Günter Mühlpfordt

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Günter Mühlpfordt (born July 28, 1921 in Ammendorf ; † April 4, 2017 in Halle (Saale) ) was a German historian and Slavist and researcher into radical enlightenment .

Career

Mühlpfordt studied history as a major at the University of Halle from 1939 to 1941 , in addition to prehistory and early history, legal history , German studies , Slavic studies , geography and philosophy . After his initial interest in medieval and prehistoric research, he devoted himself to the early modern period , especially the " Enlightenment " due to the wealth of sources, and received his doctorate in 1941 under Martin Lintzel .

After his return from Canadian captivity in 1945, he worked as an interpreter. At the same time he was a lecturer at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and employed at the Halle Adult Education Center. In 1947 Mühlpfordt was both head and speaker of the history study group in Halle and, at Eduard Winter's offer , he joined the newly established Institute for European History at the University of Halle as an assistant in the same year. In 1951 he became acting director of the University Institute for Eastern European History in Halle and its director in 1954. He equipped it with the best German library in terms of modern Eastern European history.

Mühlpfordt completed his habilitation in the fall of 1952 and was appointed professor with a teaching position in the history of the peoples of the USSR and the other Slavic peoples and director of the Institute for the History of the Peoples of the USSR at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Halle-Wittenberg in 1954 .

Against his inaugural lecture as a university lecturer on "causes of backwardness in Tsarist Russia " was the Soviet side imposed a ban. At the end of the 1950s he was expelled from Martin Luther University for political reasons and then released in 1963. Banned from practicing his profession , he lived as a jobless private scholar for over 20 years and published abroad. In 1990 he was fully rehabilitated.

At the time of his full retirement , Mühlpfordt was almost 70 years old, but continued his scientific work. After the turn of the millennium, he devoted himself to the publication of the most important of his decades of work scattered around the world on the research focus "Central German Enlightenment." The multi-volume series of the same name has been published by Mitteldeutscher Verlag Halle since 2011 .

Mühlpfordt concentrated his research on the early modern period , especially on the Enlightenment , and also on the Reformation .

Honors (selection)

The celebratory colloquium on the occasion of his 75th birthday in 1996 achieved broad and international recognition. The lectures held at the IZEA at that time resulted in the multi-volume Festschrift for Günter Mühlpfordt on Europe in the early modern period.

In 1999 he received the Eike von Repgow Prize of the City of Magdeburg and the Otto von Guericke University of Magdeburg for his services to research into the history of Central Germany .

Mühlpfordt is a member of the historical commission of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig and the science academies of Erfurt and Görlitz.

In 2001 he received a “Diamond Doctoral Diploma” from Martin Luther University, exactly 60 years to the day after his doctorate.

Publications (selection)

  • Dissertation: The German leadership of the Bohemian-Moravian region in the time of Maria Theresa and Joseph II , 1941.
  • Habilitation thesis: The Polish Crisis of 1863. The founding of the Russian-Prussian-German Entente in the years 1863-71. Primarily based on Prussian and Russian files , 1952.
  • Russian vocabulary. Help book for reading and teaching , Engelhard-Reyher-Verlag, Gotha 1948.
  • 1740, not 1741. On Bahrdt's year of birth. Mistake or manipulation? , in: Gerhard Sauder / Christoph Weiß (eds.): Carl Friedrich Bahrdt (1740–1792). St. Ingbert 1992, pp. 291-305.
  • with Günter Schenk: Der Spirituskreis : (1890–1958); a learned society in the neo-humanist tradition; from the empire to the ban by Walter Ulbricht as part of the persecution at the University of Halle in 1957 and 1958 , Hallescher Verlag Halle (Saale) Part 1: 2001 and Part 2: 2004.
  • with Ulman Weiß: Cryptoradicality in the Early Modern Age , Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2009.
  • Riddle Riade: The Battle of Hungary in 933 and Germany's Unification , Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle (Saale) 2009.
  • Halle-Leipzig Enlightenment: Core of the Central German Enlightenment , Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle (Saale) 2011.
  • Democratic Enlightenment 1: Bahrdt and the German Union , Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle (Saale) 2014.
  • Democratic Enlightenment 2: Camouflaged and open radical education , Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle (Saale) 2015.
  • with Erich Donnert : Baltic history: Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians under foreign powers , Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle (Saale) 2016.
  • with Margarete Wein: Complete index for volumes 1 to 3 of the series Mitteldeutsche Aufklerung , Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle (Saale) 2017.

Literature (selection)

  • Karlheinz Blaschke (2002): Laudation for Günter Mühlpfordt, in: Erich Donnert (Hrsg.): Europe in the early modern times . Festschrift for Günter Mühlpfordt , Vol. 6: Central, Northern and Eastern Europe, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, pp. 16–21.
  • Hartmut Boockmann (1999): The historian Günter Mühlpfordt, in: Erich Donnert (Hrsg.): Europe in the early modern times . Festschrift for Günter Mühlpfordt , Vol. 5: Enlightenment in Europe, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, pp. 771–775.
  • Bremer, Thomas (2004): Greeting and handover of the diamond doctoral certificate, in: Karlheinz Blaschke and Detlef Döring (eds.): Universities and sciences in Central Germany in the early modern period . Honorary colloquium for Günter Mühlpfordt's 80th birthday , Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, pp. 7–9.
  • Erich Donnert (2002): Eike von Repgow Prize to Günter Mühlpfordt, in: Erich Donnert (Hrsg.): Europe in the early modern times . Festschrift for Günter Mühlpfordt , Vol. 6: Central, Northern and Eastern Europe, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, pp. 2–8.
  • Erdmann, Volker (1997): On the political persecution of Günter Mühlpfordt by the Ulbricht regime, in: Erich Donnert (Ed.): Europe in the early modern times . Festschrift for Günter Mühlpfordt , Vol. 4: German Enlightenment, Weimar / Cologne / Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, pp. 711–722.
  • Haun, Horst (1997): From a life for science: Günter Mühlpfordt - a historian's fate in the GDR, in: Erich Donnert (Hrsg.): Europe in the early modern times . Festschrift for Günter Mühlpfordt , Vol. 4: German Enlightenment, Weimar / Cologne / Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, pp. 679–709.
  • Mühlpfordt, Günter (1991): A scientist's fate in the SED state, in: German University Association (Hrsg.): Forum : On the way to renewal of the spirit . Documentation - Part I , Issue 54, 2nd edition, Bonn: Jackwerth & Welker Verlag, pp. 149–153.
  • Neuhäußer-Wespy, Ulrich (1999): Günter Mühlpfordt and the synchronization of GDR historical studies in the fifties, in: Erich Donnert (ed.): Europe in the early modern times . Festschrift for Günter Mühlpfordt , Vol. 5: Enlightenment in Europe, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, pp. 721–743.
  • Pliske, Roman (2017): Obituary for Günter Mühlpfordt , in: HalleSpektrum , (hallespektrum.de [accessed on April 6, 2017]).
  • Wein, Margarete (1999): The “Mühlpfordt Case” 1947–1989 and Ulbricht's persecution campaign at the University of Halle. With excursus: Lessons from history - the situation after the 1998 elections, in: Erich Donnert (Hrsg.): Europe in the early modern times . Festschrift for Günter Mühlpfordt , Vol. 5: Enlightenment in Europe, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, pp. 777–819.
  • Wein, Margarete (2001a): Günter Mühlpfordt. The internationally recognized historian started his career in the 1940s until it was interrupted by the GDR rulers for political and ideological reasons, in: Zachow Magazin , vol. 1, issue 6, p. 17.
  • Wein, Margarete (2001b): Honorary diploma for Professor Günter Mühlpfordt. Internationally known Halle historian was awarded the "Diamond Doctorate", in: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung Halle , p. 3.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Margarete Wein: The "Mühlpfordt Case" 1947-1989 and Ulbricht's persecution campaign at the University of Halle. With excursus: Lessons from history - the situation after the 1998 elections . In: Erich Donnert (ed.): Europe in the early modern times. Festschrift for Günter Mühlpfordt . tape 5 : Education in Europe. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 1999, p. 777-819 .
  2. ↑ CHRISTIAN EGER: Historians: Looking for the truth . In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung . ( mz-web.de [accessed on April 5, 2017]).
  3. ↑ Erich Donnert (ed.): Europe in the early modern times. Festschrift for Günter Mühlpfordt . seven volumes. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 1997.
  4. ^ Repgow Prize, Günter Mühlpfordt. Retrieved April 5, 2017 .
  5. ^ Günter Mühlpfordt, Prof. Dr. - Saxon Academy of Sciences. Retrieved April 5, 2017 .
  6. ^ Margarete Wein: Honorary diploma for Professor Günter Mühlpfordt. Internationally known historian from Halle was awarded the “Diamond Doctorate” . Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, Halle 2001.
personal data
SURNAME Mühlpfordt, Günter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian and Slavist
DATE OF BIRTH July 28, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Halle-Ammendorf
DATE OF DEATH 4th April 2017
Place of death Halle (Saale)