Egmont Zechlin

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Egmont Zechlin (born June 27, 1896 in Danzig ; † June 23, 1992 in Selent ) was a German historian and university professor .

Live and act

Like his older colleague Friedrich Meinecke, Egmont Zechlin came from a middle-class Prussian-Protestant family. Egmont's father Lothar, like Meinecke, grew up in Salzwedel and had been friends with him since childhood. Egmont Zechlins grandfather Theodor Zechlin had as a local and native historians of the old Hanseatic city and its Altmark made around a name. In his autobiographical work Erlebtes und Erforschtes 1896–1919 (published posthumously 1993), Zechlin describes in detail his extensive family and his turbulent childhood as the son of a military pastor who often had to change his place of residence due to work.

In 1914, at the age of eighteen, Zechlin volunteered for military service. In 1916 he was seriously wounded and lost his left hand. After graduating from high school and again at the front in Macedonia, he finally became a war correspondent for the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung , initially at the main headquarters in Spa. In 1918/19 he experienced the days of revolution and the Spartacus uprising in Berlin.

In 1919 he began to study history, first with Friedrich Meinecke in Berlin and then with Hermann Oncken in Heidelberg , where he received his doctorate in 1922, followed by an assistant position at Oncken. First publications followed, then in 1929 the habilitation in Marburg with the title Bismarck and the foundation of the German great power . In 1931/32 Zechlin received a Rockefeller Fellowship in the USA and East Asia, where he was an eyewitness to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria .

In November 1933, Zechlin signed the German professors' confession of Adolf Hitler . In 1934 he received his first call to the University of Marburg, followed by calls to Hamburg (1936) and Lisbon (1937). In 1939 he became a full professor at the Faculty of Foreign Studies at Berlin University. During this time he specialized more and more in overseas history. Zechlin acted until 1945 as director of the Reich Institute for Sailing Research in the German Sailing Agency ; an institution that was dedicated to the Germanic roots and the military and colonial requirements of “German naval power”. Zechlin had been a member of the NSDAP and SA since 1933 . Nevertheless, after 1945 he was classified as politically “unencumbered” because he could prove contacts to the resistance group of the “ Red Orchestra ”. He also received " Persilscheine " from numerous people . Zechlin was privately friends with opponents of the Nazi regime such as Arvid Harnack and his wife Mildred Harnack .

From 1945 Zechlin lived in Selent (Holstein) and was initially unemployed. In 1947 he received a renewed call to the University of Hamburg , where he became full professor for Medieval and Modern History and Director of the History Department. In addition, he helped set up the Hans Bredow Institute for Radio and Television at the University of Hamburg, which he headed from 1950 to 1967. Zechlin achieved notoriety in the media in 1961 as an expert in the “ Anastasia Trial ” before the Hamburg Higher Regional Court .

Zechlin's main scientific research area was still overseas history, but at the beginning of the sixties he got involved in the famous Fischer controversy , where he became one of the main opponents of his Hamburg colleague Fritz Fischer . As a result of this conflict, numerous works on the First World War were written in the sixties and seventies . In addition, as in the 1930s, he was again interested in the topic of "Bismarck and the founding of the German Empire in 1871". In 1967 Zechlin retired at the age of seventy, but remained scientifically active until his death in 1992.

Zechlin belonged to the Saxonia Tübingen association.

Fonts (selection)

  • Experienced and researched 1896–1919. Edited by Anneliese Zechlin. Muster-Schmidt, Göttingen 1993, ISBN 3-7881-1535-1 .
  • Overseas history. Articles from the years 1935–1964 . For the author's 90th birthday, newly published by Inge Buisson , Günter Moltmann , Klaus-Jürgen Müller and Klaus Saul , Buske, Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-87118-766-6 .
  • War and War Risk. On German politics in the First World War: essays . Droste, Düsseldorf 1979, ISBN 3-7700-0534-1 .
  • with Hans Joachim Bieber: German politics and the Jews in the First World War . Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1969, ( DNB 458717045 ).
  • The German unity movement (= German history , part 3.1.), Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1967 ( DNB 456340017 ).
  • The establishment of an empire (= German history , part 3.2.), Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1967 ( DNB 456340025 ).
  • Maritime world history. Antiquity and Middle Ages , Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1947 ( DNB 455793069 ).
  • Bismarck and the foundation of the German great power , Cotta, Stuttgart 1930 (2nd edition, Wiss. Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1960).
  • Coup plans by Bismarck and Wilhelm II. 1890–1894 , Cotta, Stuttgart 1929.
  • Black, Red, Gold and Black, White and Red in the past and present. Using unpublished files , Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft für Politik und Geschichte, Berlin 1926.

literature

  • Commemorative speeches for Egmont Zechlin, speeches at the academic memorial service on December 16, 1992. Published by the press office of the University of Hamburg , Hamburg 1993 (= Hamburger Universitätsreden , Volume 52).
  • Daniela Frees: Egmont Zechlin (1896–1992). Biographical study of a historian from the German Empire to the end of National Socialism, between academic autonomy and political adaptation. Dissertation , University of Oldenburg , 2004 ( OCLC 802338509 ).
  • Günter Moltmann : Nekrolog Egmont Zechlin 1896–1992. In: Historische Zeitschrift 256 (1993), pp. 831-834.
  • Klaus Saul : Egmont Zechlin 90 years old. In: Uni HH , No. 17/1986, 4, pp. 44 and 46.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Andreas Eckert : From colonial and overseas history to modern non-European history. In: Rainer Nicolaysen / Axel Schildt (eds.): 100 Years of History in Hamburg , Berlin 2010, pp. 83–102, here: p. 91.
  2. ^ Egmont Zechlin: Memories of Arvid and Mildred Harnack. In: History in Science and Education 33 (1982), pp. 395–404.
  3. ^ Association of Old Lüneburgers and Saxony: Directory of addresses , 1969, p. 28.
personal data
SURNAME Zechlin, Egmont
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH June 27, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Danzig
DATE OF DEATH June 23, 1992
Place of death Selent