregory VII the terms German Reich and German King, Reich and King of the Germans were increasingly used in the disputes with Henry IV's universal claim to rule . Regnum Teutonicorum, the imperial denomination of the year 920 in the Salzburg Annals , which are only preserved in a manuscript in the Admont Abbey Library from the middle of the 12th century, Müller-Mertens determined after a detailed analysis that it was “a testimony of more than of dubious originality ”.

Despite his Marxist understanding of the world, his works could not assert themselves in the leading representations of the GDR historical studies. In his autobiographical self-questioning, existence between the fronts. Analytical Memoirs or Report on Weltanschauung and intellectual-political attitudes (2011), Müller-Mertens dealt with his work as a historian in the GDR.

Fonts

A list of publications appeared in: Evamaria Engel, Konrad Fritze, Johannes Schildhauer (eds.): Hansische Stadtgeschichte - Brandenburgische Landesgeschichte (= treatises on trade and social history. Vol. 26). Böhlau, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-7400-0071-6 , pp. 265-269.

  • Charlemagne, Louis the Pious and the Free. Who were the liberi homines of the Carolingian capitularies (742 / 743–832)? A contribution to the social history and social policy of the Franconian Empire. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1963.
  • Regnum Teutonicum. Appearance and spread of the German concept of empire and king in the early Middle Ages (= research on medieval history. Vol. 15). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1970. Also licensed from Böhlau, Vienna et al. 1970, ISBN 3-205-00502-3 .
  • The structure of the empire reflected in the practice of Otto the great. With historiographical prolegomena on the question of the feudal state on German soil, since when is the German feudal state? (= Research on Medieval History. Vol. 25). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1980.
  • together with Wolfgang Huschner : Reich integration as reflected in the rulership practice of Emperor Konrad II (= research on medieval history. Vol. 35). Böhlau, Weimar 1992, ISBN 3-7400-0809-1 .
  • Hansische Arbeitsgemeinschaft 1955 to 1990: Reminiscences and analyzes. Porta-Alba-Verlag, Trier 2011, ISBN 978-3-933701-41-1 .
  • Existence between the fronts. Analytical memoirs or reports on worldview and intellectual-political attitudes. Leipziger Universitäts-Verlag, Leipzig 2011, ISBN 978-3-86583-535-2 .

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Eckhard Müller-Mertens: Existence between the fronts. Analytical memoirs or reports on worldview and intellectual-political attitudes. Leipzig 2011, p. 33ff.
  2. ↑ Eckhard Müller-Mertens: Existence between the fronts. Analytical memoirs or reports on worldview and intellectual-political attitudes. Leipzig 2011, p. 22ff.
  3. ↑ Review by Michael Borgolte in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 8, 2012, No. 33, p. 28.
  4. ↑ Michael Borgolte: Nekrolog Eckhard Müller-Mertens (1923-2015). In: Historical magazine . Vol. 301, 2015, pp. 580-585, here: p. 581.
  5. ↑ Review by Michael Borgolte in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 8, 2012, No. 33, p. 28.
  6. ↑ Eckhard Müller-Mertens: Opening speech and closing remarks to the 35th (last) annual meeting of the Hanseatic Working Group in the GDR, which was also the first all-German historians' meeting after the fall of the wall and borders. In: Hansische Geschichtsblätter 110, 1992, pp. V – IX. Michael Borgolte: Social History of the Middle Ages. A research balance sheet after German reunification. Munich 1996, pp. 25-27.
  7. ↑ Olaf B. Rader (Ed.): Turbata per aequora mundi. Thanks to Eckhard Müller-Mertens. Hanover 2001.
  8. ↑ Michael Borgolte: Continuity and Rebuilding. East Berlin Medievalists after the “Wende”. In: Sven Fund (Ed.) Klaus G. Saur. The Berlin years. Berlin et al. 2009, pp. 55–67, here: p. 59. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  9. ^ Hans-Werner Goetz: Modern Medieval Studies. Status and perspectives of medieval research. Darmstadt 1999, p. 156.
  10. ^ Carlrichard Brühl: The rulers ritinaries. In: Popoli e paesi nella cultura altomedie- vale (Settimane di studio del centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo 29). Spoleto 1985, pp. 615-645, here: p. 625.
  11. ↑ Michael Borgolte: History as a science of reality in the darkness of tradition. In: Göttingische Scholars Ads. 246, 1994, pp. 96-110, esp. 108 f.
  12. ^ Eckhard Müller-Mertens: Regnum Teutonicum. Appearance and spread of the German conception of empire and king in the early Middle Ages. Berlin 1970, p. 8.
  13. ^ Eckhard Müller-Mertens: Regnum Teutonicum. Appearance and spread of the German conception of empire and king in the early Middle Ages. Berlin 1970, esp. Pp. 145-181. Eckhard Müller-Mertens: Roman Empire in the early Middle Ages. Imperial-papal condominate, Salian ruling association. In: Historische Zeitschrift 288, 2009, pp. 51–92, esp. Pp. 88f.
  14. ^ Eckhard Müller-Mertens: Regnum Teutonicum. Appearance and spread of the German conception of empire and king in the early Middle Ages. Berlin 1970, p. 121.
  15. ↑ Eckhard Müller-Mertens: Existence between the fronts. Analytical memoirs or reports on worldview and intellectual-political attitudes. Leipziger Universitäts-Verlag, Leipzig 2011, ISBN 978-3-86583-535-2 . Reviews by Michael Borgolte in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 8, 2012, No. 33, p. 28; Herwig Wolfram in: Mitteilungen des Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 121, 2013, pp. 227–229.
personal data
SURNAME Müller-Mertens, Eckhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian
DATE OF BIRTH August 28, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH January 14, 2015
Place of death Berlin