Hellmut Diwald

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Hellmut Diwald (born August 13, 1924 in Schattau , Moravia , † May 26, 1993 in Würzburg ) was a German historian and publicist . He was one of the best-known representatives of the so-called New Right .

Life and career

Hellmut Diwald grew up in South Moravia and first attended school in Prague before the family moved to Nuremberg in 1938 . His father was an engineer from Austria, his mother Czech. He took an active part in the Second World War and in 1944 passed a secondary school diploma as a soldier in France. After the war, he began studying mechanical engineering, which he completed in 1947 at the Nuremberg Polytechnic. He then studied philosophy , German and history in Hamburg and Erlangen . In 1952 he received his doctorate with the religious and intellectual historian Hans-Joachim Schoeps in Erlangen with a thesis on the subject of "Investigations into historical realism in the 19th century" . He completed his habilitation in 1958 with a thesis on the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey and taught medieval and modern history from 1965 to 1985 at the Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen. From 1948 to 1966 he was also the editor of the journal for the history of religion and intellectual history . Diwald last lived in Würzburg, where his wife Susanne Diwald taught Islamic studies until 1989.

Publications and media work

In 1969 Diwald published a biography about Wallenstein . In 1970 he published the estate of Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach , a conservative politician of the Bismarck era (see Gerlach archive ). In the same year he criticized the German government's policy in "The Recognition" . In 1975 he wrote the first volume of the Propylaea history of Europe under the title Claim to Maturity. 1400-1555 .

Diwald also appeared on radio and television. He was seen several times in the 1970s in the ZDF television series “Questions about the Time” or from 1977 to 1979 in the series “Documents of German Existence”. In this context he discussed with Sebastian Haffner . In addition, Diwald published articles in newspapers such as Die Welt or Rheinischer Merkur .

History of the Germans

In 1978 Diwald's book about the "History of the Germans" was published . In contrast to conventional representations, it was structured "counter-chronologically". The first chapter began with a description of the present, the following chapters led back gradually into the past. Diwald claimed that the Holocaust was "one of the most horrific events in modern times", but was exploited "through deliberate misleading, deceit, and exaggeration for the purpose of the total disqualification of a people". In the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp there were such high mortality rates because prisoners who were unable to work were concentrated there. Heinrich Himmler himself had tried to lower the death rate, the final solution to the Jewish question was initially not to be understood as the planned murder, but rather the emigration and deportation of the Jews to the East.

Diwald, numerous errors and mistakes were proven, but the conception and intention of the book were also fundamentally criticized: A conscious attempt was made to downplay the crimes of the Nazi era. Diwald rejected this, but at the urging of the publisher, several passages of the text were changed in the second edition. Barbara Distel described Diwald's book as a milestone in a process in which the denial of the National Socialist mass murders had found widespread use. Thomas Assheuer and Hans Sarkowicz said that with the publication of Diwald's book the success of a new right “re-nationalization” had begun, which had triggered an “avalanche-like growth” of right-wing literature - against the liberalist spirit of the “national oblivion of the CDU” ”. For Claus Leggewie , Diwald was a “revisionist historian from the very beginning”. Even Golo Mann described the work Diwalds that "old and neo-Nazis with joy einschlürfen" would as revisionist. Since then, Diwald has been considered an outsider among historians in Germany, "who accordingly showed less and less consideration".

One of his most extensive works, The Great Events. Five millennia of world history in representations and documents (published in 1990 in initially 6 volumes with approx. 3900 pages) is less known to the public, as it was an exclusive edition by the publisher "Coron" that did not come into bookshops.

Political activities and memberships

Diwald's unconditional support for German reunification (e.g. in Wolfgang Venohr (ed.): “German Unity Comes” , Lübbe Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach, 1982) earned him applause from the political right . According to the Schwäbische Zeitung on June 4, 1993, his “Reich German dreams” had “a bad taste”. Diwald was a member of numerous associations that were or are classified as right-wing conservative to right-wing extremist . According to Helmut Kellershohn and Alice Brauner-Orthen, Diwald was involved in the German guild . In 1979 he was a founding member of the Sudeten German Academy of Sciences and Arts .

In November 1981 Diwald founded the Contemporary History Research Center Ingolstadt (ZFI) with Alfred Schickel and Alfred Seidl , of which he became a board member. In December 1983 he was one of the founders of the “conservative collection movement” Deutschlandrat in Bad Homburg, along with Armin Mohler , Wolfgang Seiffert , Franz Schönhuber , Robert Hepp , Bernard Willms and Hans-Joachim Arndt . Without being a member himself, he was close to the Republicans , for whose second party platform he wrote the preamble in January 1990 . Later he was a member of the board of trustees of the "REP-related" "Carl Schurz Foundation". In 1989 he founded the Straube publishing house in Erlangen with Wolfgang Venohr , Günther Deschner and others .

Diwald gave interviews for the Young Freedom , was a functionary of the Sudeten German "community of ideas" Witikobund , founding member of the Sudeten German Academy of Sciences and Arts, member of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft , the German Academy for Education and Culture, the General Assembly of the Christian Youth Village Association in Germany and the Goethe Institute Munich. The Aktion Deutsches Königsberg has led him as patron since 1994 after his death.

aftermath

In 1994 the Munich publicist Rolf-Josef Eibicht published the memorial to Hellmut Diwald. His legacy for Germany, his courage to tell history . The authors included numerous right-wing conservative and right-wing extremist authors, including Wigbert Grabert , whose Hohenrain publishing house also published the book. According to the Tübingen public prosecutor, a contribution by the Osnabrück sociology professor Robert Hepp , in which doubts about the Holocaust were expressed, constituted sedition . As a result, the Hohenrain publishing house was searched, remaining copies were confiscated and an investigation was initiated against the author and publisher. This was later discontinued, the Tübingen District Court ordered the confiscation of the book by decision of June 3, 1998.

Awards and honors

Works

  • Studies on historical realism in the 19th century . Dissertation. Erlangen 1952.
  • Hegelianism in Prussia by Heinrich Leo. Published by Leiden-Cologne, 1958.
  • Living spirit. Ed., Leiden-Cologne, 1959.
  • Leopold von Ranke, History of Wallenstein. Ed., Düsseldorf, 1967.
  • Wilhelm Dilthey, Epistemology and Philosophy of History. Goettingen, 1963.
  • Wallenstein. A biography. Munich / Esslingen , 1969, ISBN 3-7628-0432-X .
  • Freedom of Belief, Freedom and Tolerance in Western History. Hanover, 1967.
  • Ernst Moritz Arndt. The emergence of the German national consciousness. Munich, 1970.
  • Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, From the Revolution to the North German Confederation. Ed., Göttingen 1970.
  • The recognition. Report on the Nation's Lament. Munich / Esslingen 1970.
  • Friedrich Schiller, Wallenstein. Frankfurt a. M./Berlin/Wien 1970.
  • People and powers - history in focus. Book series with 8 volumes, publisher, Munich, 1973.
  • Entitlement to come of age, Propylaea History of Europe Volume 1, 1400 - 1555. Frankfurt a. M./Berlin/Wien 1975, ISBN 3-549-05481-5 .
  • History of the Germans. Propylaea. Frankfurt a. M./Berlin/Wien 1978, ISBN 3-549-05801-2 .
  • The battle for the oceans. Munich / Zurich 1980.
  • Under the sign of the eagle, portraits of famous Prussians. Ed., Bergisch Gladbach 1981.
  • Luther. A biography. Bergisch Gladbach 1982, ISBN 3-404-61096-2 .
  • Life pictures of Martin Luther. Bergisch Gladbach 1982.
  • Documents of German existence. Ed., Krefeld 1983.
  • Courage to story. 1983, ISBN 3-8334-4593-9 .
  • The heirs of Poseidon. Maritime power politics in the 20th century. Munich 1984.
  • Inferiority as a reason of state. , Ed., Krefeld 1985.
  • Heinrich the First. The establishment of the German Empire. Bergisch Gladbach 1987.
  • History gives courage. Erlangen 1989.
  • Germany United fatherland. History of our present. Ullstein. Frankfurt a. M./Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-8334-5463-6 .
  • The big events. Five millennia of world history. 6 volumes, Coron, Lachen am Zürichsee 1990.
  • A crosshead doesn't need an alibi: scenes from history. Frankfurt a. M./Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-8334-5464-4 .
  • Why so depressed? Germany has a future. Ed., Hohenrain-Verlag , Tübingen 1992, ISBN 3-89180-034-7 .
  • Our stolen story . German Academy for Education and Culture, Munich 1992.
  • Handbook on the German Nation, Volume 4, Germany's Unification and Europe's Future. Ed., Tübingen 1992.

literature

  • Martin Finkenberger: History revisionists in court. In: Martin Finkenberger, Horst Junginger (Ed.): In the service of lies. Herbert Grabert (1901-1978) and his publishers. Aschaffenburg: Alibri-Verlag, 2004. pp. 124–141, on this p. 127 f. ISBN 3-932710-76-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Not in 1929, as reported in several places. In 2003, companion Günther Deschner announced that the wrong year could be traced back to a publisher who feared that Diwald could otherwise be associated with the Nazi era: Letter to the editor to JF, June 27, 2003, (online)
  2. ↑ Thomas Pfeiffer, Media of a New Social Movement from Right , 2000, p. 169.
  3. ↑ a b Jürgen Zarusky, Denial of the Holocaust. The anti-Semitic strategy after Auschwitz , In: BPS-Aktuell, special edition documentation of the 1999 annual conference of the Federal Inspectorate for Writings Harmful to Young People, p. 8.
  4. ^ Hermann Graml, Old and New Apologists of Hitler , In: Right-Wing Extremism in the Federal Republic , Wolfgang Benz (Ed.), Fischer 1992, p. 86.
  5. ↑ Hellmut Diwald, The most horrific crimes in our history , Die Welt, December 18, 1978, p. 4.
  6. ↑ Barbara Distel, Defamation as a Method , In: Right-wing extremism in the Federal Republic , Wolfgang Benz (Ed.), Fischer 1992, p. 190.
  7. ^ Thomas Assheuer, Hans Sarkowicz, right-wing radicals in Germany. The old and the new right , Beck Verlag 1990, p. 149.
  8. ↑ Claus Leggewie, The Republicans. Phantom picture of the new rights , Rotbuch Verlag, 1989, p. 62
  9. ↑ Der Spiegel 48/1989 of November 27, 1989, p. 74.
  10. ↑ Gustav Seibt, Heilversagen , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , June 2, 1993
  11. ↑ Helmut Kellershohn, Das Plagiat: the völkisch nationalism of “Junge Freiheit” , DISS 1994, pp. 70 and 102.
  12. ↑ Alice Brauner-Orthen, The New Right in Germany: Anti-Democratic and Racist Tendencies , Leske + Budrich 2001, p. 112
  13. ↑ Wolfgang Michalka, Gerd Braitmaier, East-West Conflict and Securing Peace , F. Steiner Verlag 1985, p. 46.
  14. ↑ Christoph Butterwegge , Horst Isola, right-wing extremism in United Germany , Steintor Verlag 1991, p. 147
  15. ↑ Local court Tübingen, file number 4 Gs 1085/97
personal data
SURNAME Diwald, Hellmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH August 13, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Schattau , Moravia
DATE OF DEATH May 26, 1993
Place of death Wurzburg , Germany