Adolf Rein

Gustav Adolf Rein (born August 16, 1885 in Eisenach , † January 6, 1979 in Hamburg ) was a German historian and National Socialist university politician. As state commissioner (from 1933) and as rector of the University of Hamburg (1934–1938), he played a major role in bringing the university into line and in the dismissal of numerous Jewish and politically unpopular professors.

Live and act

academic career

Adolf Rein, son of educators Wilhelm Rein , studied history in Jena , Florence , Paris and Leipzig , where he in 1910 when Karl Lamprecht Dr. phil. received his doctorate . After stays abroad in Great Britain and the USA , he completed his habilitation in 1914 with a thesis on The Constitution of the United States of America at what was then Kaiser Wilhelms-Universität Strasbourg .

After participating in the First World War , Rein moved to the newly founded Hamburg University in 1919, where, as an expert on North America, he immediately became a member of the Senate Committee for Foreign Studies and in 1927 received an extraordinary post for colonial and overseas history.

University politician and rector in Hamburg at the time of National Socialism

In 1932 Rein wrote his influential work The Idea of ​​the Political University , in which he propagated an "adaptation of the sciences to the requirements of the times". In 1933 he joined the NSDAP after initial hesitation . Supported by the National Socialist German Student Union , Rein was appointed government director in the Hamburg university authorities in May 1933, was given far-reaching powers and subsequently began to redesign the university according to his ideas. During this time, numerous Jewish and politically unpopular professors were dismissed. In September 1933 Rein became a full professor for colonial and overseas history and the history of Germanness abroad . In November 1933 he signed the German professors' confession of Adolf Hitler . After the passing of a new university law that abolished academic self-administration in favor of the leadership principle of the Nazi state , Rein took over the office of rector in 1934 and held it until 1938. During this time he established the Hamburg Colonial Institute - now as a National Socialist research facility - as well the establishment of a branch of the high school of the NSDAP , which he headed from 1938 to 1945.

Rein took part as a guest in March 1941 at the opening of Alfred Rosenberg's Institute for Research into the Jewish Question in Frankfurt am Main .

post war period

After the end of the war, Rein was dismissed from university by the British military government in August 1945 . Although he subsequently succeeded in being classified only as a “fellow traveler” and later even as “exonerated” as part of the denazification , he failed several times before his death when trying to be re-admitted to the university as a professor.

Instead, organized purely intellectual discussion groups, from which later u. a. the scientific study group of the Evangelical Academy Hamburg emerged, and in 1950 participated in the establishment of the Ranke Society , whose chairmanship he held until 1968. 1953 Rein appeared again for the first time at an event of the Evangelical Academy in the university; In 1955 he became chairman of the board of trustees of the Alfred Toepfer Foundation FVS , of which he had been a member since June 1933 at Alfred Toepfer's request .

Together with Wilhelm Schüßler, Rein has been editing a selection of the century edition of Bismarck's works since 1962 . He founded the magazine Das Historisch-Politische Buch , which was published by Muster-Schmidt Verlag. His worldview hadn't changed.

"In the prehistory of North America's entry into the war , the 'world enemy' Hitler constantly fought, Judaism , was undoubtedly one of the advisers to the President."

- Rein, The German and Politics , 1974

In the Soviet occupation zone Rein's writings The Truth About Hitler came from the English lips , Why is England at War? (both Junker & Dünnhaupt , Berlin 1940) and Europe and the kingdom ( Essen Verlagsanstalt , Essen 1943) as well as by him under the pseudonym Reinhard Wolf wrote Cyprus ordeal . Deutsche Informationsstelle, Berlin 1940, including all foreign language editions placed on the list of literature to be discarded.

literature

• Geoffrey J. Giles: Students and National Socialism in Germany , Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 1985, pp. 111 ff., ISBN 0-691-05453-3 .
• Arnt Goede: Adolf Rein and the "idea of ​​the political university" . Reimer, Berlin 2008 (= Hamburg contributions to the history of science. Vol. 17), ISBN 978-3-496-02806-2 .
• Michael Grüttner : Biographical Lexicon on National Socialist Science Policy (= Studies on Science and University History. Volume 6). Synchron, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-935025-68-8 , p. 136.
• Helmut Heiber : University under the swastika , Part II: The surrender of the high schools , Vol. 1, Saur, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-598-22630-6 , pp. 511-528.
• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Adolf Rein in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Adolf Rein in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Helmut Heiber: University under the swastika , Part II: The capitulation of the high schools , Vol. 1, Munich 1992, p. 511.
2. ^ Jan Zimmermann: Alfred Toepfer. Ellert & Richter, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-8319-0295-8 , p. 63.
3. ↑ List of auszusondernden literature, Letter R , list of auszusondernden literature, Letter W .