Georg Schnath

Georg Schnath (born November 6, 1898 in Hanover ; † October 27, 1989 ibid) was a German historian and archivist who did a great job researching the history of those areas that formed the state of Lower Saxony in 1946 .

Live and act

Growing up in Hanover's old town, Schnath attended the Ratsgymnasium on Georgsplatz and studied history, geography and German studies in Marburg and Göttingen from 1917 to 1922 . After completing his doctorate, he worked in the archive service from 1922, first in Berlin-Charlottenburg, and from 1928 in his hometown of Hanover in the State Archives on Waterlooplatz . From 1938 to 1959 he was also its director, and from 1959 to 1967 he was professor of regional history at the Georg-August University in Göttingen . In 1938 the first volume of his standard work History of Hanover appeared in the age of the ninth cure and the English succession 1674–1714 (last volume 1982), which made him the best connoisseur of Lower Saxony history of the 17th / 18th. Century profiled. This also includes his editions, such as the correspondence between Electress Sophie and the Prussian royal family (1927) or the correspondence between Princess Sophie Dorothea of ​​Hanover and Count Philipp Christoph von Königsmarck from 1690 to 1694, which appeared in 1952 and provides a key to the analysis of the Königsmarck affair forms.

Schnath, who joined the NSDAP as a so-called March fallen in 1933 , became head of the archives department of the German military administration in occupied France during World War II. Schnath was responsible for a list of archive materials to be returned to Germany, which contained 20,788 items. From 1945 to 1947 Schnath was therefore in French custody, most recently in the Paris military prison "Cherche-Midi" . His memories of a Hanoverian youth from 1898–1916 , which he made in prison in Paris in 1947 and which appeared posthumously in 1998 under the title The Old House , are a personal document of justification and confirmation. They offer a view of Hanover before the destruction caused by the German warfare through Allied bombs in 1943.

Nothing is known about its denazification . In the post-war period he was not blind to his initial sympathy for and his concessions to the NSDAP in his publications, for example in the Lower Saxony Yearbook , but still concealed his work in France in 1976 in the Kürschner , while his appointment as honorary professor in 1942 was mentioned.

In 1938 he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . Schnath was from 1938 to 1971 chairman of the historical commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen , from 1949 to 1965 of the historical association for Lower Saxony and from 1958 to 1970 head of the institute for historical research of the University of Göttingen. In 1962 Schnath received the Great Cross of Merit of the Lower Saxony Order of Merit . In 1979 he was awarded the Lower Saxony Prize in the science category. Since 1951 he was a member of the Braunschweig Scientific Society .

Tomb and estate

Georg Schnath's grave can be found in the Engesohde city cemetery in Hanover, Department 9J , grave number 570-571 .

His estate is kept in the Lower Saxony State Archives in Hanover (holdings VVP 51). The historian Thomas Vogtherr is working on the completion of a first scientific biography of Schnath, which will make use of the entire estate and will be accompanied by an annotated edition of autobiographical records from 1945 to 1948.

Fonts (selection)

• The Lords Everstein, Homburg and Spiegelberg. (Diss. Phil). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1922.
• (Ed.): Correspondence between Electress Sophie von Hannover and the Prussian royal family. Koehler, Berlin a. a. 1927.
• History of Hanover in the age of the ninth cure and the English succession 1674–1714. Lax, Hildesheim, Leipzig 1938–1982. Reprint, Hahn, Hanover 1999.
  • Vol. 1: 1674-1692. ISBN 3-7752-5822-1 .
  • Vol. 2: 1693-1698. ISBN 3-7752-5823-X .
  • Vol. 3: 1698-1714. ISBN 3-7752-5824-8 .
  • Vol. 4: Georg Ludwig's way to the English throne. The history of the succession to the throne 1698–1714. ISBN 3-7752-5825-6 .
  • Total register. Names of the four volumes of the complete work together with a list of corrections and additions. ISBN 3-7752-5826-4 .
• (Arrangement): The Königsmarck correspondence. Correspondence between Princess Sophie Dorothea of ​​Hanover and Count Philipp Christoph Konigsmarck 1690 to 1694. Critical complete edition in regesta form (= sources and representations on the history of Lower Saxony. Vol. 51). Lax, Hildesheim 1952.
• From the Saxon tribe to the state of Lower Saxony. Basic features of the state regional development in the Lower Saxony area. Lower Saxony State Center for Political Education, Hanover 1966.
• Forays through Lower Saxony's past - collected essays and lectures. Lax, Hildesheim 1968.
• Georg Schnath (among others): History of Lower Saxony (= history of the German states / territories-Ploetz. Special editions. ). 6th, updated edition. Ploetz, Freiburg et al. 1994, ISBN 3-87640-344-8 .

Autobiographical

• An old archivist's memories of the Hanover State Archives from 1920 to 1938. In: Dieter Brosius , Martin Last (Hrsg.): Contributions to the history of Lower Saxony. For Hans Patze's 65th birthday. Lax, Hildesheim 1984, ISBN 3-7848-3429-9 , pp. 454-474.
• with Holger Jacob-Friesen (arrangement), Dieter Brosius (epilogue): The old house. Memories of a Hanoverian youth 1898-1916 (= sources and representations on the history of Lower Saxony. Vol. 118). Hahn, Hannover 1998, ISBN 3-7752-5828-0 .

literature

• Dieter Brosius : Obituary. In: Archivist . Archive journal. Vol. 43, 1990, No. 1, pp. 187-192.
• Waldemar R. Röhrbein , Ernst Schubert (ed.): Georg Schnath to commemorate (= publications of the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen. Special volume). Edited by the Historical Association for Lower Saxony and the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen. Hahn, Hannover 2001, ISBN 3-7752-5863-9 .
• Waldemar R. Röhrbein: Schnath, Georg. In: Dieter Brosius et al. (Ed.): Hannoversches biographisches Lexikon . From the beginning to the present. Schlueter, Hannover 2002, ISBN 3-87706-706-9 , p. 319 .
• Heinrich Schmidt: Georg Schnath 1898–1989. In: Lower Saxony Yearbook for State History . Vol. 62, 1990, pp. 485-490 ( free access to the digital edition of the magazine volume , PDF).
• Wolfgang Hans Stein: Georg Schnath and the French archives under German occupation administration. In: Robert Kretzschmar (Red.): The German archiving system and National Socialism. 75th German Archive Day 2005 in Stuttgart (= conference documentation for the German Archive Day. Vol. 10). Klartext, Essen 2007, ISBN 3-89861-703-3 , ISBN 978-3-89861-703-1 , pp. 175-194.
• Matthias Martens: Invented Traditions? The establishment of the Institute for Historical State Research at the University of Göttingen (= Göttingen Research on State History. Vol. 15). Publishing house for regional history, Bielefeld 2008, ISBN 978-3-89534-745-0 .
• Thomas Vogtherr : Observations on the biography of Georg Schnath (1898–1989). In: Lower Saxony Yearbook for State History. Vol. 81, 2009, pp. 405–424 ( free access to the digital edition of the journal volume , PDF).
• Thomas Vogtherr: State history and politics. Georg Schnath and the establishment of the state of Lower Saxony. In: Lower Saxony Yearbook for State History. Vol. 83, 2011, pp. 1–14 ( free access to the digital edition of the journal volume , PDF).
• Thomas Vogtherr: Charlemagne or Charlemagne? A Franco-German question of fate. German historical policy in occupied France as reflected in a lecture by Georg Schnath from 1942. In: Francia . Vol. 30, 2012, pp. 331-346.
• Thomas Vogtherr: "The tasks of the historian in our time". Walter Rosin and Georg Schnath in letters from 1944–1949. In: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter . Vol. 67, 2013, ISSN  0342-1104 , pp. 187-212.

Web links

• Literature by and about Georg Schnath in the catalog of the German National Library

Remarks

1. ↑ Frank-Rutger Hausmann : "Even in war the muses are not silent". The German Scientific Institutes in World War II. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-35357-X , p. 101.
2. ↑ Kürschner , 1976, p. 2840.
3. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 215.
4. ↑ Karin van Schwartzenberg (responsible): Graves of honor and graves of important personalities at the Engesohde town cemetery , A3 leaflet with overview sketch, ed. from the City of Hanover, The Lord Mayor, Department of Environment and Urban Greenery, Department of Urban Cemeteries, Department of Administration and Customer Service, Hanover, 2012.
5. ↑ Scientific projects. In: ThomasVogtherr.de .