Ernst Birke (historian)

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Ernst Birke (born April 3, 1908 in Görbersdorf , Waldenburg district , † November 14, 1980 in Marburg ) was a German historian . He belonged to the close circle of employees around Hermann Aubin and can therefore be assigned to the "Breslau School" of Ostforschung . Birke was particularly involved in the Nazi regime and is considered "one of the key figures in the cultural Nazification of Silesia". After the Second World War , he worked at the Marburg Herder Institute from 1955 , and from 1966 he taught as a full professor in Duisburg . He mainly worked on the relationship between France and East Central Europe in the 19th century and on the history of Silesia . He also published popular science illustrated books.

Live and act

Education

Birke's father Bruno worked as a doctor at the Römplerschen Lungenheilanstalt zu Görbersdorf. Ernst Birke studied from 1927 to 1932 at the universities of Breslau , Vienna and Halle . It was in 1933 when Siegfried A. Kaehler in Halle with a thesis on "The problem of nationalities of the Habsburg monarchy in the assessment of the French Slavophile journalism (since 1840)" doctorate . Part of the work appeared in 1934 under the title The First Slavophile Publicists in the Yearbook of the History and Culture of the Slavs . Birch went in 1933 to Wroclaw in order to Hermann Aubin habilitation .

Collaborator of Herman Aubin under National Socialism

In Breslau, Birke worked on Aubin's seminar for historical regional studies, which was converted into an institute in 1937. According to Aubin in 1938, the aim of the institute was "to create a connection between research and political bodies and to make the results of research fruitful for training and practical-political work." This was based on the idea of ​​the "German people's soil" versus foreigners Defending claims and making Silesia one again, according to Aubin in 1936, "the defensive port of the German spirit to the southeast". The conception of an “all-Silesian area” represented by Aubin and his students was less a scientific concept than a historical-political idea, which in the course of the 1930s assumed an increasingly offensive character aimed at changing borders. Aubin valued Birke as one of those rare junior employees who combined “scientific training with political will” and considered the National Socialist Birke “the right adjutant” in the “border struggle”.

As a high school student , Birke had joined the Jungstahlhelm and participated in military sports and labor camps as well as trips to the Bund . As a student, he applied for membership in the NSDAP in November 1931 , which took place on March 1, 1932. Since his father threatened to cut his maintenance and he himself believed, according to his own statements made in 1937, that he “had to disapprove of some things in the movement”, he resigned from the party in November 1932. In May 1933 Birke was again admitted to the NSDAP. He was involved in the SA , as an assistant teacher for the NS student union and, since December 1933, in the Hitler Youth . In January 1934 he became Hitler Youth leader. In June 1935 he joined the SS and was employed with the rank of SS-Untersturmführer for the Breslau head section of the security service of the Reichsführer SS (SD). For the SD, he checked and looked after ethnic German foreign guests and reported on the attitudes and activities of his colleagues in Wroclaw.

Since Birke did not get an assistant position in Breslau, he worked as managing director or training manager of the Silesian regional group of the Federation of German East (BDO). In addition to Herbert Schlenger , he was one of Aubin's employees who was mainly involved in lecturing and training. From February 1936 onwards, Birke was commissioned by the Upper President of the Province of Silesia to compile a description of the national political development of Upper Silesia since the 18th century. With this work he received his habilitation in Breslau in the summer of 1937 . Birke also headed the historical-political working group for Silesian and Polish questions at the seminar or institute, in which students, assistants, doctoral students, project staff and Aubin met regularly to discuss current scientific and political new publications, newspaper articles and the like.

In March 1938 Birke was appointed lecturer in German history in Breslau and was made civil servant in July 1939. He continued to work for the BDO and the SD. From January 1938 he was managing director and from 1940 chairman of the working group for all- Silesian tribal culture and editor of its journal Schlesisches Jahrbuch for German cultural work in the whole of Silesia . He also acted as co-editor of the Schlesische monthly magazine . Appointments to professorships in Göttingen and Königsberg failed in 1939 and 1942, as did a call to a regional history professorship in Graz in 1942 . In 1944 he became a non-official associate professor in Breslau. From 1937 to 1944 Birke was a member of the jury for the Nicolaus Copernicus Prize for Germanness in Poland.

Second World War

In the course of the Munich Agreement in 1938, the smashing of Czechoslovakia and the invasion of Poland in 1939, the circle around Aubin took part in the national political “reorganization of the East” with reports, memoranda and advice to the Silesian High Presidium. Along with Aubin and other members of Aubin's working group and Theodor Schieder, Birke took part in a meeting on September 28, 1939 in which a “memorandum on the East German Reich and People's Frontier” was prepared. The formulation of the deliberations made in Wroclaw was taken over by Theodor Schieder, whose text later became known as the “Scherer Polendenkschrift”. "Population shifts of the greatest magnitude" were called for in order to achieve a "clear distinction between Polish and German nationality". This included a reference to the upcoming task of “de-Judging the rest of Poland”.

Birke was not drafted into the Wehrmacht because it was “unfit for military service”. He stayed in Paris and Prague in the summer of 1939 and 1941 for “research assignments” . He worked on French East Central Europe journalism and later participated in the work of the Reinhard Heydrich Foundation in Prague . Until September 1941 he ran archive studies in the Prague Foreign Ministry. Then he went to Paris on behalf of the Foreign Office in order to sift through loot files from the Versailles negotiations in the French Foreign Ministry until December 1942 . He collected material about France and the national development of East Central Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. Until February 1945 he worked on this subject in Breslau. A corresponding study appeared in 1960 under the title France and East Central Europe in the 19th Century .

After 1945

After the end of the Second World War , Schieder Aubin stopped in 1948 to help Birke to be denazified in Group IV ( fellow travelers ) . For a university career or a closer collaboration, Aubin did not initially want to patronize Birke. Although he believed Birke had an “always humanly impeccable” attitude, Aubin feared that as an employee, Birke could expose new institutions such as the Herder Research Council to a burden due to his National Socialist past . On April 1, 1955, after examining Birke's more recent writings, Aubin agreed to work at the Herder Institute in Marburg. Birke headed the publication department here. From 1957/58 Aubin also campaigned for Birke to be appointed to a West German university. According to the historian Ingo Haar , Aubin only helped Birke to get a job after he had reminded him that he had helped Aubin remove the Jews from the University of Breslau. Before moving to Marburg, Birke's wife Renate had built and managed a bookstore in Waldbröl .

From 1963 to 1965 Birke was the first director of the Gerhart-Hauptmann-Haus in Düsseldorf . In 1966 he became a full professor for regional history, Ostkunde and didactics of history at the Pädagogische Hochschule Ruhr, Dept. Duisburg , since 1972 Duisburg University . In 1974 he retired.

Birch was on the Historical Commission for Silesia . and the Sudetenland active. He was honored with the Gerhart Hauptmann plaque in 1972 by the Kulturwerk Schlesien , for which he had been committed since its foundation .

Fonts

  • The nationality problem of the Danube Monarchy in the assessment of French journalism <since 1840>. Part 1: The first slavophile publicists. Priebatsch, Breslau 1934.
  • The German-Slavic border area as a zone of political-historical idea formation. Trewendt & Granier in Komm., Breslau 1935.
  • The entire Silesian region. , Koenigsberg 1935.
  • New books on Sudeten Germanism. Bund Dt. East, Silesian Regional Group, Breslau 1936.
  • The whole of Germany. , Wroclaw [approx. 1938].
  • The entire Silesian region. Bund Dt. East, Wroclaw 1938.
  • The national development of Upper Silesia until 1860 , Katowice 1938.
  • (Ed.): Silesian yearbook for German cultural work in the entire Silesian area. Wilh. Gottl. Korn, Breslau 1939.
  • The rural German eastern settlement in the Middle Ages. Bund Dt. East, Berlin 1940.
  • Influences of the German intellectual movement from Herder to Hegel on the East. , o. O. [approx. 1943].
  • Herder and the Slavs. In: The castle. Quarterly publication of the Institute for German Ostarbeit in Krakow. 5, 1944, pp. 203-214.
  • Herder and the Slavs. In: Fateful Paths of the German Past. Contributions to the historical interpretation of the last one hundred and fifty years. [Festschrift for Siegfried A. Kaehler]. 1950, pp. 81-102.
  • On the prehistory of the Balkanization of East Central Europe. In: Historical regional studies and universal history. Festgabe for Hermann Aubin on December 23, 1950. 1950, pp. 193–203.
  • The Bergisches Land and the German East (1). West German Verl., Opladen 1951.
  • Inheritance and duty. Diederichs, Düsseldorf, Cologne 1951.
  • Silesia's fate. Little Silesian story. Diederichs, Düsseldorf 1951.
  • The war damage pension according to the Burden Equalization Act. Wegweiser-Verl., Troisdorf (Rhineland) 1952.
  • The East German man in West Germany. Lecture held on d. Rhine. Home day in Trier on June 28, 1952, with e. Appendix on libraries, organizations, research centers, etc. -medium. Signpost extension, Troisdorf / Rheinl. 1953.
  • Basics of the French Ostpolitik 1914-1951. Working group f. Research on Eastern Europe, Göttingen 1953.
  • East Germany in literature 1953. Wegweiserverl., Troisdorf 1953.
  • French Policy on Eastern Europe, 1914-1918. In: Journal for East Research. Countries and Peoples in Eastern Central Europe 3, 1954, pp. 321–359.
  • The all-German task of the adult education center. Lectures. Wegweiser Verl., Troisdorf 1954.
  • Friedrich Wilhelm Graf von Reden, founder of the Silesian mining industry. , Cologne 1955.
  • Karl Scheibler. From the beginnings of the cloth industry in Poland (1854) , Cologne 1955.
  • Ten years in the light of a thousand-year balance sheet. 1945/1955, 955/1955. Kammweg-Verl., Troisdorf 1955.
  • German Silesia. A picture book. 11th edition. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1956.
  • East Germany in class. Lectures given on d. 1. Ostdt. Class conference d. Landes Nordrh.-Westf. in St. Georgsheim in Düsseldorf-Hassels, July 1955. Wegweiserverl., Troisdorf / Rheinl. 1956.
  • with Herbert Hupka (Ed.): The Oder. A German stream. Gräfe and Unzer, Munich 1957.
  • The new Europe in TG Masaryk's war memorials 1914 to 1918. In: On the history and problems of democracy. Ceremony for Hans Herzfeld on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday on June 22, 1957. 1958, pp. 551–575.
  • (Ed.): The Giant Mountains and Jizera Mountains in 144 pictures. Rautenberg, Leer (Ostfriesl.) 1958.
  • The Waldenburger and Glatzer Bergland in 144 pictures. (Landeshut, Schömberg, Grüssau, Waldenburg, Neurode, Braunau, the Silesian Valley, owl, Heuscheuer, Mense, Adler, Reichensteiner and Glatzer snow mountains, Habelschwerdt, Glatz etc.). Rautenberg, Leer (East Frisia) 1959.
  • and Rudolf Neumann (ed.): The Sovietization of East Central Europe. Investigations into their process in the individual countries. Metzner, Frankfurt / M. 1959.
  • France and East Central Europe in the 19th century. Contributions to politics and intellectual history. Böhlau Verl., Cologne, Graz 1960.
  • and Kurt Oberdorffer (Ed.): The Bohemian Constitutional Law in the German-Czech Disputes of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Elwert, Marburg / L. 1960.
  • The allied struggle for the concession of an Upper Silesian referendum. , [Sl] 1961.
  • (Ed.): Central Silesia in 144 pictures. (from the districts of Schweidnitz, Reichenbach, Frankenstein, Strehlen, Brieg, Ohlau, Breslau-Land, Neumarkt, Wohlau, Guhrau, Militsch, Gross Wartenberg, Namslau, Oels and Trebnitz). Rautenberg, Leer (East Frisia) 1961.
  • (Ed.): Silesia - a German country. Landsmannschaft Schlesien Nieder- u. Upper Silesia District Group Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf 1962.
  • German-Polish encounters. A school radio series by Westdeutscher Rundfunk. West German Broadcasting Press Office, Cologne 1963.
  • The displacement of the Germans from the European East. In: Achievement and Fate. Treatises and reports on the Germans in the East. 1967, pp. 341-364.
  • Silesia. In: The Germans and their Eastern Neighbors. A manual. 1967, pp. 206-223.
  • The Braunauer Land. A home book of the Braunauer Ländchen, the Adersbach-Wekelsdorfer and Starkstädter area. Home district Braunau / Sudetenland, Forchheim 1971.

literature

  • Ingo Haar : Historian under National Socialism. German history and the “Volkstumskampf” in the East (= critical studies on history . Vol. 143). 2nd, revised and improved edition. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-525-35942-X (also: Halle, University, dissertation, 1998).
  • Eduard Mühle : For the people and the German East. The historian Hermann Aubin and the German Ostforschung (= writings of the Federal Archives. Volume 65). Droste, Düsseldorf 2005, ISBN 3-7700-1619-X .

Honors

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tobias Weger : Between Pan-German fantasies and Sudeten German connection plans - the 'all-Silesian' idea of ​​the 1920s and 1930s. In: Marek Adamski, Wojciech Kunicki (ed.): Silesia as a literary province. Literature between regionalism and universalism. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2008, pp. 91–101, here: p. 99.
  2. ^ Eduard Mühle : For the people and the German East. The historian Hermann Aubin and German Ostforschung. Univ., Habil.-Schr., Marburg 2004, Droste, Düsseldorf 2005, ISBN 3-7700-1619-X , p. 239.
  3. ^ Eduard Mühle: For the people and the German East. The historian Hermann Aubin and German Ostforschung. Univ., Habil.-Schr., Marburg 2004, Droste, Düsseldorf 2005, ISBN 3-7700-1619-X , p. 237.
  4. ^ Eduard Mühle: For the people and the German East. The historian Hermann Aubin and German Ostforschung. Univ., Habil.-Schr., Marburg 2004, Droste, Düsseldorf 2005, ISBN 3-7700-1619-X , pp. 577-579.
  5. ^ Eduard Mühle: For the people and the German East. The historian Hermann Aubin and German Ostforschung. Univ., Habil.-Schr., Marburg 2004, Droste, Düsseldorf 2005, ISBN 3-7700-1619-X , p. 246 f.
  6. ^ Eduard Mühle: For the people and the German East. The historian Hermann Aubin and German Ostforschung. Univ., Habil.-Schr., Marburg 2004, Droste, Düsseldorf 2005, ISBN 3-7700-1619-X , p. 245.
  7. ↑ The memoranda and reports could not yet be determined in detail (as of 2005). Eduard Mühle: For the people and the German East. The historian Hermann Aubin and German Ostforschung. Univ., Habil.-Schr., Marburg 2004, Droste, Düsseldorf 2005, ISBN 3-7700-1619-X , p. 363 f.
  8. ↑ Angelika Ebbinghaus , Karl Heinz Roth : Forerunner of the “General Plan East”. A documentation about Theodor Schierer's Polendenkschrift from October 7, 1939. In: 1999 - Journal for Social History of the 20th and 21st Century. Vol. 7, 1992, pp. 62-94.
  9. ^ Eduard Mühle: For the people and the German East. The historian Hermann Aubin and German Ostforschung. Univ., Habil.-Schr., Marburg 2004, Droste, Düsseldorf 2005, ISBN 3-7700-1619-X , pp. 372-375, here p. 375.
  10. ^ Eduard Mühle: For the people and the German East. The historian Hermann Aubin and German Ostforschung. Univ., Habil.-Schr., Marburg 2004, Droste, Düsseldorf 2005, ISBN 3-7700-1619-X , pp. 372-375, here pp. 248 f.
  11. ↑ Thomas Etzemüller: social history as a political story. Werner Conze and the reorientation of West German history after 1945. Oldenbourg, Munich 2001, ISBN 9783486565812 , p. 45.
  12. ^ Eduard Mühle: For the people and the German East. The historian Hermann Aubin and German Ostforschung. Univ., Habil.-Schr., Marburg 2004, Droste, Düsseldorf 2005, ISBN 3-7700-1619-X , p. 442 f.
  13. ^ Eduard Mühle: For the people and the German East. The historian Hermann Aubin and German Ostforschung. Univ., Habil.-Schr., Marburg 2004, Droste, Düsseldorf 2005, ISBN 3-7700-1619-X , p. 443.
  14. ↑ Ingo Haar: No willingness to learn. Eduard Mühle on the historian Hermann Aubin. In Süddeutsche Zeitung , November 22, 2005, p. 16.
  15. ^ Fifty Years of the Historical Commission for Silesia . In: Yearbook of the Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Breslau , Volume 17, 1972, p. 413.
personal data
SURNAME Birch, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian
DATE OF BIRTH April 3, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Görbersdorf
DATE OF DEATH November 14, 1980
Place of death Marburg