Hugh Trevor-Roper

Hugh Trevor-Roper (1975)

Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper , from 1979 Baron Dacre of Glanton (born January 15, 1914 in Glanton , † January 26, 2003 in Oxford , Great Britain) was a British historian.

life and work

Trevor-Roper was the son of a medical doctor and studied Classical Studies and Modern History at the University of Oxford . Award-winning as a student, he published his first book on British history in the early modern period in 1940 , his first specialty.

Trevor-Roper's second area of ​​specialization developed when, as an intelligence officer for the British military intelligence service, he researched Hitler's whereabouts in 1945 and soon afterwards published his most successful book - Hitler's Last Days - which was published in numerous editions well into the 21st century and quickly translated into several languages has been. Although the Soviet information about Hitler's death was kept secret, Trevor-Roper's account is not considered outdated to this day, even if there are new findings in individual aspects.

From 1957 Trevor-Roper was Regius Professor of History at Oxford for 33 years . In 1961 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1969 to the British Academy . In 1979 he was raised to a life peer as Baron Dacre of Glanton, of Glanton in the County of Northumberland . Despite his reputation and merits, he was controversial in Britain, especially among younger historians who criticized his strictly Eurocentric view. Trevor-Roper had repeatedly denied, including in a BBC broadcast, that sub-Saharan Africa had its own story before the arrival of the Europeans.

One of Trevor-Roper's most successful books was his 1976 biography of the sinologist Edmund Backhouse , who has long been considered one of the world's leading experts on China. In his biography Trevor-Roper uncovered the life story of Backhouse and exposed practically all of his erudition as a hoax. This case has not yet been reopened by Western Sinology.

From 1980 to 1987 Trevor-Roper was a Master at Peterhouse College in Cambridge .

In 1983 Trevor-Roper experienced his greatest scandal in connection with the " Hitler diaries " published in Stern , falsifications of the forger Konrad Kujau . Despite limited knowledge of the German language and after only a superficial inspection of the notebooks, he found it - like other experts - to be “99.5 percent” genuine. For Sale in the British television series Hitler , based on the non-fiction book by Robert Harris , Trevor-Roper was portrayed by Alan Bennett .

He was married to Lady Alexandra Howard-Johnston since 1954, one of his stepsons is the historian James Howard-Johnston .

Fonts (selection)

author

Letters

• Richard Davenport-Hines, Adam Sisman (Eds.): One Hundred Letters from Hugh Trevor-Roper . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-870311-2 .

Non-fiction

• The European Witch-Craze of the 16th and 17th Centuries . Penguin Books, London 1990, ISBN 0-14-013718-1 (EA Harmondsworth 1969).
• Hermit of Beijing. The Hidden Life of Sir Edmund Backhouse . Knopf, New York 1977, ISBN 0-394-41104-8 .
  • German: The hermit of Beijing. The story of a brilliant forger . Eichborn, Frankfurt / M. 2009, ISBN 978-3-8218-4590-6 (translated by Andrea Ott, series Die Andere Bibliothek )
• Religion, the Reformation and Social Change. And other essays . Macmillan, London [a. a.] 1967.
  • German: religion, reformation and social upheaval. The 17th century crisis . Propylaea publishing house, Frankfurt / M. 1970.
• George Buchanan and the Ancient Scottish Constitution . Longmans, London 1966.
• The gentry. 1540-1640 . Cambridge University Press, London [u. a.] [1953].
• The Last Days of Hitler . 1st edition, Macmillan, London / New York 1947.
• Archbishop Laud, 1573-1645 . Macmillan, London 1940.

editor

• The baroque period. Europe and the World 1559-1660 . Droemer / Knaur 1970

literature

• Edward DR Harrison: Hugh Trevor-Roper and "Hitler's Last Days" . In: VfZ , Vol. 57 (2009), Issue 1, pp. 33-60, ISSN  0042-5702
• PRJ Winter: A Higher Form of Intelligence. Hugh Trevor-Roper and Wartime British Secret Service . In: Intelligence and National Security , Vol. 22 (2007), No. 6, pp. 847-880, ISSN  0268-4527
• Joachim Fest : The horror and the comedy of history. The double world of Hugh R. Trevor-Roper . In: Ders .: Encounters. About friends near and far . Reinbek, Rowohlt 2004, pp. 313–347, ISBN 978-3-499-62082-9 (EA Reinbek 2004)
• Finn Fuglestad : The Trevor-Roper Trap or the Imperialism of History. An essay . In: History in Africa . No. 19 , 1992, pp. 309-326 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Hugh Trevor-Roper in the catalog of the German National Library
• Historian Lord Dacre dies . In: BBC News , Jan. 26, 2003.
• Lord Dacre of Glanton. Stylish and skeptical historian who nevertheless fell foul of the 'Hitler Diaries' hoax perpetrated in the 1980s . In: The Times , January 27, 2003.
• Tristram Hunt : Back when it mattered. Following the recent deaths of Christopher Hill and Hugh Trevor-Roper, Tristram Hunt looks back on history's golden era . In: The Guardian , March 5, 2003.
• Toby Barnard: Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914-2003) . In: University of Oxford, Faculty of History: History Faculty Alumni Newsletter No. April 1, 2003.
• The Trevor-Roper Ten Commandments Instructions for Writing Clearly (1971). University of Regensburg

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hugh R. Trevor-Roper: Archbishop Laud, 1573-1645 . Macmillan, London 1940.
2. ↑ Hugh Trevor-Roper Redwald: The Last Days of Hitler . 1st edition, Macmillan, London / New York 1947.
3. ↑ For example in German, French, Serbo-Croatian and Polish:
   Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper: Hitler's Last Days . Translated by RJ Sattler and Georg Nitsche. 1st edition, Spiegel-Verlag, [Hamburg] 1947.
   Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper: Les derniers jours de Hitler . Calmann-Lévy, Paris 1947.
   Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper: Posljednji dani Hitlera . Državno Izd. Poduzeće Hrvatske, Zagreb 1951.
   Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper: Ostatnie dni Hitlera . Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, Poznań 1960.
4. ^ Cf. Edward DR Harrison: Hugh Trevor-Roper and "Hitler's Last Days" . In: VfZ 57, 2009, issue 1, pp. 33–60. Abstract : "Although Trevor-Roper placed too much trust in Rauschning's conversations with Hitler and was too indulgent towards Speer, his understanding of Nazism and its leaders is profound in most other points and his account of Hitler's death is largely correct."
5. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed May 18, 2020 . 
6. ↑ See Sir Edmund Backhouse, 2nd Baronet in the English language Wikipedia.
7. ↑ Hugh Trevor-Roper . spiritus temporis. Archived from the original on January 7, 2010. Retrieved April 6, 2010.
8. ^ First as: A Hidden Life. The Enigma of Sir Edmund Backhouse . Macmillan, London 1976.
9. ↑ Also as: The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century. Religion, the Reformation and Social Change . Harper, Row, New York 1968.
10. ^ Last German: Hitler's Last Days . Translated by Joseph Kalmer and Gisela Breiting-Wolfsholz. Ullstein, Frankfurt 1995, ISBN 3-548-33192-0 .