Helmut Otto (historian)

Helmut Otto (born April 6, 1927 in Freital ) is a German historian . He worked at the Military History Institute of the GDR (MGI) in Potsdam on the history of German military policy and the development of the armed forces before and during the First World War . Among other things, he published on the history of the German General Staff and the connection between militarism and imperialism .

Life

After attending primary school, Otto completed an apprenticeship as an electrician from 1941 to 1944. From 1944 he was first in the Reich Labor Service , then he did military service, participated in the Second World War and was taken prisoner of war . After the war he first worked as an electrician.

From 1948 to 1950 Otto was delegated to the workers 'and farmers' faculty in Dresden , where he passed his school leaving examination in 1950. He then studied history, dialectical and historical materialism and political economy at the University of Leipzig . After his diploma in 1954, he was a research assistant or holder of a scientific degree in the "Military History" department at the Institute for History at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig until 1960 . With the transfer of the department to the Academy of Sciences , he became a scientific assistant and later a scientific work manager. In 1962 he was with Ernst Engelberg and Felix-Heinrich Gentzen in Leipzig with a thesis "The Prussian-German General Staff under the leadership of General von Slept (1891 to 1905) in preparation for war of the German militarism" doctorate .

From 1969 Otto was a research associate at the German Institute for Military History, later the Military History Institute of the GDR (MGI) in Potsdam . Together with Karl Schmiedel , he presented a dissertation B in 1977, “On the military strategy of German imperialism before and during the first imperialist world war”. In September 1979 he was appointed associate professor at the Institute of Military History.

Otto had been a member of the SED since 1951 and was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze in 1987 .

plant

In addition to Karl Schmiedel, it was above all Otto who dealt with the history of the First World War and the military history up to 1917 at the MGI . This also included the development of the armed forces and German military policy in the Empire since 1870/71. The aim was to show the connection between the economic war aims and the planning of the general staff and to demonstrate the imperialist character of the First World War.

Otto worked on the three-volume work Germany in World War I and in 1977, together with Schmiedel, presented a volume of documents on the First World War . From the mid-1980s Otto worked on the military history sections for Volume 6 (1897 to 1917) of German History in 12 volumes . The manuscript ready for printing in 1990 could no longer appear. In contributions to the journal Military History Otto dealt with the connection between militarism and monopoly capital and imperialist German militarism. Otto and Karl Schmiedel also presented an essay on the role of military technology in the image of war and in the strategy of the German General Staff. Otto also belonged to the working group that developed the dictionary on German military history and to the collective of authors of the planned multi-volume work German military history . In addition, a volume on the military policy of the revolutionary German labor movement from 1830 to 1917 was published in 1990 with Otto's collaboration .

Fonts

• with Gerhard Förster and Helmut Schnitter : The Prussian-German General Staff 1870 - 1963. On its political role in history. Dietz, Berlin 1964.
• with Karl Schmiedel and Helmut Schnitter: The First World War. Military historical outline. German military publisher, Berlin 1964.
• Schlieffen and the General Staff. The Prussian-German General Staff under the direction of General von Schlieffen 1891–1905. German military publisher, Berlin 1966.
• From the North German Federal Navy to the Imperial German Navy. In: Marine calendar of the GDR. 1972, pp. 34-49.
• with Gerhard Förster and Erhard Moritz : Brief outline of military history from the beginnings of the history of the German people up to 1945. Military publishing house of the GDR, Berlin 1974.
• with Gerhard Förster: To research the military history of the German people from their beginnings to the end of the Second World War. In: Evolution and Revolution in World History. 2 (1976) 1976, pp. 731-748.
• with Karl Schmiedel: The First World War. Documents. Military publishing house of the German Democratic Republic, Berlin 1977.

literature

• Werner Knoll: Research on the prehistory and history of the First World War . In: Hans-Joachim Beth, Reinhard Brühl and Dieter Dreetz (eds.). Research on military history. Problems and research results of the Military History Institute of the GDR. Transformer publ. Weist, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-89626-098-7 ( Society - History - Present . 11), pp. 73–86.
• Lothar Mertens : Lexicon of the GDR historians. Biographies and bibliographies on the historians from the German Democratic Republic. Saur, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-598-11673-X .