Günter Scheel

Günter Scheel

Günter Scheel (born February 9, 1924 in Rathenow ; † September 26, 2011 in Tutzing ) was a German historian and archivist . From 1979 to 1989 he was director of the Lower Saxony State Archives in Wolfenbüttel . His research activities focused on the life and work of the universal scholar Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz as well as the Hanoverian and Braunschweig regional history.

life and work

Scheel grew up in Rathenow, where he graduated from secondary school. At the age of 15 he switched to the teacher training seminar in Zühlsdorf (Pomerania), where he passed the Abitur. At the age of 17 he was committed to the Reich Labor Service . Working in the swamps at Lake Peipus made him so sick that he was classified as unfit for military service. He worked for a short time as a teacher at a primary school in Cottbus and began studying history, German and philosophy at the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1943 . His academic teachers included the historian and former Lübeck archivist Fritz Rörig , as well as the historians Friedrich Meinecke , Fritz Hartung and Friedrich Baethgen . From 1950 to 1952 he was a research assistant at Fritz Rörig. Scheel received his doctorate in 1952 from the constitutional historian Fritz Hartung. He had been working at the Berlin Academy of Sciences since 1952 , where he was in charge of the critical edition of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's writings and letters under the direction of Kurt Müller. Volume 6 of General, Political and Historical Correspondence was published in 1957.

Activity at the main state archive in Hanover

In 1961 Scheel moved to the Lower Saxony Archive Administration of Hanover, headed by Rudolf Grieser . He completed his training for the higher archive service with stations in Osnabrück, Hanover and Marburg. He passed his exams at the archive school in Marburg in March 1964 and then worked as an archivist in the main state archive in Hanover . There he was most recently department director. He worked on regional history topics and continued the Leibniz research he had begun in Berlin. Between 1964 and 1979, volumes 7 to 10 of the Leibniz correspondence edited by Scheel were published.

Head of the Wolfenbüttel State Archives

In 1979 Scheel became director of the Lower Saxony State Archives in Wolfenbüttel, succeeding Joseph König . During his ten-year directorate, an extension was built to the administration wing in 1988, giving the restoration workshop and the moving IT system new space. His publications from this time are mainly devoted to Leibniz research. Further areas of work were the Hanoverian and increasingly the Braunschweig regional history. His successor as archive director was the historian Horst-Rüdiger Jarck in 1989 .

Other activities

Since 1966 Scheel was a member of the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen , of which he was managing director from 1972 to 1977. From 1982 to 1994 he chaired the Braunschweigisches Geschichtsverein , of which he was made an honorary member in 1994. Until 1991 he was also the editor of the Braunschweigischer Jahrbuch , "... since 1902 the scientific organ for the history of the state of Braunschweig and the area of ​​south-east Lower Saxony." The Braunschweigisches Jahrbuch 2004 was dedicated to him on his 80th birthday and contains a bibliography of his publications. Together with John Andrew Jarck he gave to the 1996 standard work become Braunschweigische Biographical Encyclopedia . 19th and 20th centuries. out.

Scheel died in 2011 in Tutzing on Lake Starnberg. He had been with the teacher Brigitte, geb. Otto († 2002), married. The son Wolfgang Scheel was born in 1959.

Fonts (selection)

• Wincheringen . Investigations into the medieval rulership in the Saar-Moselle area, dissertation, Berlin 1952.
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: All writings and letters. (Academy edition), ed. from the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, from 1975 from the Academy of Sciences of the GDR. Series I: General, Political and Historical Correspondence, from Volume 7, 1964 ed. from the Leibniz archive of the Lower Saxony State Library in Hanover. Edited by volumes 6, 1957 (with Kurt Müller), 7, 1964 and 8, 1970 (with Kurt Müller and Georg Gerber), 9, 1975 and 10, 1979 (with Kurt Müller and Gerda Utermöhlen), supplementary volume: Harzbergbau. 1991 (self-employed).
• with Herbert Michaelis and Ernst Schraepler (eds.): Causes and consequences. From the German collapse in 1918 and 1945 to the state reorganization of Germany in the present. Volume 1–26, 2 volumes of Indices, Berlin 1958–1980.
• with Horst-Rüdiger Jarck (Ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon . 19th and 20th centuries. Hahn, Hannover 1996, ISBN 3-7752-5838-8 .

A detailed list of publications is available from : Günter Scheel, Sibylle Weitkamp: List of publications by Günter Scheel. In: Braunschweigisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte. Volume 85, 2004, pp. 179-188.

literature

• Horst-Rüdiger Jarck : Obituary for Günter Scheel (1924–2011). In: Braunschweigisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte. Volume 92, 2011, pp. 333-337.
• Otto Merker: Günter Scheel 1924–2011. In: Lower Saxony Yearbook for State History. Volume 84 (2012), pp. 591-594.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Website of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Society on behalf of the four departments of the Leibniz Edition
2. ↑ Information on the Braunschweigischer Jahrbuch