Fritz Hartung (historian)

Fritz Hartung (born January 12, 1883 in Saargemünd / Lorraine (today: Sarreguemines) , † November 24, 1967 in West Berlin ) was a German historian .

Live and act

After graduating from high school in Berlin in 1901, Fritz Hartung studied history, philosophy and economics at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin and at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg . The focus was on the study of constitutional and legal history. He received his doctorate in 1906 with a thesis on Karl August von Hardenberg and the administration in Ansbach-Bayreuth . Hartung then worked as a research assistant for the Society for Franconian History in Würzburg. In 1910 he completed his habilitation at the University of Halle under Richard Fester with a thesis on Charles V and the German imperial estates in the subject of constitutional history. In 1915 Hartung took part in World War I as a soldier , but was released again in 1916 due to illness. He was a member of the Free Conservative Party from 1917 to 1918 .

In 1922 Hartung was appointed to the University of Kiel , but one year later he went to Berlin as professor for general constitutional history of the modern age and successor to Otto Hintze and Willy Andreas . He also taught administrative history as well as economic history and economic policy . He retained this position - even through the regime change from the Weimar Republic , the Nazi and occupation times to the emerging GDR - until his retirement in 1949. During the Nazi era, he had several conflicts with the Minister of Science Bernhard Rust , and he also resigned 1935 emerged as a sharp critic of the influential lawyer Carl Schmitt .

Hartung's “German Constitutional History”, which was first published in 1914 and had nine editions by 1969, was of lasting importance. His “German History from 1871-1919”, first published in 1920, appeared in several revised editions until 1952. Both books were standard works in their fields for a long time. There were also numerous other works that ranged in time from the early modern period to the period after the Second World War . His collection of sources, “The Development of Human and Civil Rights from 1776 to the Present”, also saw several editions. Hartung was a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences , later of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin and there from 1925 to 1958 responsible for the publication of the " Annual Reports for German History ".

Hartung was a student of Max Lenz , Erich Marcks, and above all Otto Hintze , who became his doctoral supervisor and from whom his pronounced inclination to constitutional issues arose. Between 1941 and 1943 he published a three-volume selection of Hintze's essays from his estate , although severely hampered by the Nazi censorship .

Hartung lived in West Berlin (Schlachtensee) after 1945, but taught at the Humboldt University in East Berlin until 1948 ; he turned down a call to the Free University in Berlin-Dahlem. He then worked at the German Academy of Sciences (located in East Berlin) until 1958, among other things as a supervisor for various academy projects. After conflicts with the Marxist historians in the academy, especially Alfred Meusel , he resignedly gave up this activity.

Hartung's estate is kept in the Berlin State Library , Prussian Cultural Heritage, House 2 (Potsdamer Strasse).

Fonts

• Hardenberg and the Prussian administration in Ansbach-Bayreuth from 1792 to 1806 , Tübingen 1906 (also: dissertation).
• Charles V and the German imperial estates from 1546–1555. With a foreword to the reprint by Gerhard Oestreich , Darmstadt 1971 (also: habilitation thesis, University of Halle 1910).
• (Ed.): History of the Franconian District. Presentation and files. Vol. 1: The history of the Franconian district from 1521–1559 , Leipzig 1910 (= publications of the Society for Franconian History , 2.1). Digitized
• German constitutional history from the 15th century to the present , Leipzig / Berlin 1914; 2nd edition 1922; 3. On. 1928; 4th edition 1933 (= Outline of History , 2.4); Stuttgart 5th edition 1950; 6th edition 1954; 7th edition 1959; 8th edition 1964; 9th edition 1969.
• German history from 1871 to 1914 , Bonn / Leipzig 1920.
• German history from the Peace of Frankfurt to the Treaty of Versailles 1871–1919 , Bonn / Leipzig 2nd edition 1924; 3rd edition 1930; 4th edition 1939; 5th edition 1941; 6th edition 1952.
• People and State in German History. Collected treatises , Leipzig 1940.
• Studies on the history of the Prussian administration. Part 1: From the 16th century until the collapse of the old state in 1806 , Berlin 1942 (= treatises of the Prussian Academy of Sciences , 1941, phil.-hist. Class, 17); Part 2: The Oberpräsident , Berlin 1943 (= treatises of the Prussian Academy of Sciences , 1943, phil.-hist. Class, 4).
• (Ed.): The development of human and civil rights from 1776–1946 , Berlin 1948 (= collection of sources on cultural history , 1).
• State-building forces in modern times. Collected essays , Berlin 1961.

swell

• Hans-Christof Kraus (Ed.): Fritz Hartung. Correspondence of a historian between the German Empire and the second post-war period (= German historical sources of the 19th and 20th centuries. Vol. 76). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-428-15731-0 . ( Review )

literature

• Ewald Grothe : Between History and Law. German constitutional historiography 1900–1970 (= Ordnungssysteme. Vol. 16). Oldenbourg, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-486-57784-0 .
• Hans-Christof Kraus : Military State or Constitutional State? - On the controversy between Carl Schmitt and Fritz Hartung about Prussian-German constitutionalism (1934/35) . In: Yearbook for the History of Central and Eastern Germany , vol. 45 (1999), pp. 275-310.
• Hans-Christof Kraus: Constitutional theory and constitutional history - Otto Hintze and Fritz Hartung as critics of Carl Schmitt. In: Dietrich Murswiek, Ulrich Storost, Heinrich A. Wolff (Ed.): State - Sovereignty - Constitution. Festschrift for Helmut Quaritsch on his 70th birthday. Berlin 2000, pp. 637-661.
• Hans-Christof Kraus: Fritz Hartung . In the S. (Ed.), Humanities scholar (= Berlinische Lebensbilder. Vol. 10). Vol. II. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-428-13821-0 , pp. 307-328.
• Hans-Christof Kraus (Ed.): Fritz Hartung. Correspondence of a historian between the German Empire and the second post-war period . Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 2019, ISBN 978-3-428-15731-0 .
• Munzinger Archive : International Biographical Archive , 05/1968 of January 22, 1968.
• Gerhard Oestreich : Fritz Hartung as a constitutional historian (1883-1967) . In: Der Staat , Vol. 7 (1968), pp. 447-469. Digitized at JSTOR
• Werner Schochow : A Historian in Time. Experiment via Fritz Hartung (1883–1967) . In: Yearbook for the History of Central and Eastern Germany , vol. 32 (1983), pp. 219–250.
• Short biography for:  Hartung, Fritz . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Fritz Hartung in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry on Fritz Hartung in the Catalogus Professorum Halensis