Franz Petri

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Franz Petri (born February 22, 1903 in Wolfenbüttel , † March 8, 1993 in Münster ) was a German historian . He mainly dealt with regional historical topics ( Rhineland , Westphalia , Netherlands ). He played a key role in determining National Socialist research on the West .

Live and act

Franz Petri attended high school in Wolfenbüttel . He then studied history, German literature, philosophy and Protestant theology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin from 1921 to 1925 . He completed his studies in 1925 with a doctorate under Dietrich Schäfer as Dr. phil. from. From 1926 he worked at the Institute for Regional Studies of the Rhineland at the University of Bonn .

National Socialism

In 1937 Petri was admitted to the NSDAP after the four-year ban on membership . He had already joined the SA beforehand - by 1936 at the latest . He was a member of the NSDDB, the Reichsdozentenschaft and the German Academy in Munich. In 1936 he completed his habilitation at the University of Cologne . In his post-doctoral thesis “Germanic Folk Heritage in Wallonia and Northern France ” he argued that large parts of northern France were Germanic cultural areas. He was the founder of the Nazi-influenced German-Flemish Working Group De Vlag . In the following years, Petri rose to become one of the leading representatives of regional research on the West. Petri worked as a private lecturer in Cologne until 1942. He was appointed professor in 1942. Petri published numerous writings mainly on Dutch history as well as on Rhenish and Westphalian regional history and folklore. He was an influential researcher of folk and cultural areas and a specialist in field and field name research during this time.

In addition to his academic teaching, since 1940 he was cultural advisor in the rank of war administrator in the German military administration in occupied Belgium and northern France. There he was considered the National Socialist "pope of culture". He saw to it that almost a hundred Belgian, especially Jewish, scientists were dismissed and replaced by Germans. His participation in an irredentist series of events at the Nazi Reich University of Strasbourg is documented for the winter of 1943/44 . He gave a lecture at an event organized by the “Lorraine Institute for Regional and Folk Research” on the Germanic-Romance language and ethnic border with the aim of permanently integrating areas with German speakers into the Reich. In this row he worked alongside the supporter of the Breton Autonomists and RSHA employee Leo Weisgerber . At the same time he was a full professor of Dutch history in Cologne from 1942 to 1945.

evaluation

After the end of the Nazi regime, Petri was dismissed from the public service, arrested and interned as heavily burdened by the British military government. Initially classified as a follower in category IV in the denazification process, the verdict “fully exonerated” (category V) followed. The reason given was that he only acquired his membership in Nazi organizations under “official pressure”, but was not politically active. He did not represent National Socialist ideas in his academic work. Historians who reviewed National Socialist research on the West, on the other hand, came to the conclusion that Petri considered and described himself as an innocent, hard-working scientist. But it is easy to show that he represented the spatial and population policy goals of the SS in Belgium. He acted as an SS supporter and propagated racism and anti-Semitism.

Activity in the post-war period and in the Federal Republic

After his release he was involved in various scientific projects. From 1951 he was director of the Provincial Institute for Westphalian Regional Studies and Folklore of the Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe , based in Münster . Also in 1951 he was elected a full member of the Historical Commission for Westphalia , then an honorary member in 1982. Since 1961 Petri was again full professor for historical regional studies of the Rhineland in Bonn. At the same time he was director of the Institute for Historical Regional Studies of the Rhineland at the University of Bonn until 1968, succeeding Franz Steinbach . Since his retirement in 1969, Petri lived in Münster and became an honorary professor there.

After 1945, he devoted himself more to political-historical topics. The cultural area research also only played a subordinate role. Instead, Petri researched and published on Rhenish-Westphalian regional history.

Fonts (selection)

Monographs

  • Germanic folk heritage in Wallonia and Northern France. The Frankish conquest in France and the Netherlands and the formation of the western language border , 2 volumes. Röhrscheid, Bonn 1937.
  • On the status of the discussion about the Frankish conquest and the emergence of the Germanic-Romance language border . Scientific book club, Darmstadt 1954.
  • The culture of the Netherlands . Academic Publishing Company Athenaion, Frankfurt am Main 1972, ISBN 3-7997-0117-6 .

Editorships

  • Episcopal and cathedral cities of the Middle Ages and early modern times. Böhlau, Cologne 1976.
  • Handbook of the historical sites of Germany
  • Church and Social Change in German and Dutch Cities of the New Age . Böhlau, Cologne 1980, ISBN 3-412-05079-2 .
  • with Ivo Schöffer , Jan Juliaan Woltjer: History of the Netherlands. Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg. (= Handbook of European History ). Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag dtv, Munich - Klett-Cotta , Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-423-04571-X .

literature

  • Hans Derks: German West Research. Ideology and Practice in the 20th Century. Akademische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2001, pp. 85–128.
  • Hans Derks: German Westforschung, 1918 to the Present: The Case of Franz Petri, 1903-1993. In: Ingo Haar , Michael Fahlbusch (Eds.): German Scholars and Ethnic Cleansing 1920–1945. Berghahn, New York a. a. 2005, pp. 175-200.
  • Karl Ditt : The cultural space research between science and politics. The example of Franz Petri (1903-1993). In: Westfälische Forschungen 46 (1996), pp. 73-176.
  • Karl Ditt: The politicization of cultural space research in the Third Reich. The example of Franz Petri . In: Burkhard Dietz / Ulrich Tiedau / Helmut Gabel (eds.): Griff nach dem Westen. The “Westforschung” of the ethnic-national sciences on the north-western European area (1919–1960) , vol. 2, Münster et al. 2003, pp. 925–944.
  • Peter Schöttler : From Rhenish regional history to Nazi folk history - or the "inaudible voice of the blood" . In: Winfried Schulze / Otto Gerhard Oexle (Hrsg.): Historians in National Socialism . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-596-14606-2 , pp. 89-113.
  • Karl Ditt:  Petri, Heinrich Eduard Justus Gotthard Franz. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 265 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Bernd Haunfelder : Franz Petri. In: North Rhine-Westphalia. Country and people. 1946-2006. A biographical manual. Aschendorff, Münster 2006, ISBN 3-402-06615-7 , p. 360 f.
  • Horst Lademacher : Franz Petri in memory. In: Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter 57 (1993), pp. VII – XIX.
  • Martina Pitz: Franz Petri's post-doctoral thesis in terms of content, method and research history. In: Burkhard Dietz, Helmut Gabel, Ulrich Tiedau (eds.): Griff nach dem Westen. The “western research” of the ethnic-national sciences on the north-west European area (1919-1960) (= studies on the history and culture of north-west Europe. Vol. 6). Vol. 1. Waxmann, Münster 2003, ISBN 3-8309-1144-0 , pp. 225–246.
  • Frank-Rutger Hausmann : "Even in war the muses are not silent". The German Scientific Institutes in World War II (= publications of the Max Planck Institute for History. Vol. 169). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-35357-X .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ A b c Regionales Personenlexikon, article Franz Petri .
  2. ^ A b Hans Derks: German Westforschung, 1918 to the Present. The Case of Franz Petri 1903-1993 . In: Ingo Haar, Michael Fahlbusch (eds.): German Scholars and Ethnic Cleansing, 1919–1945 , New York / Oxford 2005, pp. 175–199, here: pp. 176 f.
  3. ^ Wolfgang Freund: Sciences et politique en Moselle annexée de 1940 à 1944 . In: Silvain Schirrmann (Ed.): Annexion et nazification en Europe. Actes du colloque de Metz, 7-8 November 2003, Université de Metz . Center de recherche Histoire et civilization de l'Europe occidentale (CRHCEO), Université de Metz, undated, pp. 155–162, here: p. 159, see: p. 159 ( Memento of 7 October 2007 on the Internet Archives ).
personal data
SURNAME Petri, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 22, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Wolfenbüttel
DATE OF DEATH March 8, 1993
Place of death Muenster