Henri Brunschwig

Henri Brunschwig (born June 2, 1904 in Mulhouse ; † July 20, 1989 in Versailles ) was a French historian who primarily researched sub- Saharan Africa . In Germany he became known for his studies of “German nervousness” and the German “ romantic mentality”, which undermined the spirit of the Enlightenment and thus also led to the political crises in Germany.

Life

Brunschwig studied history and geography at the University of Strasbourg with Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch . He received his DES from a thesis on living conditions in Strasbourg at the time of the French Revolution , which he did with Georges Lefèbvre . At the beginning of the 1930s he was a pensioner of the "Maison académique française" in Berlin to do a work on La crise de l'État prussien à la fin du XVIIIe siècle . In 1937 he was a history teacher at the Lycée Henri IV , but was drafted and from 1940 was imprisoned as a prisoner of war in the Oflag XC officers' camp in Lübeck . Under the protection of the Geneva Convention , he escaped the Nazi persecution of Jews.

After the liberation of Germany, Brunschwig became a teacher in 1948 at the École nationale de la France d'Outre-Mer , where he succeeded Charles-André Julien and later at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris .

Works

• La crise de l'État prussien à la fin du XVIIIe siècle et la genèse de la mentalité romantique . PUF, Paris 1947.
• La colonization française . Calmann-Lévy, Paris 1949.
• Histoire de la colonization . SDMOM, Paris 1953.
• L'expansion allemande outre-mer du XVe siècle à nos jours . Paris 1957.
• Mythes et réalités de l'impérialisme colonial français, 1871–1914 . Armand Colin, Paris 1960.
• L'avènement de l'Afrique noire . Armand Colin, Paris 1963.
• Brazza explorer. L'Ogooué 1875-1879 . Mouton, Paris 1966.
• The partage de l'Afrique noire . Flammarion, Paris 1971 ( Questions d'histoire ).
• as editor: Brazza explorateur. Les traités Makoko, 1880–1882 . Mouton, Paris 1972.
• Société et romantisme en Prusse au XVIIIe siècle . Flammarion, Paris 1973 (rééd. Abrégée de la thèse de 1947).
• Noirs et Blancs in l'Afrique noire française . Flammarion, Paris 1983.
• L'Afrique noire au temps de l'impérialisme français . Denoël, Paris 1988.