Gerhard Schröder (historian)

Gerhard Schröder (born January 21, 1908 in Stendal ; † July 12, 1944 in Normandy ) was a German historian and director of the National Socialist Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany .

Life

Born on January 21, 1908 in Stendal as the son of a railway loadmaster, but, as he liked to emphasize, from Pomeranian farming families, Gerhard Schröder had studied history, philosophy, pedagogy and German studies in Göttingen and Königsberg since 1926 without attaining a degree to be. Originally a gymnastics tournament , he had been involved in student disputes with Minister of Education and Cultural Affairs Becker and had already worked on camps and trips to "revolutionize higher education and student life" when he found his way to the NSDAP in 1931 and was now a party member, SA man, Party speakers and, above all, Nazi student leaders in Göttingen continued to work in the same way, often also in the "border regions of the Reich" while traveling.

In 1932 Schröder, now a member of Ernst Krieck's followers , moved to Berlin and the following year he became the Berlin editor and administrator of the journal “ Volk im Werden ” published by Krieck in Heidelberg . At the same time he was appointed to the Reich leadership of the student body and permanent editor (later title: Hauptschriftleiter) of the official body "Der Deutsche Student". From 1935 he worked as Walter Frank's assistant and managing director of the “Reich Institute for the History of New Germany”. Schröder was drafted into the Wehrmacht right after the start of the Second World War. He fell in July 1944 after the Allied landings in Normandy.

Schröder was, so the obituary of the Reichsinstitut claimed, “a National Socialist fighter, the type of political soldier” - the embodiment of everything that Walter Frank imagined as “scientific soldierhood” in a historiography that was the “storm song of the SA backwards to continue ”.

In 1939, Schröder's dissertation on historiography as a political educational power was published. In it, the National Socialist ideologue polemicized against Lamprecht's bloodless thought as well as against Burckhardt's pacified, apolitical cultural history that grew out of the rich Swiss “cantonal league”, against the doubtful historiography of a tired generation of epigones for whom the vitamins are vital for a vital historiography political engagement is no longer available. A "bloody historiography" should have a character-shaping, opinion-building and will-building effect, arouse national pride. The dissertation received sharp criticism from Heinrich von Srbik in the historical journal . In particular, Srbik defended Friedrich Meinecke against Schröder's accusation that he was "as a prototype of character fatigue and academic epigonism ..., as a typical appearance of a sterile age without a political nerve, of love without desire, the rigidification and narrowing of German historiography" evaluate.

Fonts

• Student and university in the context of national education , in: Politische Erbildung, vol. 1, 1933, no. 4, p. 20
• History of the German people. A floor plan, Leipzig 1937
• Writing history as a political educational power, Hamburg 1939

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Life data from: Helmut Heiber , Walter Frank and his Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany, Stuttgart 1966, pp. 335, 339.
2. ↑ Helmut Heiber, Walter Frank and his Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany, Stuttgart 1966, p. 335.
3. ↑ Gerhard Schröder: History as a political education power, Hamburg 1939, pp. 78, 88, 106. Quoted from Ursula Wolf, Litteris et patriae. The Janus Face of History, Stuttgart 1996, p. 46.
4. ↑ Gerhard Schröder: History as a political educational power, Hamburg 1939, pp. 56, 135, 140. Quoted from Ursula Wolf, Litteris et patriae. The Janus Face of History, Stuttgart 1996, p. 54.
5. ↑ Quoted from Ursula Wiggershaus-Müller, National Socialism and History. The history of the historical journal and the historical yearbook from 1933-1945, Hamburg 1998, p. 145.