Erich and Erna Kronauer Foundation

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The Erich and Erna Kronauer Foundation is a dependent foundation based in Schweinfurt . It was founded in 1999 by Erich Kronauer and his wife Erna Kronauer, who died in 2011. The foundation regularly awards a science prize for historians in the old town hall of Schweinfurt and was closely associated with the historian Ernst Nolte (1923–2016) during his lifetime . The awarding of the historian's prize to Stefan Scheil (2014), who emerged with historical revisionist theses and is now a board member, led to a public controversy. Since this honor at the latest, experts have attested the foundation's proximity to the New Right .

organization

Board

The board of the Erich-und-Erna-Kronauer-Stiftung consists of:

Board of Trustees

The six-member board of trustees consists primarily of retired local dignitaries:

Foundation purpose

Erich and Erna Kronauer Foundation is claims to be the " promotion of scientific work of historians or political scientists and sociologists for internal and external relationship of the two great totalitarianisms of the 20th century and the ideology German and European history since the Industrial Revolution ." She " wants to support above all work in the field of modern history that not only follow the often more convenient mainstream or political correctness ".

As a rule, every two years the foundation awards a main prize, endowed with 10,000 euros (originally 20,000 DM), for scientific work and grants for young students.

Historian award

Old town hall of the city of Schweinfurt , place of the award ceremony

The foundation has awarded a historian award since 2000, which went to the following people:

Sponsorship awards

Most of the funding went to doctoral students from the chairs of Eckhard Jesse ( TU Chemnitz ) and Manfred Funke ( University of Bonn ). In 2013, Sebastian Maaß's rejection of his doctorate , who, according to his own account, was a scholarship holder of the Kronauer Foundation from 2010 to 2011, was a science scandal. In the course of the review of the work, even Jesse attested the author right-wing extremist apologetics and unscientificness.

history

General

In December 1999, the Erich and Erna Kronauer Foundation was founded by Erich and his late wife Erna Kronauer in Schweinfurt, Lower Franconia . The founder Erich Kronauer (* 1930) is a former long-time manager at the Schweinfurt automotive supplier Fichtel & Sachs , there in the two-wheeler division, which was sold in 1997. Kronauer is considered a friend of the historian Ernst Nolte , who sparked the historians' dispute. Its historical work gave rise to the establishment of the foundation.

The award ceremony takes place in the old town hall of Schweinfurt. The greeting was given by Mayor Gudrun Grieser ( CSU ) until 2010 , then by her successor Sebastian Remelé (CSU).

Historian Prize (2000–2012)

The historian prize awarded in 2000 went to the Bonn political scientist Volker Kronenberg for the first time . He was awarded for his dissertation Ernst Nolte and the Totalitarian Age - Attempts at Understanding , which was supervised by Hans-Adolf Jacobsen and Klaus Hildebrand from the Institute for Political Science and Sociology in Bonn. The political scientist and contemporary historian Manfred Funke gave the laudation. The foundation's justification stated: "The book is a convincing plea for a frank discussion of open historical questions and against the dictatorship of opinion in science."

In 2001, the Polish historian Bogdan Musiał from the German Historical Institute in Warsaw received the historian's prize in the summer of 1941 for the controversially discussed book Counterrevolutionary elements are to be shot - the brutalization of the German-Soviet war . Jacobsen, who is a member of the Foundation for German-Polish Cooperation , gave the critical laudation.

The 2003 Historians Prize went to Friedrich Pohlmann from the Institute for Sociology at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau for the book Ideology and Terror in National Socialism , which examines the relationship between fascist and communist totalitarianism. According to the keynote speaker Brigitte Seebacher-Brandt, he followed his role model Ernst Nolte in arguments.

Hans-Christof Kraus , Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München , was a prizewinner in 2006. He was honored for his work on conservatism . The laudator was the Nolte student Horst Möller , director of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich.

With Donal O'Sullivan , the 2008 award went to a German-Irish historian teaching in the USA who was honored for Stalin's Cordon Sanitaire . In his celebratory speech, Arnulf Baring confessed to Ernst Nolte with the words "most important colleague [] who has been deprived of public recognition in a miserable manner" . The mayor called the award “nationally perceived”.

In 2010 the publicist Jörg Friedrich received for Der Brand. Germany in the bombing war 1940-1945 the price. His book was controversial as he criticized the late bombing raids on Germany. The FAZ editor Lorenz Jäger gave the laudation.

Ernst Nolte was finally awarded in 2012 for his "extensive scientific and historical-philosophical oeuvre". At first, Arnulf Baring was announced as the keynote speaker; the literary scholar Günter Scholdt spoke instead .

Controversy (2014)

The announcement of the award of the 2014 Historians Prize to the historian Stefan Scheil (speech by Ernst Nolte read out in absentia) sparked controversy in Schweinfurt's local politics, among citizens and in the media. Representatives of the SPD , the trade unions and other organizations organized a counter-event entitled “Schweinfurt against historical falsification - no price for the yesterday”. The historian Wolfgang Benz , professor emeritus and former head of the Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) at the Technical University of Berlin , accused the foundation of a "dubious purpose" at this event and attested that it was close to the New Right .

The Schweinfurt SPD was nominated for its commitment by the SPD federal executive for the SPD-related Wilhelm Dröscher Prize . At the federal party congress in Berlin in December 2015, the district association organized the panel discussion “From the falsification of history to right-wing extremism”, attended by Wolfgang Benz, the Bundestag member Susann Rüthrich , spokeswoman for the working group “Strategies against right-wing extremism”, and the member of the state parliament Kathi Petersen .

Scientific and journalistic criticism of the foundation

In 2010 Friedrich Klein published in Tribüne magazine . Journal for the Understanding of Judaism published a critical article about the foundation. He attested that she, the founder and some of the awardees were close to the New Right .

In the October 2014 issue of the historical journal Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft (ZfG), Wolfgang Benz criticized the purpose of the foundation because, on the one hand, it opposed the "objective, ideology-free presentation of history" to the allegedly "convenient mainstream" of established historical studies and thus suggest that this does not aim at an objective representation. On the other hand, because the foundation attests this objectivity to a historian like Scheil, whose writings aimed to “relativize the German part of the guilt” for the Second World War . In addition, the foundation is running open doors to the political right with its fight against “political correctness” . The fact that Ernst Nolte, an acting member of the Board of Trustees, received the foundation award in 2012 is also remarkable.

The awarding of the prize to Scheil was also the occasion for a statement by Alexander Schmidt , research assistant at the Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg. According to the Schweinfurter Tagblatt , he initially saw the award ceremony as an embarrassing mishap. In fact, this is obviously part of the concept, since "the foundation and benefactors [...] are close to political right-wing extremism ".

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Friedrich Klein: Dubious price (carrier). Jörg Friedrich . In: grandstand. Journal for Understanding of Judaism , 49th vol., H. 154 (2010), pp. 50–54.
  2. ↑ http://www.kronauer-stiftung.de/stifterundvorstand.htm
  3. ↑ a b F & S. Price breaker on the market . In: Reutlinger General-Anzeiger , December 7, 1978, p. 25 ( PDF ); Musial receives historian award . In: Main-Post , October 29, 2001; Gunhild Freese: Manager and Markets . In: Die Zeit , September 28, 1984, No. 40.
  4. ↑ http://www.kronauer-stiftung.de/stifterundvorstand.htm
  5. ↑ a b Kronauer Foundation - The promotion of right-wing conservative historians . In: Antifascist Info Sheet 96/2012.
  6. ^ Ernst Petersen: On the 75th birthday of Wilhelm Böhm . In: Schweinfurter Mainleite , 2 (2004), pp. 2–3 ( PDF ).
  7. ↑ http://www.kronauer-stiftung.de/preistraeger.html
  8. ↑ a b Nolte and the attempt to reach an understanding Historian Prize of the Kronauer Foundation to Bonn political scientist Volker Kronenberg . In: General-Anzeiger , October 16, 2010; Karl-Heinz Körblein: Closer to the aura of science The first prize winner is committed to the highly controversial trigger of the historians' dispute , Ernst Nolte . In: Schweinfurter Tagblatt , October 16, 2000.
  9. ↑ a b Bogdan Musial . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , September 6, 2001, p. 68; Karl-Heinz Körblein: Differentiated arguments and encouragement . In: Schweinfurter Tagblatt , October 29, 2001; Musial receives historian award . In: Main-Post , October 29, 2001.
  10. ↑ a b Manfred Kraus: Aware of one's own seducibility . In: Main-Post , October 13, 2003; Kronauer Foundation: Prize for Friedrich Pohlmann . In: Badische Zeitung , October 13, 2003, p. 1.
  11. ↑ a b Florian Töpper: Prize for "real scholars" . In: Schweinfurter Tagblatt , May 22, 2006.
  12. ↑ a b Understanding the division of Europe . In: Schweinfurter Tagblatt , November 10, 2008.
  13. ↑ a b Jörg Friedrich. Kronauer Foundation Prize . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 18, 2010; Speechless to 600,000 civilian deaths? In: Main-Post , April 19, 2010.
  14. ↑ a b historical thinking . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , June 8, 2012.
  15. ↑ a b Stefan Sauer: Leave out Hitler as a trigger for war . In: Schweinfurter Tagblatt , October 6, 2014; Prize for the preventive war thesis . In: Main-Post , October 6, 2014.
  16. ↑ Kronauer Prize goes to the historian Sean McMeekin. In: mainpost.de. August 2, 2016, accessed September 2, 2016 .
  17. ↑ Historian Prize of the Kronauer Foundation for Jürgen Schneider. In: mainpost.de. January 8, 2019, accessed January 30, 2019 .
  18. ↑ See Sebastian Maaß's XING profile, accessed on December 1, 2014.
  19. ↑ Jens Eumann: "Right-wing extremist doctoral thesis in Chemnitz overturned". The extremism researcher Eckhard Jesse dismissed a doctoral student for unscientific apologetics. . In: Freie Presse , July 13, 2013, p. 4; Kerstin Köditz : Chemnitz Front? . Website from Kerstin Köditz, September 22, 2013.
  20. ↑ Stefan Sauer: “No price for the yesterday”. Alliance against the Kronauer Prize . In: Main-Post , October 1, 2010; Honoring historians divides Schweinfurt . In: Neue Presse , September 11, 2014, p. 3; . Bayerischer Rundfunk , September 10, 2014; Historians award ceremony of the Kronauer Foundation in the town hall hall ( Memento of the original from December 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . schweinfurt.de, September 10, 2014; Thomas Witzgall: Town halls in Lower Franconia are open to right-wing speakers . Right end of the line , October 2, 2014; Hannes Helferich: “Keep the shady things out of the city” . In: Schweinfurter Tagblatt , September 10, 2014; . Bayerischer Rundfunk , October 4, 2014; Wolfgang Siebenbürger, Norbert Steiche:. Bayerischer Rundfunk , September 29, 2014. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.schweinfurt.de
  21. ^ Hannes Helferich: SPD nominated for federal award. Campaign against Scheil . In: Main-Post , November 4, 2015.
  22. ↑ Karl-Heinz Körblein: SPD at the party . In: Main-Post , December 8, 2015.
  23. ↑ Wolfgang Benz : Historical politics of the "New Right": Revisionism contra historical truth. Notes from current events . In: Journal of History . Issue 10/2014, pp. 785–801, here: pp. 785f.
  24. ↑ Hannes Helferich: “Keeping the dubious away from the city” . In: Schweinfurter Tagblatt , September 10, 2014.