Ernst Engelberg

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Engelberg as an expert in the Globke trial on July 17, 1963

Ernst Engelberg (born April 5, 1909 in Haslach im Kinzigtal , † December 18, 2010 in Berlin ) was a German Marxist historian and university professor .

Life

Life from childhood to return from exile

As the son of the print shop owner and publisher Wilhelm Engelberg (1862–1947) and his wife Therese, b. Aiple, Ernst Engelberg was born into a family in which the democratic and revolutionary traditions of 1848 were still alive. His father founded the SPD local association in Haslach in 1898 . His grandfather Julius Engelberg (1829–1902) had dropped the noble “von” under the impact of the revolution and had become a member of the vigilante group. These family imprints and the experience of childhood and youth, overshadowed by the First World War , post-war chaos and inflation , led Engelberg to join the Communist Youth Association (1928) and the KPD (1930). After studying history, economics , philosophy and law between 1927 and 1934 in Freiburg im Breisgau , Munich and Berlin , among others with Gustav Mayer , he did his doctorate with Hermann Oncken and Fritz Hartung . The subject of the dissertation was German Social Democracy and Bismarck's Social Policy . However, when he submitted the dissertation, Mayer had already been forced into exile. It was one of very few Marxist dissertations in the “Third Reich”.

A few days after the defense, in February 1934, Engelberg was for preparation of high treason by the Nazi regime arrested and sentenced to 18 months prison convicted. After serving his sentence, he fled to Switzerland, where he received a scholarship at the Geneva University Institute for International Studies and a member of the Institute for Social Research a . a. met and worked with Hans Mayer , Hans Kelsen and Max Horkheimer . There he also worked for the Free Germany Movement . Although he had already been assigned to the labor camp, through Horkheimer's mediation he was able to emigrate to Istanbul in 1940 and work there as an academic German teacher (lecturer for German language). Along with Ernst Reuter , with whom he was in contact, he was one of the first to want to return to Germany after 1945. Due to lengthy bureaucratic procedures, Engelberg only succeeded in this in the spring of 1948, when he moved to the Soviet occupation zone . In the same year he joined the SED .

Academic and personal career in the GDR and after the fall of the Wall

After his return, Engelberg was a lecturer in German history at the Brandenburg State University in Potsdam . In 1949 Engelberg became professor for the history of the German labor movement at the University of Leipzig , where he worked with Hans Mayer , Ernst Bloch , Werner Krauss , Wieland Herzfelde , Hermann Budzislawski and Walter Markov, among others . In 1951 he was appointed director of the Institute for German History, which was newly founded there, and focused on researching revolutionary social democracy in the 19th century and its leading figures such as August Bebel , Friedrich Engels and Julius Motteler . Engelberg had been a full professor since March 1953 and was also a member of the university's SED party leadership. In September 1957 he became a professor with a chair. From March 1958 to March 1965 Engelberg was also President of the German Historian Society .

The German Academy of Sciences of the GDR appointed Engelberg as director of the Academy Institute for German History in 1960. In 1961 he was elected a full member of the Academy. From 1969 until his retirement in 1974, after restructuring at the academy, he headed the research center for methodology and history of historical science . During this time his essays on formation theory were written . From 1960 to 1980, Engelberg headed the National Committee of Historians of the GDR as President .

Engelberg became known to the general public through his sensational two-volume Bismarck biography, which appeared simultaneously in Ost (Akademie-Verlag) and West (Siedler). Engelberg was impressed by Bismarck's political realism, his intellectual circumspection and imagination, the seriousness of his foreign policy balancing act, his readiness to recognize the dawn of a new era. Only the world of industry and the working class remained alien to Bismarck.

His students and staff include a. Rolf Weber, Werner Berthold , Heinrich Scheel , Wolfgang Ruge , Ingrid Mittenzwei , Thomas Höhle , Helmut Bock , Konrad Canis , Karl-Heinz Noack and Wolfgang Küttler . From 1967 to 1973 he edited the Jahrbuch für Geschichte , after restructuring the publication, he was a member of the editorial board of the Jahrbuch until 1990.

Engelberg was Vice President of the Leibniz Society for Science in Berlin . After the transformation of the SED, he remained a member of the PDS in 1990 and has been a member of the party's council of elders since 1990 and was a member of the party's Marxist forum . He lived in Berlin with his second wife Waltraut . He is the father of the architect Renate Rauer and the publicist Achim Engelberg . Ernst Engelberg died on December 18, 2010 at the age of 102 in Berlin.

Awards

In 1964 he received the National Prize of the GDR III. 1st class and 1984 1st class for science and technology. In 1974 he was awarded the Gold Patriotic Order of Merit and in 1979 the Karl Marx Order . On October 7, 1989, he was the last scientist to be honored as the Great Scientist of the People .

Fonts

  • Revolutionary politics and red field post 1878–1890. Akademie-Verlag , Berlin 1959.
  • Germany from 1849 to 1871. Berlin 1965.
  • Germany from 1871 to 1897. Berlin 1965.
  • Theory, empiricism and method in historical science. Collected essays, Berlin 1980.
  • Bismarck. Original Prussians and founders of the empire. Berlin 1985.
  • Bismarck. The empire in the middle of Europe. Berlin 1990.
  • The Germans - where we come from. (Ed. By Achim Engelberg), Dietz-Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-320-02170-2 .
  • The Bismarcks. A Prussian family saga from the Middle Ages to the present day. (together with Achim Engelberg), Siedler, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-88680-971-4 .
  • How does what moves us move? Evolution and Revolution in World History. Edited, edited and supplemented by Achim Engelberg. With an introduction by Peter Brandt . Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-515-10270-4 .
  • Bismarck. Storm over Europe. Edited and edited by Achim Engelberg, Siedler, Munich 2014, ISBN 9783827500243 .

As editor

  • In the conflict about the establishment of an empire. A collection of sources on the class struggle in German history from 1849–1871 . VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften , Berlin 1970.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mario Keßler: I'm a 48 democrat . In: Die Zeit , No. 13/1998.
  2. ↑ Stephan Speicher: The grave diggers of the revolution had become their executors . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , December 20, 2010.
  3. ^ Lothar Mertens: Priest of the Klio or court chronicler of the party? Collective biographical analyzes of the GDR historians . 2006, p. 84.
  4. ↑ Dedication: "In memory of my fatherly friends Joseph Belli and Adolf Geck "
personal data
SURNAME Engelberg, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Marxist historian, professor at the University of Leipzig
DATE OF BIRTH April 5, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Haslach in the Kinzigtal
DATE OF DEATH December 18, 2010
Place of death Berlin