Hans Buchheim

Hans Buchheim (1969)

Hans Buchheim (born January 11, 1922 in Freiberg ; † November 14, 2016 in Mainz ) was a German historian and political scientist . His focus was on political theory , the history of ideas, contemporary history and, in particular, the history of the Third Reich.

Life and career

Hans (Johannes) Buchheim was born as the son of the historian, teacher and later university professor Karl Buchheim . He attended the Albertinum grammar school up to the Quinta in Freiberg and moved with his parents to Leipzig in 1934, where he attended the St. Thomas School up to the Abitur .

In 1940 and 1941 he studied philosophy and classical philology for three trimesters at the University of Leipzig . In autumn 1941 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and took part in the war on the Eastern Front until he was wounded in February 1945 . He was captured by the Americans in the Bad Kissingen military hospital .

From January 1946 he studied at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg classical philology , ancient history and philosophy (with Karl Jaspers and Hans-Georg Gadamer ) as well as ancient law with Wolfgang Kunkel . In December 1950 he was with Hans Schaefer with the work Die Orientpolitik des M. Antonius and his relationship to Octavian in the years 42 to 35 to the Dr. phil. PhD.

The historian Hermann Mau appointed him to the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich in January 1951 . There he worked as a research assistant until 1966.

In the 1960s Buchheim dealt primarily with the theory of totalitarianism . He published the book Totalitarian Rule . From 1963 to 1966 he dealt exclusively in the Federal Chancellery with studies on the subject of the politics of the federal government under the chancellorship of Dr. Konrad Adenauer . Under Federal Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger , he was a member of the planning staff of the Federal Chancellery.

Since the autumn of 1966 (from 1990 as emeritus) Buchheim taught as professor for political science at the University of Mainz . There he built the Institute for Political Science and the Faculty of Social Sciences, of which he was temporarily dean.

Research activity

At the beginning of his scientific research Buchheim dealt with classical philology and Roman history. However, even his dissertation on Marcus Aurelius's policy on the Orient was under the central question of what politics is and how it is done, which accompanied him through all of his research.

At the Institute for Contemporary History, he worked on the organization of the Hitler regime and the history of the SS and the police until autumn 1960. In 1951 he wrote a study on the National Socialist religious policy and the early church struggle of 1933/34 under the title "Faith Crisis in the Third Reich". Since 1953 he was active as an expert (including in matters of reparation ) and was heard in trials against violent Nazi criminals (for example in the Auschwitz trial ).

In his theoretical work he dealt with constitutional questions , the history of political ideas and the theory of politics. His own theoretical definition of politics viewed it as a special, clearly delimitable part of human coexistence. So he worked out a concept that identifies the moments in human interaction that are to be understood as political. In 1971, the theses against the abuse of democracy submitted by the "Politics, Constitution, Law" commission were controversial .

A whole series of individual studies, for example on Thucydides and Machiavelli , on political ethics and power, put his political theory on a broad intellectual-historical foundation.

Buchheim published on the National Socialist system of rule, the constitutional problems and government practice of the Federal Republic, on questions of Germany policy ( Germany policy 1949–1972 ) and on contemporary theories of politics.

reception

The trained classical philologist Hans Buchheim "was one of the few scholars of the present day who were able to strike a bow in the history of ideas from the Greek politeia to the Roman res publica to the Republic of the Basic Law and the practical philosophy from Aristotle to Hegel to Searle with the claim of a current theory of the political. "

“He excelled as a clever and contentious friend of the democratic constitutional state” wrote the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on January 11, 1992 on Buchheim's 70th birthday.

Important academic students of Buchheim were Michael Hartmann , Julia Klöckner and Adolf Weiland .

Memberships and functions

• Deputy chairman of the structure committee for the establishment of the University of Trier / Kaiserslautern (1969/1970)
• Head of the Board of Trustees of the Rhineland-Palatinate State Center for Political Education
• Member of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK). There he was chairman of the advisory board for political questions from 1969 to 1974 and chairman of the commission "Politics, Constitution, Law" from 1975 to 1996
• Board member of the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Foundation
• Member of the PEN Center Germany
• Member of the Board of Trustees of the Fridtjof Nansen Academy for Political Education at the Ingelheim Training Center .

Awards

• 1969 Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon for his research
• 1986 Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class,
• 2006 Order of Merit of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate
• 2016 "Bernhard Sutor Prize for special services to political education in Rhineland-Palatinate"

Private

Hans Buchheim is the father of the economic historian Christoph Buchheim († 2009) and the philosopher Thomas Buchheim .

Fonts

• 1958: The Third Reich. Foundations and political development.
• 1961: The National Socialist Era in the Consciousness of History in the Present.
• 1963: Criticism out of reluctance.
• 1965: totalitarian rule.
• 1965: Anatomy of the SS State.
• 1966: The German resistance against Hitler. Four historical-critical studies. Ed. Together with Walter Schmitthenner
• 1968: Current crisis points in German national consciousness.
• 1968: What does thinking politically mean?
• 1975: Adenauer's security policy 1950–1951.
• 1976: The guideline competence under the chancellorship of Konrad Adenauer.
• 1979: Problems of the juridification of the constitution.
• 1981: Theory of Politics.
• 1981: Aurelius Augustinus ' concept of peace as a concept of a modern theory of peace.
• 1983: The Ethics of Power.
• 1985: Germany Policy 1949-1972.
• 1993: Contributions to the ontology of politics.
• 1996: On the interpretation of Rousseau's “Du Contrat Social ”.
• 2013: The modern republican state

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans Buchheim in the catalog of the German National Library
• Hans Buchheim in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
• Obituary by Hans Buchheim at the University of Mainz

Remarks

1. ^ Hans Buchheim - Munzinger biography. Retrieved January 19, 2020 . 
2. ↑ Hans Buchheim: The modern republican state . Mohr Siebeck, 2013, ISBN 978-3-16-152941-2 ( com.ph [accessed January 19, 2020]).
3. ↑ published by Deutsche Verlagsanstalt , Stuttgart 1953.
4. ↑ Hans Buchheim: The modern republican state . Mohr Siebeck, 2013, ISBN 978-3-16-152941-2 ( com.ph [accessed January 19, 2020]).
5. ↑ https://merkurist.de/mainz/campus/julia-kloeckner-ueber-ihr-studium-in-mainz_Hoc
6. ↑ Prof. em. Dr. Hans Buchheim receives the Bernhard Sutor Prize for Political Education. Retrieved January 19, 2020 .