Gordon A. Craig

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Gordon Craig (1991) with the order Pour le Mérite

Gordon Alexander Craig (born November 26, 1913 in Glasgow , Scotland , †  October 30, 2005 in Portola Valley , California ) was an American historian and writer of Scottish origin. His main focus was on German history and diplomacy research .

Life

Craig's temporarily single father immigrated to Toronto , Canada , and then to Jersey City in the United States in 1925 . Gordon became a US citizen in childhood. He initially studied in the United States and graduated from Princeton University with a degree in history . His role model there was the historian Walter "Buzzer" Hall (1884–1962). In the summer of 1935 he traveled to Germany for the first time with a group of students. His work scholarship, which enabled him to study the development of the National Socialist state and the everyday life of the population under National Socialism in Germany with participant observation , established the lifelong focus of the young historian's work. After he received a two-year Rhodes scholarship and spent it at Balliol College of Oxford University in the UK . His academic teachers there were Benedict Humphrey Sumner and Llewellyn Woodward .

During World War II , he served in the United States Marine Corps and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). According to his former student Michael Stürmer, this is where his precise knowledge of and preference for Germany stems from . According to the set of "know your enemy" , that "(he) know your enemy" , he had at that time the order on all psychology , traditions and command tactics of the Wehrmacht as a Prussian -German army gather and order instruction write down of US officers . Through this activity he gained so much deepened interest and love for his subject that he stuck with it for life.

After the war, he taught at Yale and Princeton Universities , where he was a professor from 1950 to 1961. His lectures were extremely well attended. From 1961 until his retirement in 1979 he taught at Stanford University in California. In 1962 Gordon A. Craig became a visiting professor at the Free University of Berlin and received an honorary doctorate in 1983. In 1965 he gave the Harmon Memorial Lecture in Military History at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Craig was considered the doyen of American history, was president of the American Historical Association for years and a decade, from 1975 to 1985, vice chairman of the Comité International des Sciences Historiques (CISH).

The preoccupation with German history was always at the center of Craig's work. His study The Prussian-German Army 1640–1945 from 1955 earned him international attention in professional circles. His book The Germans (German title: Über die Deutschen ), published in 1982, was an attempt to bring the German people closer to an Anglo-Saxon readership, but it also met with a great response in Germany. It deals with the development of Germany from the Thirty Years War to the end of the 20th century and also deals with the contrast between German culture and the darker sides of German history, especially National Socialism. Another important work by Craig is the book German History 1866–1945.

The differentiated examination of German history from the perspective of the foreign historian is the lasting merit of Craig. He turned against the notion that was widespread after the Second World War that the German national character was determined by a preference for authoritarian forms of rule and militarism . At the same time, he criticized attempts to portray National Socialism as an "industrial accident" in German history without deeper roots.

Craig considered the establishment of the German Empire in 1871 by Otto von Bismarck to be a tragedy and also referred to the problematic role of the Prussian-German army as a “ state within a state ”. Craig interpreted German history in the 19th and early 20th centuries as a conflict between enlightened minds and authoritarian power - a conflict that was usually decided in favor of power.

Craig was an outstanding exponent of international history. Even so, he remained humble. When asked what he might have been, he once replied: a better historian. The tendency to self-deprecating distance was one of the most striking characteristics of the scholar, although many of his works have long been considered classics.

Craig emphasized that history is not an exact science but a " humanistic discipline ". As servants of the muse Klio , historians would have to learn again to “connect history and literature”. Craig was a master of this art. He always knew how to tell interesting stories, with a dash of age humor and a sense of the anecdotal . Above all, he knew how to use beautiful literature as a source for historiography. In order to deepen his background knowledge of the Wilhelmine epoch , he devoted himself enthusiastically to the novels of Theodor Fontane , to whom he dedicated one of his most beautiful books. In Fontane's novels he praised the ability to penetrate more deeply into social reality and the class conflicts of his time than the “braid professors”, the guild historians, could ever have done. As a connoisseur and lover of German-language literature, his students and readers especially appreciated the fact that he formulated with a great sense of language and liveliness, far removed from dry technical jargon.

Craig had a particularly close relationship with Berlin , where he taught as a visiting professor in the 1960s. For years he had been working on a book about the Berlin novels of the 20th century, but could not finish it.

Gordon Alexander Craig died on October 30, 2005 at the age of 91 in a California retirement home.

Awards (selection)

Fonts (selection)

  • The second chance. America And The Peace. Princeton University Press, 1944.
  • with Felix Gilbert (Ed.): The Diplomats. 1919-1939. Princeton University Press, 1953.
  • The Politics of the Prussian Army 1640-1945. The Clarendon Press, Oxford 1955.
    • The Prussian-German Army 1640–1945. State within the state. Droste, Düsseldorf 1960; Athenäum-Verlag, Königstein 1980.
  • From Bismarck to Adenauer. Aspects of German statecraft. Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore 1958.
    • German statecraft from Bismarck to Adenauer. Droste, Düsseldorf 1961.
  • The Battle of Königgrätz. Prussia's victory over Austria 1866. Lippincott, Philadelphia / New York 1964.
  • Europe since 1815. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York 1964.
    • History of Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. Two volumes. Beck, Munich
      • Volume 1: From the Congress of Vienna to the outbreak of the First World War 1815–1914. 1978, ISBN 3-406-07214-3 .
      • Volume 2: From World War I to the Present 1914–1975. 1979, ISBN 3-406-07215-1 .
    • One-volume special edition: History of Europe 1815–1980. From the Congress of Vienna to the present. Beck, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-406-09567-4 ; 3rd, completely revised and revised edition, ibid. 1989, ISBN 3-406-33634-5 .
  • War, Politics, And Diplomacy. Praeger, New York 1966.
    • War, Politics, and Diplomacy. Zsolnay, Vienna / Hamburg 1968; expanded and updated new edition, ibid. 2001, ISBN 3-552-05153-8 .
  • Germany 1866-1945. The Clarendon Press, Oxford 1978, ISBN 0-19-822113-4 .
  • The Germans. Putnam, New York 1982, ISBN 0-399-12436-5 .
  • with Alexander L. George: Force and Statecraft. Diplomatic Problems of Our Time. Oxford University Press, 1983, ISBN 0-19-503115-6 .
  • The End of Prussia. University of Wisconsin Press, 1984, ISBN 0-299-09730-7 .
  • The Triumph of Liberalism. Zurich in the Golden Age, 1830–1869. Scribner, New York 1988, ISBN 0-684-19062-1 .
    • Money and mind. Zurich in the age of liberalism 1830–1869. Beck, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-406-33311-7 .
  • The Politics Of The Unpolitical: German Writers And The Problem Of Power, 1770–1871. Oxford University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-19-509499-9 .
  • Theodor Fontane: Literature and History in the Bismarck Reich. Oxford University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-19-512837-0 .
  • Politics and Culture in Modern Germany. Essays from The New York Review of Books. Society for the Promotion of Science and Scholarship, Palo Alto 1999, ISBN 0-930664-22-1 .
  • End of the parade. About German history. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-47618-X .

literature

Web links

Commons : Gordon A. Craig  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Lisa Trei: Gordon A. Craig, renowned historian of Germany, dead at 91 , Stanford Report , November 4, 2005 (obituary), accessed on August 13, 2012.
  2. ↑ a b James J. Sheehan: Gordon Craig. US historian wrestling with Germany's past , The Guardian , November 30, 2005 (obituary), accessed August 13, 2012.
  3. ^ Member History: Gordon A. Craig. American Philosophical Society, accessed June 30, 2018 .
  4. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed May 17, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Craig, Gordon A.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Craig, Gordon Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American historian (Germany expert) and writer
DATE OF BIRTH November 26, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Glasgow , Scotland
DATE OF DEATH October 30, 2005
Place of death Portola Valley , California, USA