Hermann Mau

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hermann Mau (born July 1, 1913 in Hoyerswerda ; † October 25, 1952 near Pforzheim ) was a German historian . He was Secretary General of the German Institute for the History of the National Socialist Era in Munich .

Life

Mau was born in 1913 as the son of August Mau, the head physician of the Hoyerswerda district hospital, and Franziska Mau (née Sievers). He sang in the St. Thomas Choir and passed his A-levels at the humanistic St. Thomas School in Leipzig . Karl Straube and Günther Ramin were among his friends .

In 1934/35 he was arrested, interrogated and tortured several times by the Gestapo because of his critical attitude towards National Socialism . From 1932 to 1937 he studied history , German and sociology at the University of Leipzig . His teachers were u. a. Herbert Grundmann , Hermann Heimpel , Walter Stach (1890–1955), Theodor Frings and Hans Freyer . 1940 doctorate he became Dr. phil. His dissertation was on The Swabian Knight Societies with St. Jörgenschild. A contribution to the history of the German unification movement in the 15th century. als (published in the contribution to the history of the German unification movement ). In 1941 he became Heimpel's assistant at the Department of Medieval and Modern History at the University of Strasbourg . In 1943 he wrote a thesis on Henry the Lion . From 1944 on he represented the professorship of Eberhard F. Otto in Strasbourg. From 1944 habilitation he did at the University of Leipzig (previously Umhabilitation from the University of Jena , where he occupied the Chair of Medieval History) on Cluny and the kingdom .

From 1945 he was a private lecturer for middle and modern history in Leipzig. There he became deputy director of the Historical Institute. He joined the CDU and became a university advisor to the CDU leadership in the Soviet occupation zone. In 1947 he was arrested by the NKVD together with Wolfgang Weinoldt, Werner Ihmels , Edmund Bründl and Luise Langendorf on alleged espionage allegations . As he was least aware of the activities of the group around him, he was acquitted. He cured in the Benedictine monastery in Niederaltaich and fled to the American occupation zone in 1948. Before he became a private lecturer at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich in 1951 , he worked for the radio and founded the Maßmannplatz dormitory . In the same year he traveled to the USA at the invitation of John Jay McCloys .

From 1951 to 1952 Mau was scientific director and general secretary (successor to Gerhard Kroll ) of the German Institute for the History of the National Socialist Period in Munich. The institute, which has existed since 1947, carried out research during the Nazi era . He published numerous writings and paved the way for the quarterly magazine for contemporary history, which has been published since 1953 .

In 1952 he had an accident with his car on a business trip on the motorway between Karlsruhe and Pforzheim. His friend Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker gave the funeral speech.

Posthumously an article about the so-called Röhm Putsch appeared in the first edition of the quarterly journal for contemporary history . Another work called Hitler and National Socialism was handed down as a fragment and was completed by Helmut Krausnick . It was published as a single edition under the title German History of the Recent Past , a short version of Nazi history that is still worth reading today , according to Hans Buchheim .

Works (selection)

  • German history of the recent past. Tübingen 1956.
  • German history of the recent past 1933–1945. Bonn, 1959 (collaboration with Helmut Krausnick and epilogue by Peter Rassow ).
  • Henry the Lion. Munich 1943.
  • The knight societies with St. Jörgenschild in Swabia. Stuttgart 1941.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Gottlieb Tesmer, Walther Müller: Honor roll of the Thomas School in Leipzig. The teachers and high school graduates of the Thomas School in Leipzig 1912–1932. Commissioned by the Thomanerbund, self-published, Leipzig 1934, p. 54.
  2. a b c Gerald Wiemers: On the 50th anniversary of Hermann Mau's death: Thomaner and Historiker . In: Journal . 7 (December 2002). University of Leipzig, ISSN  0947-1049 , p. 33 ( qucosa.de ).
  3. Astrid M. Eckert: Struggle for the files. The Western Allies and the return of German archive material after the Second World War. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-515-08554-8 , pp. 408-414.
  4. ^ Hermann Heimpel: "Mau, Hermann" in: Neue Deutsche Biographie 16 (1990), p. 422 f. Online version