Francis L. Carsten

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Francis Ludwig Carsten (born June 25, 1911 in Berlin as Franz Ludwig Carsten ; † June 23, 1998 in London ) was a German-British historian .

After graduating from high school, the son of a Berlin ophthalmologist of Jewish origin studied law in Geneva , Heidelberg and Berlin , where he was able to take the legal traineeship at the Higher Regional Court in May 1933 . Because of the transfer of power to the National Socialists , however, he was prevented from starting his legal clerkship. For the same reason, his older brother Ernst, who received his doctorate in 1932 with his thesis The History of the Public Prosecutor's Office in Germany , was unable to complete his legal traineeship at the Supreme Court. Carsten worked in a bank and ran a bookshop on Kurfürstendamm . He was involved in the resistance organization New Beginning . He worked with Richard Löwenthal , Waldemar von Knoeringen and Fritz Erler . In 1936 the Carsten family emigrated, including their younger sister Marie, who made a career as a biochemist in the USA.

Franz Ludwig Carsten first came to London. From there he finally went to Amsterdam , where he stayed for three years. Carsten began, inspired by Norbert Elias , to deal with German history, especially Prussia. In 1939 he returned to England. There he continued his studies on a scholarship at Wadham College , Oxford . His academic teachers were economic historians George Norman Clark and Michael Postan . In 1942 Carsten received his doctorate in Oxford on the subject of The development of the Manorial System - manorial rule and manor in Northeastern Germany Until the End of the Sixteenth Century . From 1947 to 1960 he was a lecturer at Westfield College of the University of London , where he was Prussia expert argued in a series of essays a name and in 1954 his first book entitled The Origins of Prussia published.

Carsten's subsequent work, Princes and Parliaments, is considered a groundbreaking study. In it, Carsten tried to show that the assemblies of the 15th and early 16th centuries were by no means arch-conservative institutions that stood in the way of absolutist state organization. Even if the egoism of the aristocratic and urban oligarchies that dominated them was strong, they were at the same time defenders of the freedoms of the class elites against the increasing attacks and ambitions of the princes.

In 1961 Carsten was appointed professor at the University of London . There he taught European history and began his research on the role of the Reichswehr in the Weimar Republic . One of his doctoral students was Volker Berghahn . In 1988 he retired. After his retirement there followed biographies of social democratic politicians such as August Bebel and Eduard Bernstein . In 1971 he was elected a member of the British Academy .

Fonts (selection)

  • Resistance to Hitler. The German workers and the Nazis. Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-458-16806-0 .
  • Eduard Bernstein: 1850-1932. A political biography. Beck, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-406-37133-7 .
  • August Bebel and the organization of the masses. Siedler, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-88680-371-6 .
  • History of the Prussian Junkers (= Edition Suhrkamp. New series, vol. 273). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-518-11273-2 .
  • The first Austrian republic as reflected in contemporary sources (= Böhlaus Zeitgeschichtliche Bibliothek. Vol. 8). Böhlau, Vienna et al. 1988, ISBN 3-205-05087-8 .
  • War against war. British and German Radical Movements in the First World War. Batsford, London 1982, ISBN 0-71343697-2 .
  • Fascism in Austria. From Schönerer to Hitler. Fink, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-7705-1480-7 .
  • Revolution in Central Europe: 1918–1919. Temple Smith, London 1972, ISBN 0-85117-015-3 .
  • The creation of Prussia. Translation by Margarethe von Knoop. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1968, ISBN 3-548-35081-X .
  • Princes and Parliaments from the 15th to the 18th century , Clarendon Press, Oxford 1959.

literature

  • Peter Alter : German Historical Institute London. Bulletin. Volume XX, No. Nov. 2, 1998, pp. 124-126 ( online ).
  • Peter Alter: Francis Ludwig Carsten. In: Proceedings of the British Academy. Volume 115, 2002, pp. 119-129.
  • Volker Berghahn : Francis L. Carsten 1911–1998 [obituary]. In: History and Society . 25, 1999, pp. 504-510.
  • Wilhelm Sternfeld , Eva Tiedemann: German Exile Literature 1933-1945. A bio bibliography. Schneider, Heidelberg / Darmstadt 1962.
  • Carsten, Francis Ludwig. In: Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945. Volume 2.1. Saur, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 182.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ The work has been updated by Erardo Cristoforo Rautenberg and appeared in the second edition in 2012 and the third edition in 2015.
  2. ↑ See the family history of Erardo Cristoforo Rautenberg : Ernst Carsten - A forgotten court trainee of Jewish descent. Lecture, held on March 18, 2013. In: Monika Nöhre (Ed.): Destroyed Legal Culture, Lectures in the Berlin Court of Appeal. Berlin 2013, pp. 1–18, here: p. 4 ff.
  3. ^ Carsten, Mary E. In: Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 . Volume 2.1. Saur, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 182.
  4. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed May 12, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Carsten, Francis L.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Carsten, Francis Ludwig; Carsten, Franz Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-British historian
DATE OF BIRTH June 25, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH June 23, 1998
Place of death London