Gerhard Masur

Gerhard Masur (born September 17, 1901 in Berlin ; † June 21, 1975 in Lynchburg , Virginia , USA ) was a German-American historian .

Life

Masur was a member of the Free Corps in 1919/20 and took part in the Kapp Putsch . He later sympathized with the German People's Party (DVP). He studied history, German, philosophy and art history at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin and at the Philipps-Universität Marburg . In 1925 he received his doctorate from Friedrich Meinecke in Berlin on "Ranke's concept of world history". In 1930 he completed his habilitation with a thesis on the legal philosopher Friedrich Julius Stahl .

Due to his Jewish descent, Masur had to emigrate to Colombia via Switzerland in 1935 . From 1936 to 1938 Masur worked in the Colombian Ministry of Education in Bogotá . From 1938 he taught there as professor and director of the department for philology and languages ​​at the Escuela Normal Superior. From there he emigrated to the USA in 1947 . He taught on a professorship in history at Sweet Briar College in Virginia until 1966 . In 1965/66 he was visiting professor at the Free University of Berlin . From 1966 to 1968 he was visiting professor at the University of California in Los Angeles . All his life Masur was a representative of the history of ideas inspired by Meinecke .

Works

• Ranke's concept of world history . Oldenbourg, Munich 1926.
• Friedrich Julius Stahl. Story of his life. Rise and development 1802–1840. Mittler & Sohn, Berlin 1930.
• Simón Bolívar and the Liberation of South America . Südverlag, Konstanz 1949 (first American Albuquerque 1948).
• Prophets of Yesterday. Studies in European Culture. 1890-1914 . Macmillan, New York 1961 (Ger. 1961).
• Imperial Berlin . Praeger, Munich 1971.
• Events and history. Essays and lectures on European intellectual history . Colloquium, Berlin 1971.
• The uncertain heart. Reports from Berlin about the search for the outdoors . Blenheim, Holyoke, Mass. 1978 (including a bibliography of Masur), ISBN 0-918288-50-9 .

literature

• August Ludwig Degener, Walter Habel: Who is who? The German Who's Who , Volume 16, Arani, Berlin 1970, ISBN 3-7605-2007-3 , p. 817.
• Walter Bussmann : Gerhard Masur (1901–1975) . In: Historische Zeitschrift 223 (1976), p. 523 f.
• Bernd Faulenbach : Masur, Gerhard . In: Rüdiger vom Bruch , Rainer A. Müller (Hrsg.): Historikerlexikon. From antiquity to the present . CH Beck, 2nd edition, Munich 2002, p. 213 f.
• Wolfram Fischer : La belle époque. Gerhard Masur as an interpreter of European history and its effects on the world before the First World War. In: Research on Eastern European History 25 (1978), pp. 63–74.
• Gerhard A. Ritter (Ed.): Friedrich Meinecke. Academic teacher and emigrated student. Letters and notes 1910–1977. Oldenbourg, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-486-57977-2 , esp. Pp. 44-47.

Web links

• Excerpt about Masur from the master's thesis by René Betker: "The historical seminar of the Berlin University in the 'Third Reich', with special consideration of the full professors"
• Gerhard Masur in the database of Find a Grave (English)