Georg Eckert

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Georg Eckert (born August 14, 1912 in Berlin ; † January 7, 1974 in Braunschweig ) was a German educator, ethnologist , historian and social democrat .

Life

Eckert was the son of an editor and a mother from Russia. In 1931 he graduated from high school and began studying history, geography, German and ethnology in Berlin, which he continued from 1933 in Bonn. As a pupil and student, he had already been committed to the SPD. In Bonn he received his doctorate in ethnology in 1935. In 1936 and 1938 he passed both state exams for school service.

In October 1939, shortly after the start of the Second World War , Georg Eckert and Magda Lauffs married. On February 20, 1940 Eckert was drafted into the Wehrmacht ; he took part as a radio operator in the western campaign. On February 10, he started his service at the Wilhelmshaven marine meteorological station.

Soon afterwards he became a Wehrmacht officer . Wehrmacht officials were entitled and obliged to wear uniforms and corresponding badges of rank, but were not part of the fighting force. After four months of training as a supplementary meteorologist, Eckert received marching orders to the Salonika weather station , where he was deployed on July 1, 1941, in the wake of the Balkan campaign . In September 1942 he became head of the weather station. In 1943 he completed his habilitation while on home leave in Bonn.

During the Second World War, Eckert was also active in the resistance against National Socialism in Greece. There he brokered the surrender of the city of Saloniki without a fight. On September 1, 1944, Army Group E received the Führer order to prepare for the retreat, on September 3 the German troops began to be evacuated from Crete, on October 12, Athens was evacuated. November the last German soldiers left Greece. Eckert stayed.

On February 10, 1945, he and three other comrades went into British captivity. He was to be brought to London via Athens and Rome and from there sent to post-war Germany for democratic rebuilding. In Rome, however, he fell ill with a life-threatening lung abscess; After the end of the war, in August 1945, the first hospital train transported him to the British military hospital in Goslar. There he struggled for his life under the most difficult supply conditions; only in autumn 1946 could he leave the hospital. At the end of 1945 he rejoined the SPD.

From November 1946 Eckert held a teaching position at the Kant University in Braunschweig , which later became the college of education , where he became professor of history and the methodology of history teaching in 1952 . He was the editor of the ethnological book series Kulturgeschichtliche Forschungen , together with Hermann Trimborn .

In 1951, with the help of the Education and Science Union (GEW) in Braunschweig, he founded the International Textbook Institute , whose director he remained until his death and which now bears his name. From 1961 to 1969 he was responsible for the yearbook Archive for Social History published on behalf of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung . Eckert was chairman of the Scientific Commission on the foundation's board of directors. He was also a member of the German Society for Ethnology and for many years (until 1967) editor of the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie .

He also worked as a member of the commission for the preparation of the Godesberg program of the SPD and as a board member in the German Council of the European Movement . Eckert had been a member of the German UNESCO Commission since 1949 and became its President in 1964. In the General German Teachers Association and the GEW , he was chairman of the committee for history lessons. In the Association of History Teachers in Germany , he was treasurer on the federal board from its founding in 1949 until 1964, but without much influence.

Memorial stone for Georg Eckert in the main cemetery in Braunschweig

Eckert collapsed on January 7, 1974 while lecturing on the labor movement and died on the way to the hospital. He was buried in the forest cemetery in Rhöndorf (Bad Honnef). In Braunschweig a memorial stone in the main cemetery commemorates him.

Honors

literature

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Part of Georg Eckert's estate (ED 396) in the archive of the Institute for Contemporary History Munich-Berlin ( Memento from October 22, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) on ifz-muenchen.de
  2. ↑ cf. Mätzing 2013, page 18ff.
  3. ↑ cf. Mätzing 2013, page 20
  4. ^ Archive of social democracy on fes.de
  5. ^ Paul Leidinger: History Lessons and History Didactics. Klett, Stuttgart 1988, p. 453.
personal data
SURNAME Eckert, Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German educator, historian and social democrat
DATE OF BIRTH August 14, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 7th January 1974
Place of death Braunschweig