Horst Boog

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Horst Boog (born January 5, 1928 in Kleinkayna near Merseburg ; † January 8, 2016 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German military historian and translator . He was the senior scientific director of the Military History Research Office in Freiburg im Breisgau and is an expert on aviation and aerial warfare history of the Second World War .

Life

Origin and translator in Nuremberg

Horst Boog, the fourth child of the foreman in the brown coal works, Johannes Boog and his wife Frieda, geb. Winemaker, attended elementary school in Großkayna from 1934 and the municipal high school for boys in Merseburg from 1938 . In his youth, Boog experienced the bombing of the industrial complex in Leuna-Merseburg . In 1944 he was trained as a glider pilot in the Hitler Youth (HJ) and then deployed in the Volkssturm . After Boog had finished school in mid-April 1946, overcrowding in the universities prevented him from starting studies immediately. He attended a foreign language school in Leipzig , where he passed the interpreter and correspondent test for English in February 1947 . He then worked as a translator at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg.

History studies in Germany and the USA

In the summer semester of 1948, Boog was admitted to study humanities at the Philosophical-Theological University of Regensburg . However, the currency reform in June 1948 deprived him of its material basis and made parental allowances from the Eastern Zone impossible. By doing odd jobs he was able to finance another semester in Regensburg and the summer semester of 1949 at Kiel University himself.

For the academic year 1949/50, in which Horst Ehmke , Hildegard Hamm-Brücher and Günter Behnisch also took part, Boog received a scholarship as an exchange student for Middlebury College . On June 12, 1950, he passed the examination for a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and philosophy . Then he found employment as a lumberjack in the Catskill Mountains and was supposed to cut a swath to a nuclear-bombproof new housing estate on the Shawangunk River . As he later learned, his employer was the architect of the Berlin Olympic Stadium .

Professional activity and dissertation

When Boog returned from the USA, there was still no funding for students living in the Eastern Zone who were neither politically persecuted nor refugees, late returnees or disabled people. In order to complete his academic training penniless, he therefore worked in 1950 as a press clerk in Stuttgart and from 1951 to 1964 as a scientific and technical employee in a news office (military intelligence service and then federal intelligence service ). He also worked as a freelance translator.

Since 1950, Boog study was limited to the leisure, to the visit of evening events at the Technical University of Stuttgart (WS 1950/51) and on unpaid leave months in which he lectures and exercises in history, philosophy, law and pedagogy at the University of Heidelberg participate could. His university lecturers included Professors Andrews, Bense, Caselmann, Conze, Cook, Dachs, Ernst, Fuchs, v. Fürstenberg, Gönnenwein, Kämpf, Kellenbenz, Kühn, Löwith, Metzke, Kosler, Munford, Weizsäcker, Wentzel. In August 1955, Boog obtained the Diplome de Langue from the Alliance française in Paris . In 1965 he was with Johannes Kühn at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Heidelberg with the dissertation Graf Ernst zu Reventlow (1869-1943). A study on the crisis in German history since the end of the 19th century for Dr. phil. PhD.

Military historian in Freiburg

Through Hermann Heidegger , Boog came to Freiburg, where he became the chief scientific director of the Military History Research Office (MGFA). In Freiburg he initiated the first and so far only (?) Scientific conference on the aerial warfare of the Second World War. In addition, he was a member of the Dresden Historical Commission and from 1979 to 1993 President of the Freiburg Museum Society .

Boog was involved in several volumes of The German Reich and the Second World War (1983, 1990, 2001, 2008). Since 1982 he has been an internationally recognized expert on international martial law , such as the right to war (ius ad bellum) and the law in war (ius in bello). In 2014 he dealt philosophically with Karl Popper .

Boog was the father of a daughter.

Fonts (selection)

Monographs

  • Count Ernst zu Reventlow (1869–1943). A study of the crisis in German history since the end of the 19th century . Dissertation, Heidelberg University, 1965 (Vita: p. 326).
  • The German Air Force Command 1935–1945. Leadership problems. Top breakdown. General staff training (= contributions to military and war history . Volume 21). Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-421-01905-3 .
  • Military History Research Office (Ed.): The German Reich and the Second World War . Multi-volume, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1979 ff.
  • With Werner Rahn, Reinhard Stumpf, Bernd Wegner: The world in war 1941–1943 . 2 volumes, reviewed edition, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1992.

Editing / translations

  • Leo Strauss : Natural Law and History . Translation from English, Koehler, Stuttgart 1956.
  • Air warfare in World War II. An international comparison (= lectures on military history , volume 12). On behalf of the Military History Research Office, Mittler, Herford 1993, ISBN 3-8132-0340-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Obituary from January 15, 2016 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Expert knowledge in demand worldwide Horst Boog is 85 today. In: Badische Zeitung , January 5, 2013. ( Memento of July 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ Horst Boog: British-American Early Cold War Clandestine Overflights over Communist Territory 1950 to 1956 . In: Heiner Timmermann (Ed.): The Future a Memory. The Cold War and Intelligence Services - Aspects . Lit, Zurich a. a. 2013, ISBN 978-3-643-90442-3 , p. 129.
  4. ↑ a b c Baas von Benda-Beckmann: A German Catastrophe? German Historians and the Allied Bombings, 1945–2010 . Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2010, ISBN 978-90-5629-653-7 , p. 170.
personal data
SURNAME Boog, Horst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German military historian
DATE OF BIRTH January 5, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Kleinkayna near Merseburg
DATE OF DEATH January 8, 2016
Place of death Freiburg in Breisgau