Eric Hobsbawm

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93-year-old Eric Hobsbawm at the literature festival in the Welsh book village of Hay-on-Wye , May 2011

Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm ( CH ; born June 9, 1917 in Alexandria , Sultanate of Egypt ; † October 1, 2012 in London ) was a Marxist- oriented British universal historian with a focus on social and economic history . He became known worldwide with his three-volume work on the history of the “ long 19th century ” and the supplementary volume on the “ short 20th century ” as well as with reflections on invented tradition and studies of the labor movement . Critics accuse him of distancing himself too late and too little from Stalinism .

Life

Family background and birth in Alexandria

Eric Hobsbawm came from a Jewish family. He was the son of the British colonial official Percy Hobsbaum and the Viennese merchant's daughter Nelly Grün. The grandparents, David and Rose Obstbaum, born in the 1840s, had immigrated to England from Warsaw , the family name being written with H as Hobsbaum . As the couple belonged to opposing warring factions in the First World War, the parents' wedding took place at the British consulate in Zurich , with the approval of the British Foreign Minister Sir Edward Gray . Since the couple could not live in any of the warring countries, the Hobsbaums traveled to Alexandria, where they had met in 1913.

After Eric's birth, both birthday and surname were recorded incorrectly in the British consulate there - as Hobsbawm .

Childhood and youth in Vienna and Berlin

After the war ended, the young family moved to Vienna , where Eric Hobsbawm spent his childhood in the Villa Seutter and attended elementary school. At the age of about ten he consciously took up politics for the first time, he particularly remembered the fire in the Vienna Palace of Justice and a conversation between two women about Leon Trotsky .

After the early death of his father after a heart attack in 1929 and his mother from tuberculosis in 1931, he moved with his younger sister Nancy to live with an uncle in Berlin for two years . He describes these two years as the decisive phase in his life. As a student at the Prinz-Heinrich-Gymnasium in Schöneberg, he became a member of the Socialist Student Union, a sub-organization of the KPD , and was involved in the magazine Schulkampf . He started reading Marx and became a communist. A memorable moment of this time was when, on his way home from school at Berlin-Halensee train station in 1933, he saw the headline in a newspaper about Hitler's appointment as Reich Chancellor.

Studied in Great Britain, World War II

The uncle moved to Edgware in England in 1934 for professional reasons , 17-year-old Hobsbawm and his sister with him. At this time he first heard jazz music , which he later, like many other subjects, treated literary. After attending public school, he studied history on a scholarship from 1936 to 1939 at King's College , Cambridge and became a member of the Cambridge Apostles . He met communists at this time and became a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1936 . After 1975 he was considered one of the masterminds of their Eurocommunist wing. In the mid-1930s, he and many of his communist friends and colleagues were still convinced that capitalism was about to collapse.

After the outbreak of World War II , he volunteered for the military intelligence service , but was not accepted because of his political views. After all, he served in a sapper division . This was the time when his deep bond with the English working class arose. After the end of the war, Hobsbawm returned to Cambridge and decided to make the history of Fabianism his doctoral thesis instead of the North African agrarian reform .

According to documents published in October 2014, Hobsbawm was targeted by the British secret services MI5 and MI6 from 1942 onwards because of his initially only presumed membership in the Communist Party . This monitored him even after the end of the Second World War and prevented both a use of Hobsbawms as a foreign policy advisor to the government during the war and a later appointment to the University of Cambridge . Until his death he was to be denied access to the files of the secret service.

Working as a historian

1947 Hobsbawm took his first teaching at Birkbeck College of the University of London on. In 1948 he published his first work, Labor's Turning Point , which evaluates documents from the time of Fabianism.

From 1946 Hobsbawm was also involved in the lead of the Communist Party Historians Group . It included numerous well-known historians of the British post-war period, including Christopher Hill and EP Thompson . Due to the attitude of the British Communist Party to suppressing the Hungarian uprising, many historians of the group left the party in 1956. Hobsbawm criticized the party's attitude as he was later to do several times, but always remained a party member. His works were not published in the Soviet Union. In the yearbook for economic history appearing in the GDR Hobsbawm was able to publish repeatedly, in the imprint he was named for years as an "advisory employee".

Hobsbawm presented his first large and important work in 1959 with Primitive Rebels (similar to 1969 Bandits , which appeared in a new edition in 1999). The essay collection Laboring Men appeared in 1964 (on the same subject in 1984 in Worlds of Labor ) and in 1968 the work Industry and Empire . As early as 1962 he published the first part of his central four-part work, The Age of ... , namely The Age of Revolutions . The other three parts appeared in 1975 ( The Age of Capital ), 1987 ( The Age of Empire ) and 1994 ( The Age of Extremes ).

Analysis of the present

After his reputation as a historian was established, his reflections on the current situation also gained importance. In 1978 he asked in an article ( The Forward March of Labor Halted? ) Whether the labor movement as a political force was on the retreat and to what extent it was still a revolutionary subject in the classical sense, which was a lively debate in the Communist Party triggered. As one of its most important intellectuals, he remained a member until it dissolved after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. While Hobsbawm barely made a name for himself in the CPGB, he repeatedly intervened in the fierce wing battles that were fought in the Labor Party after the election defeats of 1979 and 1983. Meaning acquired its opinions in favor of - as distinct from the left hard to Tony Benn called - soft left to Neil Kinnock , as his "favorite Marxist" Hobsbawm in the 80s was called ironically. Most recently he devoted himself to the global economic crisis that broke out in 2007/2008, which for him could end in tragedy if the relationship between the state and the market is not regulated anew.

University career

From 1947 Hobsbawm worked at the university, but initially exposed to resistance due to his Marxist orientation. From 1971 until his retirement in 1982 he held a professorship for economic and social history at the University of London . Numerous visiting professorships have taken him to Stanford University , the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, among others . From 1984 he held the Chair of Politics and Society at the New School for Social Research in New York.

family

In 1943, Hobsbawm married his first wife, Muriel Seaman, from whom he divorced in 1951. He had a relationship during the 1950s that resulted in his first son. In 1962 he married Marlene Schwarz and had a daughter and a son with her. Eric Hobsbawm left behind his wife Marlene, his three children, seven grandchildren and one great-grandson.

Late years and death

Eric Hobsbawm's grave in Highgate Cemetery , London

From the 1980s and especially the 1990s, Hobsbawm was widely recognized as a historian in politics and science. Tony Blair made him a Companion of Honor in 1998 , and many other honorary degrees followed. During this time, Hobsbawm published, among other things, Uncommon People (1998) and his autobiography Interesting Times (2002). In 2007 the book Globalization, Democracy and Terrorism was published. His last published work was an anthology of essays, published in 2011, in which the relevance of Marx's theory is emphasized ( How to Change the World: Tales of Marx and Marxism ).

His mobility was severely restricted by a fall in 2010. Eric Hobsbawm died of pneumonia on October 1, 2012 at London's Royal Free Hospital. His death met with wide media coverage.

criticism

Hobsbawm's reflection on Stalinism has been repeatedly criticized as "uncritical". He answered yes to the question of whether the success of communism and the achievement of a bright future ("radiant tomorrow") could have justified the millions of deaths of Stalinism . Even after Stalin's death, Hobsbawm defended the Soviet Union and communist regimes as well as the role of the communists in the Spanish Civil War . Critics have therefore called him a “ useful idiot ” for the communist rulers.

plant

Hobsbawm dedicated himself particularly to the period from 1789 to 1914, to which he dedicated his own trilogy (The Long 19th Century ) :

  • The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848 (European Revolutions: 1789-1848), 1962
  • The Age of Capital: 1848–1875 . A cultural history of the years 1848–1875, 1975
  • The Age of Empire 1875-1914 ( The Age of Empire 1875-1914), 1987.

In connection with this, Hobsbawm turned his interest to the development of the labor movement , the rising nationalist ideologies and the various forms of social revolt. Best known was his analysis of the " short 20th century " ( The Age of Extremes: A History of the World 1914-1991 - German as: The Age of Extreme: World History of the 20th Century 1914-1991 ).

On the labor movement he published 35 essays ("Studies in the History of Labor") in two volumes: Laboring Men and Worlds of Labor . The spectrum encompasses treatises on machine attackers , labor aristocracy , class consciousness , working class culture , the relationship between socialism and religion, the labor movement and human rights, as well as chapters on the development of trade union organization.

For the international discussion of dealing with history was especially influence of Hobsbawm along with Terence Ranger , introduced the concept of " invented tradition " ( invention of tradition ). "Invented traditions" are historical fictions that suggest that something has "always been" an element of one's own history. A striking example is the so-called tartan skirt , an invention of the late 18th century that was traced back to allegedly Celtic roots in the 19th century. The modern Olympic Games can also serve as an example, especially since Hobsbawm also dealt with invented traditions in sport.

In The Age of Extremes , another trilogy (in one volume) that Hobsbawm started with the beginning of World War I and ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union , he interpreted the “short 20th century”. The subdivision into three epochs includes the “catastrophe age” (1914 to 1945) with the two world wars, the horrors of the great dictatorships and the world economic crisis, then the “golden age” of the reconstruction period, which brought full employment, economic growth and prosperity for many (1945 until the mid-seventies). The third period is called Hobsbawm the "landslide" ( landslide ).

In his autobiography Interesting Times , Hobsbawm presents the personal and family roots of his commitment with unreserved honesty.

In his book Unusual People ( English Uncommon People ) he described "resistance, rebellion and jazz". The subjects of the individual essays range from Thomas Paine to the history of May Day to May 1968 and Billie Holiday .

Hobsbawm also published in numerous magazines, including the Vienna Diary, which existed until 1989 and has been Eurocommunist since the late 1960s . In addition to his academic and historical work, Eric Hobsbawm also published jazz reviews in New Statesman magazine in the 1950s . These reviews appeared, as well as his book The Jazz Scene , published in 1959 , under the pseudonym Francis Newton , which is based on the name of the American jazz trumpeter Frankie Newton .

Awards

Fonts

  • The jazz scene. Faber & Faber, London 2014, ISBN 0571320104 (first in 1959 under the pseudonym Francis Newton).
  • Primitive rebels. Studies in archaic forms of social movement in the 19th and 20th centuries. 1959.
    • German edition: Social rebels. Archaic social movements in the 19th and 20th centuries. Translated by Renate Müller-Isenberg and C. Barry Hyams. Luchterhand, Neuwied / Berlin 1962; Focus, Giessen 1979, ISBN 3-88349-202-7 .
  • The Age of Revolution. Europe 1789-1848. 1962, ISBN 0-349-10484-0 .
    • German edition: European Revolutions. 1789 to 1848. Translated by Boris Goldenberg. Kindler, Zurich 1962; again 1978, ISBN 3-463-13715-1 .
  • Laboring Men. Studies in the History of Labor. Weidenfels and Nicolson, London 1964 (numerous reprints).
  • Industry and Empire. 1968.
    • German edition: Industry and Empire. British economic history since 1750. 2 volumes, translated by Ursula Margetts. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1969.
  • Bandits. 1969.
    • German edition: Die Banditen. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1972, ISBN 3-518-06566-1 ; New edition under the title Die Banditen. Robbers as social rebels , translated by Rudolf Weys and Andreas Wirthensohn. Hanser, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-446-20941-1 .
  • Revolutionaries. Contemporary essays. 1973.
    • German edition: Revolution and revolt. Essays on Communism, Anarchism and Revolution in the 20th Century. Translated by Irmela Rütters and Rainer Wirtz. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1977, ISBN 3-518-07433-4 .
  • The Age of Capital. 1848-1875. 1975, ISBN 0-349-10480-8 .
    • German edition: The heyday of capital. A cultural history from 1848–1875. Translated by Johann George Scheffner. Kindler, Munich, ISBN 3-463-00694-4 ; Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt 1980, ISBN 3-596-26404-9 .
  • with Giorgio Napolitano : On the way to historical compromise. A conversation about the development and programming of the KPI. Translated by Sophie G. Alf. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1977, ISBN 3-518-00851-X .
  • The Forward March of Labor Halted? (PDF; 117 kB). In: Marxism Today . September 1978, pp. 279-286.
  • Worlds of Labor. Further Studies on the History of Labor. Weidenfels and Nicolson, London 1984.
  • The Age of Empire. 1987.
  • Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Program, myth, reality. 1990.
  • Age of Extremes. The short twentieth century 1914-1991. 1994.
    • German edition: The age of extremes. World history of the 20th century. Translated by Yvonne Badal. Hanser, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-446-16021-3 ; dtv, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-423-30657-2 .
  • On history. 1997 (lectures, speeches, essays and reviews on the science of history).
  • Uncommon People. Resistance, rebellion and jazz. 1998.
    • German edition: Unusual people. About resistance, rebellion and jazz. Translated by Thorsten Schmidt. Hanser, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-446-19761-3 ; dtv, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-423-30873-7 .
  • The face of the 21st century. A conversation with Antonio Polito. Translated by Udo Rennert. Hanser, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-446-19761-3 ; dtv, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-423-30844-3 .
  • Interesting Times. A twentieth-century life. 2002 (autobiography).
  • Globalization, Democracy and Terrorism. 2007 (collection of articles).
    • German edition: Globalization, Democracy and Terrorism. Translated by Andreas Wirthensohn. dtv, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-423-24769-6 .
  • Art and culture at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. Picus, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-85452-361-1 .
  • Between worlds and transition times. Interventions and requests to speak. Edited by Friedrich-Martin Balzer and Georg Fülberth. PapyRossa, Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-89438-405-0 (lists more than 100 publications by Eric Hobsbawm in German or German translation).
  • Ways of Social History. Address on the occasion of the award of the third Bochum Historian Prize (= writings of the library of the Ruhr area. Vol. 28). Klartext, Bochum 2009, ISBN 978-3-8375-0229-9 .
  • How to change the world: Tales of Marx and Marxism. Little, Brown, London 2011.
    • German edition: How to change the world: About Marx and Marxism. Translated by Thomas Atzert and Andreas Wirthensohn. Carl Hanser, Munich 2012, (hardcover: ISBN 978-3-446-24000-1 ) and 2014 (paperback: ISBN 978-3423348126 ).

literature

  • Matthias Middell: Eric Hobsbawm (* 1917) . In: Lutz Raphael (Hrsg.): Classics of the science of history . Vol. 2: From Fernad Braudel to Natalie Z. Davis , Munich 2006, pp. 96–119.
  • Jesús Casquete: A historian becomes history: On the death of Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012). In: Journal of History . Vol. 60, 2012, pp. 1038-1039.
  • Thomas Welskopp : "We dream into the future". Obituary for Eric J. Hobsbawm (July 9, 1917 - October 1, 2012). In: History and Society . Vol. 39, 2013, pp. 116-124.
  • Thomas Welskopp: Eric J. Hobsbawm: Historian in the "Age of Extremes". In: Eric J. Hobsbawm: Ways of Social History. Address on the occasion of the award of the third Bochum Historian Prize (= writings of the library of the Ruhr area. Vol. 28). Klartext, Bochum 2009, ISBN 978-3-8375-0229-9 , pp. 15-21.
  • Andreas Linsenmann, Thorsten Hindrichs (eds.): Hobsbawm, Newton and Jazz. On the relationship between music and historiography. Schöningh, Paderborn 2017, ISBN 978-3-506-78295-3 .
  • Richard J. Evans : Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History . London 2019. ISBN 978-1-4087-0742-5 .
  • Richard J. Evans: Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm, 1917–2012 . In: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy . tape XIV , 2015, p. 207-260 ( thebritishacademy.ac.uk [PDF]).

Web links

Commons : Eric Hobsbawm  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "David and Rose Obstbaum, who first landed in London in the 1870s and doubtless acquired the initial H of their name from a Cockney immigration officer, were dead." Eric J. Hobsbawm: Interesting Times. A Twentieth Century Life . Random House, 2002, ISBN 0-375-42234-X , p. 89.
  2. ↑ Eric J. Hobsbawm: Interesting Times. A Twentieth Century Life . Random House, 2002, ISBN 0-375-42234-X .
  3. ↑ "in Alexandria, where I was born in June 1917, to have my presence registered by a clerk at the British Consulate (incorrectly, for they got the date wrong and misspelled the surname)". Eric J. Hobsbawm: Interesting Times. A Twentieth Century Life . Random House, 2002, ISBN 0-375-42234-X , p. 2.
  4. ↑ See Eric Hobsbawm: Dangerous Times. A life in the 20th century , Munich 2003.
  5. ^ Spiegel.de: Century witness Hobsbawm: "I am a travel guide to history" (accessed on December 11, 2014)
  6. ^ Markus Kompa: Public enemy scientist . Telepolis, October 27, 2014, accessed the same day
  7. ↑ Legendary Historian: Eric Hobsbawm is Dead , Spiegel Online , October 1, 2012.
  8. ↑ See the obituaries: Alexander Cammann: Eric Hobsbawm - An anti-specialist in a world full of specialists , Die Zeit , October 1, 2012; Retrieved April 27, 2013. Mara Delius: Eric Hobsbawm - A Fossil from the Depth of the Twentieth Century , Die Welt , October 1, 2012; accessed April 27, 2013. Carsten Volkery: To the death of Eric Hobsbawms - The man who wrote history with Marx , Der Spiegel , October 1, 2012; accessed April 27, 2013.
  9. ^ Bill Jamieson: Lessons of the Russian Revolution. In: The Scotsman , February 2, 2017 (English); John Phelan: The life and death of Eric Hobsbawm. In: The Commentator , October 2, 2012 (English).
  10. ↑ Michael Burleigh: Eric Hobsbawm: A believer in the Red utopia to the very end. In: The Daily Telegraph , October 1, 2012.
  11. ^ John Stevens: Eric Hobsbawm leaves £ 1.8million estate in his will. In: Daily Mail , January 10, 2014 (English).
  12. ^ Arnd Krüger : The History of the Olympic Winter Games. The Invention of a Tradition. In: Matti Goksör, Gerd von der Lippe, Kristian Mo (Hrsg.): Winter Games - Warm Traditions. Oslo: Norsk Idrettshistorisk Vörening 1996, pp. 101-122.
  13. ↑ See the review in Economy and Society No. 2/2002 http://wug.akwien.at/WUG_Archiv/2004_30_2/2004_30_2_0307.pdf
  14. ↑ Eric Hobsbawm: Diary in: London Review of Books , Vol. 32, No. 10, May 27, 2010 (English).
  15. ^ Review in the NZZ , November 10, 2007.
  16. ^ Review by Hans-Ulrich Wehler , Deutschlandradio , 2003; Review in Kultura Extra, 2003 (with explanations on the origin of the family name).
  17. ↑ Review by Achim Engelberg : Interpret to change. In: Sheets for German and international politics . Issue 9, 2012, pp. 119–122.
  18. ↑ Review by Dieter Glawischnig in Konkret , March 2017, p. 49; Review by Wolfram Knauer .
  19. ↑ Review by Gil Shohat on H-Soz-Kult . Retrieved July 27, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Hobsbawm, Eric
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hobsbawm, Eric John Ernest (full name); Hobsbaum, Eric; Hobsbawm, Eric
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British historian
DATE OF BIRTH June 9, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Alexandria
DATE OF DEATH October 1, 2012
Place of death London