Gerhard Kallen

Franziskus Gerhardus Antonius Kallen (born May 6, 1884 in Neuss ; † January 26, 1973 there ) was a German historian . He held chairs for Medieval History at the Universities of Münster (1925–1927) and Cologne (1927–1953).

Live and act

Gerhard Kallen came from the upper class of Rhenish Catholicism. He came from a wealthy family of farmers and farm owners. He was born in 1884 on the " Kallenhof ", which is located on the western edge of the Neuss city area. He passed his Abitur in 1902 at the humanistic grammar school in Neuss.

From 1902 he studied history, philosophy and geography at the University of Innsbruck and from 1903 to 1909 at the University of Bonn . His most important academic teachers were Friedrich von Bezold , Aloys Schulte and Ulrich Stutz . He received his doctorate in 1907 with the work supervised by Schulte The Upper Swabian Benefices of the Diocese of Constance and their occupation (1275-1508) . Kallen passed the first state examination for higher education in 1909. For one year he worked on the statutes of the old Cologne cathedral chapter from the 12th to the 18th century. Then he went to school. From 1912 to 1914 Kallen was von Stutz's assistant at the University of Bonn. At the same time, he completed a second degree in law. Since November 1914, Kallen was stationed as an infantryman on the Western Front . In September 1915 he was captured by the French as a reserve lieutenant . He was only able to return to Germany in the summer of 1919. The long captivity of war and the experience of the French occupation of the Rhineland were decisive for Klaus Pabst that Kallen developed a deep aversion to France. He was subsequently honored with the Iron Cross .

Since 1920 he was active in the school service and taught until 1925 as a teacher at the secondary school in Neuss. In 1923 Schulte did his habilitation with the work diocese property and chapter property up to the XI. Century and their inspections for church reform by Ludwig the Pious . A year later, Kallen passed the law doctoral examination. In 1924/25 he worked as a private lecturer at the University of Bonn. From 1925 to 1927 Kallen taught as a full professor for middle and modern history in Münster. In 1926 he was elected a full member of the Historical Commission for Westphalia , from which he resigned in 1945. From 1927 Kallen was a professor in Cologne, succeeding Justus Hashagens . Kallen was able to significantly expand the seminar library, especially in the area of ​​the history of the Rhineland. However, his request for a “Cologne Archive School”, in which the sources of the historical seminar, the university and city library and the historical archive were to be bundled under his leadership, remained in vain. From 1927 to 1958, Kallen was the successor to Joseph Hansen as chairman of the Society for Rhenish History . In 1934/1935 he took over the office of Dean of the Philosophical Faculty at the University of Cologne. In 1943 he became a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences .

Kallen did not become a member of the NSDAP . But he joined the SA and was a member of the NS-Volkswohlfahrt , the Kampfbund for German culture and the NS teachers' union . From 1933, Kallen adapted his publications to the Nazi regime. He published numerous articles in the Rheinische Blätter , the publication organ of Alfred Rosenberg's Kampfbund for German culture . Joseph Görres saw Kallen in a 1934 contribution to the Rheinische Blätter as a kind of forerunner of the National Socialist revolution. In 1937 he interpreted Nikolaus von Kues as educator of the nation in the sense of a powerful empire. He expressed his approval of the Third Reich in his contribution Rhenish History to the Collapse of the Second Reich : After the “corrosive effects” of the party system, the “mud sea of ​​parliamentarism”, the “miracle” finally happened, the “rebirth of the Germans Soul". In the last year of the war, Kallen took part in the Ritterbusch campaign , the war effort of the humanities from 1940. According to Klaus Pabst, his works from the second half of the Nazi era show a more moderate view and sometimes contradicted the view of history favored by the Nazi state. In his 1943 university speech in Cologne, he defended Friedrich Barbarossa's Italian policy against the criticism typical of the time of neglecting German colonization in the east . His last publication on Nikolaus von Kues in the historical magazine also made no allusions to the Nazi regime.

He was removed from office on October 24, 1946 by the British military government. The denazification committee of Cologne University classified him as a “fellow traveler”. In the appeal he was classified by the main committee in category V as "exonerated". Since 1947 he was able to take over his previous chair as a substitute. In 1948 he was reinstated in his chair. In 1952 he retired. But Kallen continued to teach at Cologne University until his successor Theodor Schieffer was appointed in 1954. As an academic teacher, he supervised two dissertations in Münster and 70 in Cologne. Important academic students were Elisabeth Darapsky , Hans Martin Klinkenberg and Erich Meuthen . Kallen spent the last years of his life in Neuss. He remained unmarried and had no children. He is buried in the main cemetery in Neuss.

Kallen dedicated himself primarily to Nikolaus von Kues. Forty years later, he was able to complete the edition of his early work Concordantia catholica , which Kallen had begun in 1928 . In 1939 and 1941, Kallen published the first two books of the script. For the Society for Rhenish History he published the "Lower Rhine City Atlas" since 1952. The Aachen history association and the association for historical regional studies of the Rhineland elected him as a board member or honorary member. A commemorative publication entitled From the Middle Ages and Modern Times was dedicated to his 70th birthday . On the occasion of his 80th birthday, ten selected essays in the volume Problems of the Legal Order in History and Theory have been combined into one gift of honor.

Discussion about Kallen's role in National Socialism

In the obituaries of Gerhard Kallen, problematic aspects of his work under National Socialism were, according to Klaus Pabst, passed over with silence or described in a glossing over.

German historiography began to critically examine the role of some prominent historians in the Nazi era only very late. This fact sparked heated debates at the Frankfurt Historians' Day in 1998 . The section “German Historians under National Socialism” attracted the greatest attention on September 10, 1998, headed by Otto Gerhard Oexle and Winfried Schulze . In spite of this new discussion, Kallen is missing from the studies of historical studies under National Socialism.

The picture of Kallen's involvement in National Socialism remains controversial to this day, as there is probably no usable personal estate. Frank Golczewski (1988) classified him as “completely true to the line” during the Nazi era. Otherwise he considered him to be "politically inconspicuous". For Ursula Wolf (1996), Kallen was a "supporter of National Socialism". According to Wolf, his confessions to National Socialism, his values ​​and politics, which have been repeated over the years, cannot be classified in the area of ​​“adaptation”. Klaus Papst (2003) classified him as an “active bourgeois fellow traveler” who “was in agreement with many of the goals of the Nazi system and its political methods, but who inevitably also served its other purposes”. According to Anne Christine Nagel (2005), Kallen was one of the few medievalists who stayed politically in the background for a long time or even kept a certain distance from the regime.

Fonts

• A list of publications appeared in: Josef Engel, Hans Martin Klinkenberg (ed.): From the Middle Ages and Modern Times. Gerhard Kallen for his 70th birthday presented by colleagues, friends and students. Hanstein, Bonn 1957, pp. 387-389.

literature

• Ursula Lewald: Gerhard Kallen 1884–1973. In: Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter 37, 1973, pp. XIII – XVI.
• Erich Meuthen: Nekrolog Gerhard Kallen †. In: Historische Zeitschrift 216 (1973), pp. 522-523.
• Klaus Pabst: “Blood and Soil” in the Rhenish way. Gerhard Kallen, National Socialism and the “Western Region”. In: Burkhard Dietz, Helmut Gabel, Ulrich Tiedau (eds.): Griff nach dem Westen. (= Studies on the history and culture of Northwest Europe. Publications of the Institute for Lower Rhine Cultural History and Regional Development of the University of Duisburg Essen. Vol. 6.2). Part 2. Waxmann, Münster et al. 2003, ISBN 3-8309-1144-0 , pp. 945-978.
• Theodor Schieffer: Gerhard Kallen 85 years. In: Rheinische Heimatpflege . New episode. Vol. 6, 1969, p. 151.
• Theodor Schieffer: Gerhard Kallen † 1884–1973. In: Historisches Jahrbuch 93, 1973, pp. 258–260.
• Kallen, Gerhard. In: German Biographical Encyclopedia of Theology and the Churches. Edited by Bernd Moeller with Bruno Jahn. Vol. 1. Saur, Munich 2005, p. 744.

Web links

• Literature by and about Gerhard Kallen in the catalog of the German National Library
• Publications by Gerhard Kallen in the Opac of the Regesta Imperii
• Klaus Pabst: Gerhard Kallen (1884–1973), historian. In: Portal Rhenish History. Personalities, ed. from the Rhineland Regional Council.
• Prof. Dr. Gerhard Kallen at the Historical Commission for Westphalia

Remarks

1. ↑ Klaus Pabst: "Blood and Soil" in the Rhenish way. Gerhard Kallen, National Socialism and the "West Area". In: Burkhard Dietz, Helmut Gabel, Ulrich Tiedau (eds.): Griff nach dem Westen. Part 2, Münster et al. 2003, pp. 945–978, here: p. 948.
2. ↑ Klaus Pabst: "Blood and Soil" in the Rhenish way. Gerhard Kallen, National Socialism and the "West Area". In: Burkhard Dietz, Helmut Gabel, Ulrich Tiedau (eds.): Griff nach dem Westen. Part 2, Münster et al. 2003, pp. 945–978, here: p. 969.
3. ^ Gerhard Kallen: Rhenish history up to the collapse of the second empire. In: Frontier in the West. A home book from the Rhine. Vol. 1. Düsseldorf 1940, p. 188. See also Ursula Wolf: Litteris et Patriae. The Janus face of history. Stuttgart 1996, p. 89.
4. ↑ Klaus Pabst: "Blood and Soil" in the Rhenish way. Gerhard Kallen, National Socialism and the "West Area". In: Burkhard Dietz, Helmut Gabel, Ulrich Tiedau (eds.): Griff nach dem Westen. Part 2, Münster et al. 2003, pp. 945–978, here: p. 975.
5. ↑ Klaus Pabst: "Blood and Soil" in the Rhenish way. Gerhard Kallen, National Socialism and the "West Area". In: Burkhard Dietz, Helmut Gabel, Ulrich Tiedau (eds.): Griff nach dem Westen. Part 2, Münster et al. 2003, pp. 945–978, here: p. 958.
6. ^ Gerhard Kallen: Friedrich Barbarossa. Cologne 1943.
7. ↑ Gerhard Kallen: The political theory in the philosophical system of Nikolaus von Cues. In: Historische Zeitschrift , Vol. 165 (1942), pp. 246-277.
8. ↑ Klaus Pabst: "Blood and Soil" in the Rhenish way. Gerhard Kallen, National Socialism and the "West Area". In: Burkhard Dietz, Helmut Gabel, Ulrich Tiedau (eds.): Griff nach dem Westen. Part 2, Münster et al. 2003, pp. 945–978, here: p. 976.
9. ↑ Cf. the list of dissertations in Josef Engel, Hans Martin Klinkenberg (Ed.): From the Middle Ages and Modern Times. Gerhard Kallen for his 70th birthday presented by colleagues, friends and students. Bonn 1957, pp. 389-394.
10. ↑ Gerhard Kallen: Problems of the legal order in history and theory. Ten selected essays. Cologne et al. 1965.
11. ↑ Klaus Pabst: "Blood and Soil" in the Rhenish way. Gerhard Kallen, National Socialism and the "West Area". In: Burkhard Dietz, Helmut Gabel, Ulrich Tiedau (eds.): Griff nach dem Westen. Part 2, Münster et al. 2003, pp. 945–978, here: p. 947.
12. ↑ The lectures and discussion contributions of the section on historians in National Socialism in: Winfried Schulze, Otto Gerhard Oexle (Ed.): German Historians in National Socialism. Frankfurt am Main 1999.
13. ↑ Winfried Schulze, Otto Gerhard Oexle (ed.): German historians in National Socialism. Frankfurt am Main 1999.
14. ^ Frank Golczewski: Cologne University Teacher and National Socialism. Personal history approaches. Cologne et al. 1988, p. 357f.
15. ↑ Ursula Wolf: Litteris et Patriae. The Janus face of history. Stuttgart 1996, p. 88f.
16. ↑ Klaus Pabst: "Blood and Soil" in the Rhenish way. Gerhard Kallen, National Socialism and the "West Area". In: Burkhard Dietz, Helmut Gabel, Ulrich Tiedau (eds.): Griff nach dem Westen. Part 2, Münster et al. 2003, pp. 945–978, here: p. 978.
17. ^ Anne Christine Nagel: In the shadow of the Third Reich. Medieval research in the Federal Republic of Germany 1945–1970. Göttingen 2005, p. 28.