Fritz Stern

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Fritz Stern (2007)

Fritz Richard Stern (born February 2, 1926 in Breslau ; † May 18, 2016 in New York ) was an American historian of German origin.

Life

Fritz Stern received his first name when he was baptized after his godfather, the chemist and Nobel Prize winner Fritz Haber . Both his father Rudolf Stern and his grandfathers were doctors, while his mother Käthe Brieger had a doctorate in physics and later made a name for herself as a mathematics didactician. He also had an older sister, Toni. Stern attended the Maria-Magdalenen-Gymnasium in Breslau. In September 1938, the family fled the Nazi terror in Germany because of their Jewish descent and emigrated to the USA. There Stern studied at Columbia University in New York City , where he received his bachelor's degree in 1946 and his master's degree in 1948 , and his PhD in 1953 with Jacques Barzun . Shortly afterwards he became an assistant professor there , a full professor in 1963, and a Seth Low professor in 1967 . With breaks for visiting professorships and his work at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1969/70, he remained in this position until his retirement in 1997.

Stern was married to the US publisher and author Elisabeth Sifton (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, since 1993 majority owned by the Georg von Holtzbrinck publishing group ). She is the daughter of the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr , whose parents immigrated to the USA from Germany. In his first marriage, Stern had a son and a daughter. Stern was distantly related to Otto Stern , the Nobel laureate in physics . The German poet and writer Dagmar Nick is his great cousin. His aunt Charlotte Kobrak, née Stern, and her husband Richard Kobrak were murdered in Auschwitz in 1944 , and their three children were rescued with the Kindertransport .

Research priorities

Stern's research interests included the history of historiography and the cultural and political history of modern Europe, especially Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries. With a view to his own fate as a Jewish emigrant, he was intensely concerned with the reasons for the failure of the Weimar Republic and the characteristics of National Socialism . In 1953, for example, he received his doctorate with a thesis on cultural pessimism as a political danger , an examination of the forerunners of National Socialism based on culture-pessimistic literature, namely Paul de Lagarde's German writings , Julius Langbehn's Rembrandt as an educator and Arthur Moeller van den Bruck's The Third Reich - bestsellers, which in wide Circles of the German bourgeoisie were already widespread during the period of the German Empire , but also found a large audience in the Weimar Republic.

Fritz Stern had been visiting professor at the Free University of Berlin since 1954, and since 1966 he had been a permanent visiting professor at the University of Konstanz . In the Fischer controversy , Stern sided with Fritz Fischer , who, because of his research results on the causes of the First World War and the question of guilt, was treated and marginalized by others as a German "nest dirtier". Stern achieved particular esteem as a historian with the double portrait Gold and Eisen about Bismarck and his banker Bleichröder , according to Norbert Frei a “brilliant story of characters and German-Jewish relationships”.

In 1987, Stern was the first foreign citizen to give the celebratory speech in the German Bundestag on June 17 , undermining all expectations of reunification rhetoric: the 1953 workers' uprising was solely aimed at civil liberties. Nonetheless, in 1990 he tried to convince Margaret Thatcher that there was no need to be afraid of a regaining strength in Germany. From this spoke a confidence in the final ties to the West of the Federal Republic, for which he himself found the formula of the “second chance”. In 1993, he finally acted as an advisor to the American Ambassador Richard Holbrooke in Bonn for a year . Since 1997 he has been a member of the Presidential Commission “History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society under National Socialism”, which was appointed by the then President of the Max Planck Society , Hubert Markl . In the summer semester of 2000, Fritz Stern was the first holder of the Johannes Gutenberg Endowed Professorship at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz . As a visiting professor at the Jena Center for the History of the 20th Century , he held several public lectures in the 2007 summer semester at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, which were published in the summer of 2008 under the title The West in the 20th Century . On July 20, 2010, on the occasion of the federal government's ceremony on the 66th anniversary of July 20, 1944, he gave a speech in the courtyard of the Bendler Block .

Shortly before his 90th birthday, Stern answered questions from Johannes Schmitt-Tegge for dpa on the latest developments in Europe and North America. He looked at the rise of politicians such as Donald Trump and the rightward shift in European countries such as Hungary, Poland and Austria with great concern and said that one in a new "age of anxiety" ( era of fear stoked live), aware of the fear and being exploited by the political right. He also said: “I sometimes regret that I grew up with the end of a democracy and now, at the end of my life, I have to fight for democracy again. A sad balance. "( I sometimes regret having grown in the middle of the end of a democracy, and now, towards the end of my life, I must once again fight for democracy. A sad balance. )

Stern was well known as a respected historian in the United States and Germany. “The political class of our republic,” said Norbert Frei in his obituary, “honored and respected Fritz Stern like no other historian with the German tongue, probably also because of sentences like this: 'I come from a Germany that no longer exists and will never exist again becomes.'"

On February 2, 2017, Fritz Stern's 91st birthday, a symposium organized by the Jena Center for the History of the 20th Century took place in Berlin in his memory. The lectures and discussions of the event are documented by the volume published by Norbert Frei, The story is open. In memoriam Fritz Stern (Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2017).

Awards (selection)

He has received numerous awards for his research.

Fonts (selection)

  • As editor: history and historiography. Possibilities, tasks, methods. Texts from Voltaire to the present . Piper, Munich 1966 (English first as: The varieties of history. From Voltaire to the present . Meridian, New York 1956).
  • Cultural pessimism as a political danger. An analysis of national ideology in Germany . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-608-94136-3 (English first as dissertation : The politics of cultural despair. A study in the rise of the Germanic ideology . University of California Press, Berkeley et al. 1961. The work deals with Paul de Lagarde , Julius Langbehn and Arthur Moeller van den Bruck , three key figures in anti-democratic and nationalist thought who had had a major influence on large parts of the German bourgeoisie since the establishment of the German Empire in 1871).
  • Bethmann Hollweg and the war. The limits of responsibility , Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1968, ISBN 3-16-628831-7 . (Issues 351–352 of the journal 'Law and State in Past and Present')
  • The failure of illiberal politics. Studies on the political culture of Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries . Propylaen, Frankfurt 1974, ISBN 3-549-07303-8 (English first as: The Failure of Illiberalism. Essays on the Political Culture of Modern Germany . Knopf, New York 1972).
  • Gold and iron. Bismarck and his banker Bleichröder . Ullstein, Berlin / Frankfurt am Main 1978, ISBN 3-550-07358-5 (first published in English as: Gold and Iron. Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the building of the German empire . Knopf, New York 1977, ISBN 0-394 -49545-4 ; various editions, including Beck, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-406-56847-3 . This book is about the banker Gerson (1822-1893), a trusted friend of Otto von Bismarck star examines. Development of Insecure Relationships between Jews and Non-Jews in Germany).
  • About a new German past (= Konstanz University Speeches . Volume 57). University publishing and printing company, Konstanz 1972, ISBN 3-87940-067-9 .
  • The dream of peace and the temptation of power. German history in the 20th century . Pantheon, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-570-55013-3 (English first as: Dreams and Delusions. The Drama of German History . Knopf, New York 1987, ISBN 0-394-55995-9 ; German first with Siedler, Berlin 1988 , ISBN 3-88680-261-2 ).
  • Playful size. Essays on German History . CH Beck, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-406-41328-5 (3rd edition 2005, ISBN 3-406-49420-X ).
  • The fine silence. Historical essays. CH Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-45674-X .
  • Five Germany and one life. Memories. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-55811-5 (English original edition: Five Germanys I Have Known . Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 2006, ISBN 0-374-15540-2 ; see review by Norbert Frei In: Die Zeit . 23 August 2007, p. 47).
  • The West in the 20th Century. Self-destruction, reconstruction, threats to the present. Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0254-9 .
  • Helmut Schmidt , Fritz Stern: Our Century: A Conversation , CH Beck, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-60132-3 (also as an audio book, read by Hanns Zischler and Hans Peter Hallwachs . The Audio Verlag , Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-89813-978-6 ).
  • With Elisabeth Sifton: No ordinary men. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi in the resistance against Hitler . Translated from the English by Ruth Keen, Erhard Stölting. Beck, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-406-65373-5 .
  • With Joschka Fischer : Against the current. A conversation about history and politics . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-406-64553-2 .
  • At home far away , historical essays, translated from English with the collaboration of Andrea Stumpf, Beck, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-406-68296-4 .

literature

  • Karl Dietrich Bracher : Master of the second chance. Fritz Stern, the historian of the history of ideas and power in Germany, turns seventy. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . February 2, 1996.
  • Henning Ritter : The promise of a second chance. He is the great connoisseur of Germany's liberal tradition. The historian Fritz Stern is eighty years old. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. No. 28, February 2, 2006, p. 39.
  • Gangolf Hübinger : Fritz Stern between Europe and America. A case study of the history intellectual. In: Peter Burschel (Ed.): Intellectuals in Exile . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8353-0781-0 , pp. 219-240.
  • Andreas W. Daum : Refugees from Nazi Germany as Historians. Origins and Migrations, Interests and Identities. In: Andreas W. Daum, Hartmut Lehmann, James J. Sheehan (Eds.): The Second Generation: Émigrés from Nazi Germany as Historians . Berghahn Books, New York 2016, ISBN 978-1-78238-985-9 , pp. 1–52.
  • Norbert Frei (Ed.): The story is open. In memory of Fritz Stern . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2017, ISBN 978-3-8353-3159-4 . (on-line)

Movie

  • Fritz Stern - My Life. Documentation, Germany, USA, Poland 2007, 43 min., Director: Jean Boué , production: JAB Film, ZDF , arte , first broadcast: March 30, 2008, summary by arte.
  • The bridge builders Henry Kissinger, Fritz Stern and Lord George Weidenfeld. Jewish emigrants and reunification. Documentation, 43 minutes, Germany, USA, Israel, England, Austria, Switzerland, 2010. Written and directed by Evi Kurz, Production: TLF-Timelinefilm GmbH Fürth , first broadcast: ARD , September 29, 2010. In interviews, Kissinger, Stern and Weidenfeld among others Helmut Schmidt, Angela Merkel, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Richard von Weizsäcker, Timothy Garton Ash and Niall Ferguson. Table of contents / synopsis (PDF; 76 kB) from TLF-Timelinefilm GmbH.
  • In the film Wir sind Juden aus Breslau (2016) by Karin Kaper and Dirk Szuszies, Fritz Stern speaks in detail as a contemporary witness.

Web links

Commons : Fritz Stern  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Historian Fritz Stern is dead. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung Online. May 18, 2016, accessed May 18, 2016 .
  2. ^ Fritz Stern: Five Germany and one life. Memories. Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-406-55811-9 , p. 161 ( limited preview in Google book search - English: Five Germanys I have know. New York 2006. Translated by Friedrich Griese, Stern writes: “A second cousin Degree of my father, the physicist and later Nobel Prize winner Otto Stern ”).
  3. ↑ Dagmar Nick: Captured Shadows. My Jewish family book. Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-406-68148-6 , p. 266.
  4. ↑ Matthias Kamann: The spiritual forerunners of National Socialism. Fritz Stern: Cultural pessimism as a political danger. In: Deutschlandradio Kultur . December 23, 2005, accessed May 18, 2016 .
  5. ↑ Former professor at the University of Konstanz: Historian Fritz Stern is dead. In: Südkurier . December 23, 2005, accessed May 18, 2016 .
  6. ↑ a b c Norbert Frei: He believed in role models. The historian Fritz Stern explored the history of German-Jewish relationships - and found clear words where they were missing. In: The time . May 25, 2016, p. 19.
  7. ↑ See page of the commission at the MPI for the History of Science, Berlin, accessed May 20, 2016.
  8. ↑ Günter Platzdasch: “A dictatorship should be enough for you”. Fritz Stern's inaugural lecture on the foundation of the “Jena Center History of the 20th Century”. In: linksnet . September 26, 2008, accessed August 12, 2012 (written May 9, 2006).
  9. ↑ Address by Prof. em. Dr. Fritz Stern, New York / USA. (No longer available online.) In: Internet presence of the Federal Ministry of the Interior. July 20, 2010, archived from the original on August 15, 2012 ; Retrieved August 15, 2012 .
  10. ↑ Historian Fritz Stern: "We are facing an age of fear" Interview: Johannes Schmitt-Tegge, dpa. In: Greenpeace magazine. January 28, 2016, accessed May 18, 2016 .
  11. ↑ Fritz Richard Stern. Biography with detailed information on curriculum vitae, awards, works etc. in: Andreas W. Daum, Hartmut Lehmann, James J. Sheehan (eds.): The Second Generation. Émigrés from Nazi Germany as Historians. Berghahn Books, New York 2016, ISBN 978-1-78238-985-9 , pp. 437-441.
  12. ↑ S. (PDF 2.1  MB ) In: Book of Members. American Academy of Arts and Sciences, p. 53 , accessed April 21, 2016 .
  13. ↑ Member History: Fritz Stern. American Philosophical Society, accessed December 28, 2018 .
  14. ↑ CERTIFICATE - 1999 Fritz Stern. (PDF 191  kB ) In: Internet presence of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade . Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, accessed on May 18, 2016 .
  15. ↑ Gunter Hofmann: My five Germanys . In: The time . December 28, 2006.
  16. ↑ Laudatory speech by Federal President Horst Köhler on the award of the Great Cross of Merit with Star and Shoulder Ribbon of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany to Fritz Stern. September 28, 2006, archived from the original on October 7, 2007 ; accessed on May 18, 2016 .
  17. ↑ University of Oldenburg: Honorary doctorate: Video message from Fritz Stern. May 19, 2016. Retrieved May 24, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Stern, Fritz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stern, Fritz Richard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American historian of German origin
DATE OF BIRTH February 2, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH May 18, 2016
Place of death new York