Erich Keyser
Erich Keyser (born October 12, 1893 in Danzig ; † February 21, 1968 in Marburg an der Lahn ) was a German historian . Keyser was one of the most important historiographers in Gdansk.
Live and act
The main focus of Keyser's interest, namely the history of Danzig and the Weichselland , was already evident in the dissertation presented in Halle (Saale) in 1918, The civil property of the legal city of Danzig in the 14th century . From 1920 he worked in the Danzig State Archives. In 1927 he was entrusted with the management of the State Museum for Danzig History, which was expanded in 1939 to become the Gau Museum for West Prussian History. From 1931 he taught at the Technical University in Danzig as a professor of medieval history, historical auxiliary sciences and German national history. Since the Weimar Republic , but especially during the time of National Socialism , he was engaged as a national politician. He has remained known to the present day as the author of monographs on German urban history, the first of which - Danzig's history - appeared in 1921 and continues to the present day as the German city book .
Keyser was one of the founders of the Historical Commission for East and West Prussian State Research in 1923 . His essay volume The Battle of the Vistula , published in 1926, shows him in the context of Ostforschung in his self-image as a political historian who campaigned in the national struggle after the First World War to revise the Peace Treaty of Versailles with the borderline in the east determined in it. After the "seizure of power" by the National Socialists , Keyser joined the NSDAP in the early summer of 1933. His books on the development of Danzig, West Prussia and the Weichselland mutated after the victorious war over Poland, alongside the works of other authors, in part to justify the violent enforcement of German rule over Polish territory and its population. In his population history of Germany from 1938 (third edition 1943) he explicitly admitted himself to a "decidedly ethnically oriented view of history". His anti-Semitism was already clear in the foreword, where he spoke about the war that "under the influence of Jewish agitation by England and France against the German people" was instigated and "continued together with Bolshevism". In the further text he stated: "The events of 1938 successfully initiated the de-Jewification of the German people's area".
After the Second World War , Keyser's writings in Danzig's past (NSDAP., Gauleitung Danzig-West Prussia, Danzig 1940), the history of the German Weichselland ( Hirzel , Leipzig 1940) and population history of Germany (Hirzel, Leipzig 1943) in the Soviet occupation zone were on the list of those to be segregated Literature set. In the German Democratic Republic , this list was followed by Prussia (Kafemann, Danzig 1929) and Das Werk der Deutschen an der Weichsel (Danziger Verlagsgesellschaft, Danzig 1940).
Keyser taught in Marburg in the post-war period and headed the Historical Commission for East and West Prussian State Research from 1950 to 1965 . Also in 1950 he participated in the establishment of the Herder Research Council and the JG Herder Institute , which he headed until 1959. From 1952 he was co-editor of the journal for Ostforschung . Keyser died in 1968, immediately after the completion of his manuscript on the architectural history of the city of Danzig. The representation is divided into four large sections according to the epochs of the outer history of Danzig: Pomeranian, Order, Hanseatic and Prussian times. He left out the time after 1945. The buildings that he considered to be decisive "documentary evidence of the development of the city of Gdansk" were destroyed.
Michael Burleigh (1988) sees in the reasons given by Keyser in 1952 for the “new German East research” to be carried out by the Herder Institute, the old folkish chauvinism in the reference to new European community vocabulary shines through when Keyser talks about Christianity, which has been imparted to Eastern Europeans for 700 years whose cultural elevation, political order and economic development write.
Fonts
A list of publications appeared in: Ernst Bahr (Hrsg.): Studies on the history of the Prussian country. Festschrift for Erich Keyser on his 70th birthday. Marburg 1963, pp. 505-517.
- The building history of the city of Danzig (= East Central Europe in the past and present. Vol. 14). Published by Ernst Bahr. Böhlau, Cologne 1972.
- Population history of Germany. 3rd, revised and enlarged edition. Hirzel, Leipzig 1943.
literature
- Ernst Bahr: Keyser, Erich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 562 ( digitized version ).
- Michael Burleigh : Germany turns eastwards. A study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1988, ISBN 0-521-35120-0 . Paperback edition Pan MacMillan, New York 2002, ISBN 0-330-48840-6 .
- Alexander Pinwinkler : Erich Keyser. In: Ingo Haar, Michael Fahlbusch (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Völkischen Wissenschaften. People - institutions - research programs - foundations. Saur, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-598-11778-7 , pp. 323-324.
- Alexander Pinwinkler: People, Population, Race, and Space: Erich Keyser's Ambiguous Concept of a German History of Population, approx. 1918–1955. In: Ingo Haar , Michael Fahlbusch (eds.): German scholars and ethnic cleansing: 1919–1945. Berghahn Books, New York 2005, ISBN 1-571-81435-3 , pp. 86-99.
Web links
- Literature by and about Erich Keyser in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Erich Keyser in the German Digital Library
- Publications by and about Erich Keyser at Litdok East Central Europe / Herder Institute (Marburg)
- Culture portal west-east
Remarks
- ^ German city book
- ↑ Alexander Pinwinkler : People, Population, Race, and Space: Erich Keyser's Ambiguous Concept of a German History of Population, approx. 1918–1955. In: Ingo Haar , Michael Fahlbusch (eds.): German scholars and ethnic cleansing: 1919–1945. New York 2005, pp. 86-99. Ingo Haar: Historian under National Socialism. German history and the “national struggle” in the east. Göttingen 2000, p. 137.
- ^ Karen Schönwälder: Historians and Politics. History in National Socialism. Frankfurt am Main 1992, p. 258.
- ↑ Erich Keyser: Population history of Germany. 3. Edition. Hirzel, Leipzig 1943, pp. IV and 578.
- ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet zone of occupation, list of the literature to be separated / German administration for popular education in the Soviet zone of occupation, list of literature to be separated
- ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1953-nslit-k.html
- ↑ See the discussion by Peter Letkemann in: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 24 (1975) pp. 302–304.
- ↑ Erich Keyser: The building history of the city of Danzig. Cologne 1972, p. VI.
- ^ Michael Burleigh: Germany turns eastwards. A study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich. Cambridge 1988, p. 315. Cf. Erich Keyser: The Johann Gottfried Herder Research Council and the Johann Gottfried Herder Institute. In: Zeitschrift für Ostforschung 1 (1952), pp. 101–106, here: p. 102.
personal data | |
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SURNAME | Keyser, Erich |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German historian |
DATE OF BIRTH | October 12, 1893 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Danzig |
DATE OF DEATH | February 21, 1968 |
Place of death | Marburg on the Lahn |