Fritz Kern (historian)

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Max Friedrich Ludwig Hermann Kern (born September 28, 1884 in Stuttgart , † May 21, 1950 in Mainz ) was a German historian . He held chairs for history at the universities of Frankfurt am Main (1914–1922) and Bonn (1922–1947).

Life

Fritz Kern came from a middle-class family. He was the son of Hermann von Kern (1854–1932), Württemberg State Councilor, and Karoline (1860–1944), daughter of the Senate President Ludwig von Hufnagel (1825–1900).

Kern attended the humanistic Karls-Gymnasium in Stuttgart from 1892 to 1902 . He passed his matriculation examination in 1902 and studied law in Lausanne from the winter semester of 1902/03 , but dropped out after two semesters and then studied two semesters of history in Tübingen (with Georg von Below ) and four semesters in Berlin (especially with Karl Zeumer ). With Michael Tangl in Berlin in 1906 he was awarded the magna cum laude work Dorsualkonzept und Imbreviatur. Doctorate on the history of notarial deeds in Italy . Extensive archival trips followed (in the spring and summer of 1908 in France and England, in the spring of 1909 in Italy). In 1909 the habilitation took place in Kiel with the writing Basics of the French Expansion Policy up to 1308 . In 1913 he became an associate professor in Kiel. In 1914 he was appointed full professor for Medieval and Modern History at the University of Frankfurt . In 1922 he taught as the successor to Friedrich von Bezold until his retirement in 1947 as a professor at the University of Bonn .

During Kern's entire tenure as a professor, his teaching activities were characterized by political activities. From 1914 to 1918 he worked for the Foreign Office and the General Staff in Berlin and was involved in the publications of the Grand Admiral von Tirpitz in 1918/19 and 1924–26 . In December 1919, Kern took over the publication of the traditional magazine Grenzboten . With his journalistic and journalistic activities he tried to intervene actively in daily politics. Since the mid-1920s and increasingly since the early 1930s, Kern transformed himself into a supporter of international understanding and European reconciliation. Until 1933, his aim was to prevent National Socialist rule in Germany. The departure from his ultra-nationalist positions, however, remained ambivalent. After 1933 he emigrated to the Inner City .

However, as early as 1934, Kern had relationships with a student resistance group of the KPD around Walter Markov at the University of Bonn. He continued to support this group after Walter Markov's imprisonment from 1936, despite the associated danger, until the end of the war. When the war began in 1939, Kern wanted to go to Berlin to make himself available to his "old office" from 1915/18, the defense department at OKW . There, under the leadership of Vice Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and Major General Hans Oster, an opposition to the war preparations of the Nazi leadership had already formed. Later, through the Prussian Finance Minister Johannes Popitz and the Wednesday Society , Kern's extensive relationships also reached the circles of the resistance group of July 20, 1944 . Popitz had drawn up a “Provisional State Law” for Carl Friedrich Goerdeler , one of the leading conspirators against Hitler, which was to come into force in Germany after the putsch against Hitler. However, in order to achieve the change of power legally and without bloodshed, Popitz got in touch with Heinrich Himmler through Carl Langbehn in the summer of 1943 , whom he tried to persuade to enter into peace negotiations with the Western powers. At this point, however, Himmler still refused to comply with this suggestion. In the fall of 1944, however, Kern was actually a member of a “resistance group” that advocated the initiation of the surrender of renegade SS leaders to USA contacts in Bern . Their goal was to shorten the war through a separate peace with the Western powers. But the Allies passed Himmler's offer to talk to the press. Hitler reacted with a fit of rage, expelled Himmler from the NSDAP as well as from all party and state offices and commissioned the security service (SD) to expose his co-conspirators. So Kern saw shortly before the war, on 27 April 1945 forced with his family to Switzerland to escape exile from which he was allowed to return until the 1948th Kern died on May 21, 1950 in Mainz city hospital.

Kern's first marriage (1909–1941) was Bertha von Hartmann (* 1886), the youngest daughter of the philosopher Eduard von Hartmann ; the marriage resulted in a son and two daughters; second marriage (1941) to Elisabeth Charlotte, daughter of Reinhold Ahrens medical adviser and Anna Spennemann; from this marriage a son was born.

Research priorities

The core academic focus was the comparative legal and constitutional history of the Middle Ages and the universal history of mankind. His main work of Divine Right and Right of Resistance in the Early Middle Ages from 1914 became fundamental. He intended to write a “comparative constitutional history of the Middle Ages” and to investigate the “connections between law and worldview”. The subject of the book is "the relationship between ruler and people when establishing rulership, during its exercise and when it comes to an end". An English edition followed in 1939 with Kingship and Law . In 1954 Rudolf Buchner published a new German edition of the work. His essay Law and Constitution in the Middle Ages , in which he derived the law from the traditional “old” and “good”, was also influential. In 1939 his universal historical treatise The Beginnings of World History After the War Kern completely reworked this text. In it he brought his cultural doctrine to the fore, with which he sought to overcome the historical image of bourgeois-liberal evolutionism as well as biological social Darwinism . Of the greatly expanded new version of the book, however, only the first part was finished, "which presents the thousands of centuries of basic culture in detail", and which appeared as The Beginning of World History (Volume 60 of the "Dalp Collection") in 1953 in Bern. However, his teaching was repeatedly criticized from the early 1960s.

Kern's early work on French expansion policy became a standard work. In 2009, Jean-Marie Moeglin rated the thesis formulated by Fritz Kern about a decided French expansion policy in the late Middle Ages at the expense of the empire as a myth.

Fonts (selection)

  • Dorsal concept and imbreviation. On the history of the notarial deed in Italy , phil. Diss., Berlin 1906.
  • The beginnings of the French expansion policy up to 1308. Mohr, Tübingen 1910.
  • as editor: Acta Imperii Angliae et Franciae from anno 1267 ad annum 1313. Documents mainly on the history of Germany's foreign relations. Mohr, Tübingen 1911 (reprint. Olms, Hildesheim et al. 1973, ISBN 3-487-04916-3 ).
  • Divine right and right of resistance in the early Middle Ages. On the history of the development of the monarchy (= Medieval Studies. Vol. 1, H. 2, ZDB -ID 513361-0 ). Koehler, Leipzig 1914 (7th edition, unchanged reprint of the 2nd edition from 1954. Edited by Rudolf Buchner. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-00129-X ).
  • Dante. 4 lectures to introduce the Divine Comedy. Mohr, Tübingen 1914.
  • Humana civilitas (state, church and culture). A Dante study (= Medieval Studies. Vol. 1, Issue 1). Koehler, Leipzig 1913.
  • Law and Constitution in the Middle Ages. In: Historical magazine . Bd. 120, 1919, pp. 1–79, doi : 10.1524 / hzhz.1919.120.jg.1 , (special edition of the edition from 1952. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2008, ISBN 978-3-534-20883-8 ).
  • Family tree and species picture of the Germans and their relatives. An attempt at cultural and racial history. Lehmann, Munich 1927.
  • The beginnings of world history. A research report and guide. Teubner, Leipzig et al. 1933.
  • History and development (evolution). Edited from the estate by Liselotte Kern. Francke, Bern 1952.

literature

Representations

  • Hubert Becher: The idea of ​​a “Historia Mundi” and its realization. In: Historisches Jahrbuch Vol. 79, 1960, pp. 220–226.
  • Roland Böhm:  Fritz Kern (historian). In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 3, Bautz, Herzberg 1992, ISBN 3-88309-035-2 , Sp. 1399-1402.
  • Gerhard Fouquet : Fritz Kern. In: Württembergische biographies. Vol. 1 (1994), pp. 126-130. (on-line)
  • Hans Hallmann: Fritz Kern (1884–1950). In: 150 years of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn. 1818-1968. Bonn scholars. Contributions to the history of science in Bonn. Vol. 1: History. Bouvier et al., Bonn 1968, pp. 351-378 ( online ).
  • Hans Hallmann:  Kern, Fritz. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 519 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Johannes Liebrecht: Fritz Kern (1884–1950). In: Concise dictionary of German legal history (HRG). 2nd, completely revised and expanded edition, Schmidt, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-503-07912-4 , Sp. 1709 f.
  • Johannes Liebrecht: Fritz Kern and the good old law. Intellectual history as a new approach for medieval studies. Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2016, ISBN 978-3-465-04288-4 ( online )
  • Robert Pech: Southeast Research in Mainz? Fritz Kern, Fritz Valjavec and the establishment of the Institute for European History. In: Rainer Bendel, Robert Pech (Hrsg.): Historiography and culture of remembrance in the European context (= displaced persons - integration - understanding. Vol. 5). Lit, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-643-13788-3 , pp. 79-103.
  • Sebastian Rojek: Sunken hopes. The German Navy in dealing with expectations and disappointments 1871–1930 (= sources and representations on contemporary history. Vol. 116). De Gruyter, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-052903-6
  • Oliver Schillings: From bourgeois to citizen. Fritz Kern between politics and science. Monsenstein and Vannerdat, Münster 2001, ISBN 3-935363-20-6 (also: Münster, Universität, Dissertation, 2000).

Necrologist

Web links

Remarks

  1. Sebastian Rojek: Sunken Hopes. Berlin 2017, pp. 263–270, 285–289, 293.
  2. Sebastian Rojek: Sunken Hopes. Berlin 2017, pp. 311–315.
  3. Sebastian Rojek: Sunken Hopes. Berlin 2017, p. 413.
  4. Oliver Schillings: From Bourgeois to Citoyen. Fritz Kern between politics and science. Münster 2001, pp. 233-267, 271-274.
  5. Winfried Schulze, Corine Defrance: The establishment of the Institute for European History Mainz. Mainz 1992, p. 63; Uwe Baumann, Claudia Wich-Reif: The Philosophical Faculty. In: Thomas P. Becker, Philip Rosin (eds.): The book studies, history of the University of Bonn. Vol. 3, Göttingen 2018, pp. 473–783, here: p. 619.
  6. ^ Introduction to the Fritz Kern estate: Life data
  7. ^ Hans Hallmann: Fritz Kern (1884-1950). In: 150 years of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn. 1818-1968. Bonn scholars. Contributions to the history of science in Bonn. Volume 1: History. Bonn 1968, pp. 351-378, here: p. 371 ( online ).
  8. ^ Reprinted in: Ulrich von Hassell: Vom Andere Deutschland. From the posthumous diaries 1938–1944. Frankfurt 1964, p. 336 ff.
  9. ^ Indictment against Langbehn , p. 220. Printed in: Allen Welsh Dulles : Conspiracy in Germany. Zurich 1948.
  10. On the controversial question of Himmler's position, cf. Hedwig Maier: The SS and July 20, 1944. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. Vol. 14, 1966, Issue 3, pp. 299-316, here pp. 311-314 ( weblink )
  11. ^ Hans Hallmann:  Kern, Fritz. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 519 f. ( Digitized version ).
  12. Fritz Kern: Divine Right and Right of Resistance in the Early Middle Ages. On the history of the development of the monarchy. Leipzig 1914, reprint Darmstadt 1954, p. XI ff.
  13. ^ Hans Hallmann: Fritz Kern (1884-1950). In: 150 years of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn. 1818-1968. Bonn scholars. Contributions to the history of science in Bonn. Volume 1: History. Bonn 1968, pp. 351-378, here: p. 374 ( online ).
  14. ^ Hans Hallmann: Fritz Kern (1884-1950). In: 150 years of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn. 1818-1968. Bonn scholars. Contributions to the history of science in Bonn. Volume 1: History. Bonn 1968, pp. 351-378, here: p. 372 ( online ).
  15. ^ Fritz Kern: The beginnings of the French expansion policy up to 1308. Tübingen 1910.
  16. ^ Jean-Marie Moeglin: French policy of expansion at the end of the Middle Ages: Myth or Reality? In: Franz Fuchs, Jörg Schwarz (Ed.): King, Prince and Empire in the 15th century. Cologne et al. 2009, pp. 350–374 ( online )