Hellmut Braun

The title of this article is ambiguous. For other people with a similar name, see Helmut Braun .

Hellmut Braun (born July 26, 1913 in Saronno , † December 26, 2008 in Lübeck ) was a German orientalist and librarian .

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Hellmut Braun was the son of a foreman who worked for a German company in Italy. He was therefore born in Lombardy . He later moved with his parents near Esslingen am Neckar . He finished his school education there in 1932 with the Abitur. He then studied theology, Greek, Hebrew and oriental languages ​​at the University of Tübingen and the University of Bonn . From 1934 to 1935 he served in the military. He then used a nine-month trip through northern Finland to acquire Finnish and Lappish language skills. From 1936 to 1939 he studied seminars, Islamic studies and the history of religion at the University of Berlin and completed his studies with a diploma at the university abroad.

During the Second World War , Braun fought in Russia, where he was seriously injured in 1941 and spent eight months in a hospital. In February 1943 he married Rosemarie. A month later, his wife accompanied him to Turkey, where her husband had been posted. Braun began working on his dissertation during the war. In it he attempted a previously unexploited representation of the first Shah of the Safavids . The University of Göttingen accepted the work after the end of the war in 1946.

Braun initially worked as an assistant in the field of Iranian Studies and in 1949 switched to the Hamburg State and University Library as a librarian . In 1952 he passed the specialist examination for library service at the Bavarian State Library . A short time later, he took over the management of the alphabetical catalog at the Hamburg Library. Since he had in-depth knowledge of formal cataloging, he was also known in the professional world outside of Hamburg. In 1961 he took part as one of the German delegates at the international conference on the principles of alphabetical cataloging.

In addition to his activities as a librarian, Braun also worked scientifically. He completed his habilitation at the Hamburg University in 1967 on Iran and its kings from 1629 to 1694. He also taught Iranian Studies. In 1968 he took over the position of library director from Hermann Tiemann . During his service time he installed a new electronic data processing system in the library, which was of lasting importance and which from 1974 onwards recorded all new publications according to the current guidelines of alphabetical cataloging.

Hellmut Braun was a member of the Joachim Jungius Society of Sciences from 1968 to 2003 . From 1967 to 1978 he was a member of the board of the Maximilian Society . From 1968 to 1978 he worked on the board of trustees of the Hamburg Scientific Foundation . In retirement he moved to Lübeck, where he died at the end of 2008.

literature

• Horst Gronemeyer: Braun, Hellmut . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 6 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8353-1025-4 , p. 46-47 .