Hedwig Hintze

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Memorial plaque for Hedwig Hintze in Berlin

Hedwig Hintze (born February 6, 1884 in Munich as Hedwig Guggenheimer, † July 19, 1942 in Utrecht ) was one of the first women historians in Germany and the second to complete her habilitation. Her specialty was the history of the French Revolution and its constitutional history, as well as French and German historiography on this subject. She taught at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin and was a member of the staff of the most important German specialist body, "Historische Zeitschrift". In 1933, due to her Jewish origin, her license to teach and participation in the HZ was withdrawn, and academic work in Germany was no longer possible. Years of exile followed.

Life

education

Hedwig Hintze was the daughter of the banker Moritz Guggenheimer (1825–1902) and his wife Helene nee Wolff. The father was chairman of the supervisory board of the Löwenbräu brewery , head of the city council, first chairman of the Upper Bavaria Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and played a role in economic and political life in Munich. Hedwig initially received private tuition, from 1895 she attended a secondary school for girls in Munich. In addition, she received private lessons in the history of states, art and literature. Some stays in French-speaking countries raised her qualifications so that she was able to take the Bavarian state examination for French teachers in 1901. In autumn 1901 she went to a girls boarding school in Brussels for a year . In 1904 she became a guest student at the University of Munich and attended lectures on cultural studies. In 1908 she moved to Berlin after women were allowed to study, where she was one of the first women to take her Abitur.

From 1910 Hedwig Hintze studied history, economics and German at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin . Attending the events of the well-known historian of the Prussian constitution, Otto Hintze , was significant for her life . In 1912 she married Hintze, 23 years her senior. Her studies were repeatedly interrupted for several years. During the First World War she worked temporarily for the Red Cross and had to devote herself several times between 1918 and 1920 to the care of her husband, who was frequently and seriously ill. In lectures she heard, among others, Ernst Troeltsch . In addition to her husband's lectures, she also attended events by Friedrich Meinecke on the era of the French Revolution and the Wars of Liberation, and studied economics with Heinrich Herkner . Their professors were among the few more liberal university lecturers. Her dissertation topic, the 'Municipal Legislation of the Constituante', arose in connection with political and constitutional history. She was able to submit this work for a doctorate in 1924. Your doctoral supervisor was Friedrich Meinecke. On June 24, 1924, the candidate received Ms. Geh. Rat Hintze received the doctoral certificate with the grade summa cum laude .

Historian in Berlin until 1933

Hedwig Hintze's doctoral thesis was part of a large research project on French constitutional and revolutionary history, which she continued to pursue in order to obtain her habilitation. She learned important influences in this work from her husband Otto Hintze, who always supported her very much in her projects. Due to years of preparatory work, she was able to submit the habilitation thesis as early as 1928. In the meantime she also published many articles in magazines and books. She wrote the introduction to Alphonse Aulard's story of the French Revolution . Hintze also wrote in socialist magazines, especially in the theoretical organ of the SPD “Die Gesellschaft”, in the “Sozialistische Monatshefte” or in the specialist organ “Die Justiz”. She had no fear of contact with left-wing publications. She had a slightly different view of the history of Germany than many of her colleagues in the historians' guild. She shared many ideas with her great political role model Hugo Preuss . In contrast to the majority of conservative historians, it approved the Weimar constitution that Preuss had drafted. She defended these democratic ideas with conviction and skill against some conservative representatives in her field. She was offered to work on the historical magazine, where she oversaw the review section and wrote countless specialist reviews herself. After her habilitation, she taught at Berlin University, where she introduced hitherto little-noticed topics such as the historiography of modernity. It was important to her to establish a deeper understanding of modern French historiography in the German historian scene and in the training of students.

Hedwig Hintze's fate after the National Socialist seizure of power

1933 she was a Jew in Nazi Germany , the instructor withdrawn. She also had to give up her work for the historical magazine in 1933 when the lead editor Friedrich Meinecke wanted to achieve the independence of his magazine by dismissing Jewish employees. Otto Hintze, who had been co-editor for many years, then wrote to Meinecke that he would end his editorial work with immediate effect in order to avoid any "semblance of concessions" to the National Socialist cultural policy.

After a research stay in Paris , Hedwig Hintze returned to Berlin in 1935 and, following the experience of 1938, emigrated to the Netherlands for good one year later . Shortly after her husband died in Berlin - on April 25, 1940 - she received an offer to the University in Exile at the New School for Social Research in the USA on October 4, 1940 . Her position was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation . The university committee that dealt with her vocation expected her to arrive in the spring of 1941. The committee considered her one of the best historians in Europe. Hintze had references from fellow historians who expected their work to enrich US history. In the meantime, the German Reich had invaded the Netherlands in the western campaign and occupied it on May 14, 1940. Since the persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands began immediately, Hintze could no longer leave the country. The emigrants who fled Germany were particularly targeted by the Gestapo . And for Hedwig Hintze, the only relatively protected status of living in a so-called mixed marriage ended with the death of her husband. She lived near Utrecht, friends with a group of other German emigrants of Jewish origin. Most of the time she was completely destitute and dependent on help from friends. On November 26, 1941, an ordinance was issued, according to which the property of Jews who were abroad was forfeited in favor of the German Reich. Hedwig Hintze thus lost all entitlement to the widow's pension to which she was entitled and which she had been fighting for since her husband's death. In April 1942 Hintze tried to emigrate to Switzerland with the help of his friend, Swiss historian Edgar Bonjour . But Switzerland refused the request. On April 27, 1942, the "General Commissioner for Security" and "Higher SS and Police Leader" "Northwest announced" at the " Reich Commissioner for the occupied Netherlands ' Hans Albin Rauter , the obligation on the identification of Jews, so the compulsion, the Star of David to wear. On June 4, Hintze received the request to hand over all the silver in her possession, a tea caddy and six silver spoons, to the German agency for expropriations, the “Raubbank” Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co , in Amsterdam on June 10, without compensation . In her last letter to her Swiss friend Edgar Bonjour on July 6, 1942, she hinted at a suicide. On July 15, Jews were first transported to the Westerbork transit camp , from where the trains to the extermination camps in the east started - presumably without Hintze's knowledge. Hedwig Hintze died on July 19, 1942 in the Utrecht hospital . Until 2004, based on the testimony of a Dutch acquaintance Hedwig Hintzes, historians assumed that Hedwig Hintzes had committed suicide out of desperation. In 2003 a researcher in Great Britain, Volkmar Felsch, found the diaries of a friend of Hedwig Hintze, the mathematician Otto Blumenthal , who also emigrated from Aachen , who was deported and murdered by the Germans a little later with his wife. In these diaries one found in 2005 the report by Blumenthal about an illness-related death due to an existing heart failure Hedwig Hintze, which he is supposed to have learned in a private conversation with a nurse. Since it is uncertain whether Blumenthal's investigations are correct, the cause of death cannot be fully clarified today.

Memory of Hedwig Hintze

Hedwig Hintze received probably the first appreciation after the end of National Socialism in 1975 by the GDR historian Hans Schleier in his book on the civil history of the Weimar Republic. In 1996 the Hedwig Hintze Society for Historical Research and Education was founded in Bremen , which has its office and a Hedwig Hintze Institute at the University of Bremen. The aim of the company is to document the life, work and impact of the historian Hedwig Hintze. In addition, the Association of Historians in Germany awards the Hedwig Hintze Prize in memory of Hedwig Hintze . The Hedwig Hintze Prize is endowed with € 5,000. The association's prize is aimed at recently graduated and is awarded for an excellent dissertation from the entire field of history. In addition, since 2000 there has been the “Hedwig Hintze Women's Promotion Prize at the Department of History and Cultural Studies” at the Free University of Berlin, which is endowed with 1000 €.

Font selection Hedwig Hintzes

  • The municipal legislation of the Constituante . Dissertation from the Philosophical Faculty Berlin. 1924. The text later forms a chapter of the post-doctoral thesis State Unity and Federalism in Old France and in the Revolution . s. u.
  • Introduction to: François-Alphonse Aulard : Political History of the French Revolution. Origin and development of democracy and the republic 1789–1804 , Munich 1924.
  • French regionalism . In: Volk unter Völkern ( Books of Germanism Volume 1). For the German Protection Association [...] edited by Dr. KC v. Loesch, Breslau 1925, pp. 349–367.
  • Hugo Preuss : Constitutional developments in Germany and Western Europe. Historical foundation for a constitutional law of the German Republic. From the estate. Edited and introduced by Hedwig Hintze. Carl Heymann, Berlin 1927.
  • The German unified state and history . In: “Justice. Journal for the Renewal of German Law “3 (1928), pp. 431–447.
  • State unity and federalism in old France and during the revolution. DVA, Stuttgart 1928. Habilitation thesis, University of Berlin, 1928. Reprint:
    • State unity and federalism in old France and during the revolution . Unchanged reprint of the Stuttgart edition with a new introduction by Rolf Reichardt, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 1889, ISBN 3-518-40172-6 .
  • Otto Hintze and Hedwig Hintze: "Do not despair and do not stop fighting ..." The correspondence 1925–1940. Arranged by Brigitta Oestreich. Edited by Robert Jütte and Gerhard Hirschfeld , Klartext, Essen 2004, ISBN 3-89861-142-6 .

Secondary literature (selection)

  • Hinnerk Bruhns: Hedwig Hintze (1884–1942). Une historienne en avance sur son temps, un destin tragique, une reconnaissance tardive . In: Un siècle d'historiennes . Sous la direction d'André Burguière et de Bernard Vincent. Editions des femmes - Antoinette Fouque, Paris 2014, ISBN 978-2-7210-0634-9 , pp. 97-115.
  • Heike Brandstätter: Hedwig Hintze - Small Fonts. Try reading. In: Annali dell'Istituto Storico-Germanico in Trento. Ban 22, 1996, pp. 421-432
  • Elisabeth Dickmann: Hedwig Hintze (1884-1942). Bibliography. 2. revised Edition Berlin: Trafo-Verlag 2017. (Writings of the Hedwig Hintze Institute Bremen. Volume 1.)
  • Elisabeth Dickmann: The historian Hedwig Hintze (1884–1942). No place - nowhere. In: Elisabeth Dickmann and Eva Schöck-Quinteros (eds.): Barriers and careers. The beginnings of women's studies in Germany. Berlin: Trafo-Verlag 2000. (Series of publications by the Hedwig Hintze Institute Bremen. Volume 5.) pp. 45–60
  • Elisabeth Dickmann: The political self-image in the life and work of the historian Hedwig Hintze. In: Contributions to the history of the labor movement, vol. 44,2. Berlin, Trafo-Verlag 2002. pp. 119–140
  • Bernd Faulenbach : Hedwig Hintze-Guggenheimer (1884–1942). Historian of the French Revolution and Republican publicist. In: Barbara Hahn (Hrsg.): Women in the cultural studies. From Lou Andreas-Salomé to Hannah Arendt , Munich 1994, pp. 136–151, 325–330.
  • Marianne Goch: Hedwig Hintze, German historian. In: Famous Women. 300 portraits. Edited by Luise F. Pusch and Susanne Gretter. 1.1999, Frankfurt, Leipzig: Insel Verlag
  • Rainer Hansen, Wolfgang Ribbe (Ed.): History in Berlin in the 19th and 20th centuries. Berlin: de Gruyter 1992. Reprint 2012
  • Hintze, Hedwig. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 11: Hein – Hirs. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-22691-8 , pp. 365-371.
  • Robert Jütte : Hedwig Hintze (1884–1942) - The challenge of traditional historiography by a left-liberal Jewish historian . In: Walter Grab : Jews in German Science . Nateev Pr. And Publ. Enterprises, Tel-Aviv 1986, proceedings of an international symposium of the same name at Tel-Aviv University, Institute for Dt. History, April 1985. Directed by Walter Grab. Supplement 10 of the yearbook of the Institute for German History at Tel Aviv University / Israel.
  • Robert Jütte and Gerhard Hirschfeld: Otto Hintze and Hedwig Hintze. "Do not despair and do not stop fighting ..." The correspondence 1925–1940. Arranged by Brigitta Oestreich. Essen: Klartext Verlag 2004. (Writings of the Library for Contemporary History - New Series. Volume 17)
  • Steffen Kaudelka and Peter Th. Walther: New and new archive finds about Hedwig Hintze (1884–1942). Berlin 1999. In: Jahrbuch für Universitätsgeschichte 2, 1999. pp. 203-218
  • Steffen Kaudelka: Reception in the Age of Confrontation - French History and History in Germany 1920–1940 . Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-525-35184-4 . (Publications of the Max Planck Institute for History Göttingen, Vol. 186)
  • Steffen Kaudelka: Hedwig Hintze and Hugo Preuß: looking for a new understanding of democratic self-government and nation in a European dimension. In: Christoph Müller (Ed.): Municipality, City, State. Aspects of the constitutional theory of Hugo Preuss. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag 2005, pp. 101–120
  • Karl Korsch : The Problem of State Unity - Federalism in the French Revolution. In: Archive for the history of socialism and the workers' movement (Grünberg archive). 15. 1930. Reprinted 1966. pp. 126-146
  • Wolfgang A. Mommsen : The bequests in the German archives and libraries. Boppard: Harald Boldt Verl. 1971
  • Brigitta Oestreich: Hedwig and Otto Hintze. A biographical sketch. In: History and Society . 11: 397-419 (1985).
  • Brigitta Oestreich: Hedwig Hintze, née Guggenheimer (1884–1942). How did she become Germany's most important specialist historian? In: Yearbook of the Italian-German Historical Institute in Trento. 22.1996, pp. 421-432
  • Sylvia Paletschek: Ermentrude and her sisters: the first habilitation women historians in Germany. In: Henning Albrecht u. a. (Ed.): Political history of society in the 19th and 20th centuries. Festival ceremony for Barbara Vogel. Hamburg: Krämer 2006. pp. 175-187
  • Hans Schleier : The bourgeois German historiography of the Weimar Republic: I. Currents - Conceptions - Institutions; II. The left-liberal historians. East Berlin, Academy of Science of the GDR, 1974. Edition in a book. At the same time university thesis, dissertation B, 1974. Here also the section Hedwig Hintze, pp. 272–302.
  • Eva Schöck-Quinteros: Unknown letters from Hedwig Hintze to Karl Kautsky. Lecture at the Hedwig Hintze Society Bremen 2004. Expected to be published in 2019
  • Erika Schwarz: Hedwig Hintze. In: Berlin historians: the recent German history in research and teaching at the Berlin University. Ed. And edit. by Edeltraud Krüger. Berlin: Humboldt University 1985
  • Heinz Sproll: French Revolution and Napoleonic Era in the historical-political culture of the Weimar Repunlik. History and history lessons 1918–1933. Munich: Birds 1992
  • Inge Stephan: The fate of the gifted woman in the shadow of famous men. In it: the life and work of Hedwig Guggenheimer-Hintze (1884–1942). Stuttgart: Kreuzverl. 1989. pp. 143-156
  • Peter Th. Walther: Workshop report: Hedwig Hintze in the Netherlands 1939–1942. In: Marc Schalenberg and Peter Th. Walther (eds.): Always stay in research. Rüdiger von Bruch on his 60th birthday. Stuttgart: Steiner 2004. pp. 425-433
  • Peter Th. Walther: Hedwig Hintze in the Netherlands 1939–1942: a workshop report. In: German Historians in Exile (1933–1945). Selected studies. Edited by Mario Kessler. Berlin: Metropol 2005. pp. 197–222
  • Peter Th. Walther: The destruction of a project: Hedwig Hintze, Otto Hintze and Friedrich Meinecke. In: Gisela Bock and Daniel Schönpflug (eds.): Friedrich Meinecke in his time. Studies of life and work. Munich: Steiner Verl. 2006. pp. 119–144

Web links

Commons : Hedwig Hintze  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Hedwig Hintze  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hans Schleier: The bourgeois German historiography of the Weimar Republic: I. Currents - Conceptions - Institutions; II. The left-liberal historians. Berlin-Ost, Academy of Science of the GDR, 1974, pp. 272–275.
  2. ^ Hans Schleier: The bourgeois German historiography of the Weimar Republic: I. Currents - Conceptions - Institutions; II. The left-liberal historians. Berlin-Ost, Academy of Science of the GDR, 1974, p. 275.
  3. ↑ Robert Jütte: Hedwig Hintze (1884-1942) - The challenge of traditional historiography by a left-liberal Jewish historian . In Walter Grab : Jews in German Science . Nateev Pr. And Publ. Enterprises, Tel-Aviv 1986, pp. 262ff.
  4. ↑ Peter Th. Walter: Historians who emigrated to the United States 1945–1950: Looking or jumping across the pond? In: Christoph Cobet (Hrsg.): Introduction to questions to the history science in Germany after Hitler 1945-1950. Cobet, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-925389-02-4 , pp. 41-50, here p. 42.
  5. ↑ Gabriela Ann Eakin-Thimme: History in Exile. German-speaking historians after 1933 , Munich 2005 (also dissertation, Frankfurt am Main 1999), p. 61.
  6. ↑ Peter Th. Walther: The Destruction of a Project - Hedwig Wärme, Otto Hintze and Friedrich Meinecke after 1933 . In Gisela Bock ; Daniel Schönpflug (Ed.): Friedrich Meinecke in his time - studies on life and work . Steiner, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 978-3-515-08962-3 . P. 133f.
  7. ↑ Peter Th. Walther: The Destruction of a Project - Hedwig Wärme, Otto Hintze and Friedrich Meinecke after 1933 . In Gisela Bock; Daniel Schönpflug (Ed.): Friedrich Meinecke in his time - studies on life and work , Steiner, Stuttgart 2006, p. 134f.
  8. ^ Robert Jütte; Gerhard Hirschfeld (ed.): “Don't despair and don't stop fighting…” the correspondence Otto Hintze and Hedwig Hintze 1925–1940 . Edited by Brigitta Oestreich, Klartext, Essen 2004, ISBN 3-89861-142-6 , p. 226f.
  9. ↑ So z. B. Robert Jütte and Gerhard Hirschfeld in their foreword to Robert Jütte ; Gerhard Hirschfeld (ed.): “Don't despair and don't stop fighting…” the correspondence Otto Hintze and Hedwig Hintze 1925–1940 . Edited by Brigitta Oestreich, Klartext, Essen 2004, ISBN 3-89861-142-6 , p. 12.
  10. ↑ z. B. also Hans Schleier: The bourgeois German historiography of the Weimar Republic . Berlin-Ost 1974, p. 302.
  11. ^ Volkmar Felsch: Otto Blumenthal's diaries. A math professor from Aachen suffers the Nazi dictatorship in Germany, the Netherlands and Theresienstadt. Edited by Erhard Roy Wiehn, Hartung-Gorre Verlag, Konstanz 2011, ISBN 978-3-86628-384-8 , here diary entries for July 19-21, 1942, p. 384f.
  12. ↑ Peter Th. Walther: The Destruction of a Project - Hedwig Wärme, Otto Hintze and Friedrich Meinecke after 1933 . In Gisela Bock; Daniel Schönpflug (Ed.): Friedrich Meinecke in his time - studies on life and work . P. 134f.
  13. ↑ Gisela Bock: Introduction. In: Gisela Bock (Ed.): Friedrich Meinecke: New letters and documents. Volume 10 of the works, on behalf of the Friedrich Meinecke Institute of the Free University of Berlin. Oldenbourg Verlag 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-70702-1 , p. 18.
  14. ^ Hans Schleier: The bourgeois German historiography of the Weimar Republic: I. Currents - Conceptions - Institutions; II. The left-liberal historians. Berlin-Ost, Academy of Science of the GDR, 1974, pp. 272–275.
  15. ↑ http://www.hhi-bremen.de/institut.html
  16. ↑ http://www.historikerverband.de/nachwuchs/hedwig-hintze-preis.html Accessed June 4, 2014.
  17. ↑ https://www.fu-berlin.de/sites/frauenbeauftragte/foerdern/preise/ge_kult/index.html
personal data
SURNAME Hintze, Hedwig
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Guggenheimer, Hedwig (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German modern historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 6, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH July 19, 1942
Place of death Utrecht