Johann Albrecht von Rantzau

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Johann Albrecht von Rantzau , pseudonym Joachim von Dissow (born October 2, 1900 in Schwerin - Ostorf ; † July 22, 1993 at Elmischwang Castle , Fischach ) was a German historian, university professor and publicist.

Life

Johann Albrecht von Rantzau came from the non-counts Mecklenburg branch of the Schleswig-Holstein Equites Originarii family Rantzau and was the eldest son of Cuno von Rantzau and his wife Erica, nee. von Müller (born October 30, 1878 in Vrestorf, today district of Bardowick ; † April 13, 1958 ibid). At the time of his birth, his father was a wing adjutant and later the court marshal of Duke Johann Albrecht , after whom he was named. Of his two younger brothers, Josias von Rantzau (1903–1950) became a diplomat and died in Soviet captivity; Cuno von Rantzau (1910–1982) married the shipowner Liselotte von Rantzau-Essberger in 1942 .

He attended the Gymnasium Fridericianum Schwerin until he graduated from high school at Easter 1919 and then studied history, art history and philosophy at the universities of Heidelberg , Hamburg , Munich and Berlin . In Berlin he was on October 15, 1923 with a dissertation supervised by Friedrich Meinecke on Friedrich von Gentz and politics. to the Dr. phil. PhD. Meinecke, as well as the personality and work of the eternal professor Ernst Troeltsch , he owes the greatest impressions of his studies, so Rantzau in the curriculum vitae of his dissertation. From 1926 to 1934 he worked at the Baltic Historical Research Institute founded by Otto Scheel at the University of Kiel .

From 1934 to 1939 he lived as a private scholar in Würzburg , where he joined in 1939 at the University of Würzburg with a thesis on Wilhelm von Humboldt habilitated . In 1939/40 he worked at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin and then did military service as a Wehrmacht interpreter in Paris .

In 1946 he came to the University of Hamburg as a private lecturer in Medieval and Modern History. Here he acquired a certain "anti-establishment" reputation , especially with his essay, Individuality Principle , State Glorification and German Historiography , published in 1950 , which contained strong criticism of Gerhard Ritter . In the same year he was at the head of a list of appointments in the faculty for the new professorship for scientific policy at the Philosophical Faculty of the Philipps University in Marburg, to which the Hessian Ministry of Culture then appointed Wolfgang Abendroth . In 1951 he became an adjunct professor and in 1952 received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation for a one-year research stay in the USA, which he spent at Yale University . In 1954 he was appointed full professor of Middle and Modern History at the Technical University of Berlin , where he taught until his retirement in 1967.

On November 28, 1927 he was in Vienna , born Maria von Baranoff (born June 29, 1905 in Gatchina ; † March 11, 1979 in Augsburg ), married, the youngest daughter of the Russian major general Konstantin von Baranoff (1859–1936) and his second, German-Baltic wife Marie, b. von Reutern (1864–). Maria von Rantzau joined the foreign service of the German Reich in the 1930s and was in China from 1936 to September 1940 , and temporarily in Japan in 1939 . From 1941 to 1943 she worked for the Economic Policy Society in Berlin, in 1943/44 in the Foreign Office, and was then obliged to serve in the High Command of the Wehrmacht .

In retirement, Johann Albrecht von Rantzau lived in Würzburg, later in Elmischwang. He was in the v. Müller / Rantzauschen family crypt buried under the south tower in Bardowick Cathedral, St. Peter and Paul . His estate is in the Koblenz Federal Archives .

Works

  • Friedrich von Gentz ​​and politics. Dissertation Berlin 1923
  • European sources on the history of Schleswig-Holstein in the 19th century. Breslau: Shepherd 1934
  • Wilhelm von Humboldt. The way of his spiritual development. Munich: Beck 1939 (Habil.)
  • under the pseudonym Johann von Dissow: Nobility in transition. A critical comrade reports from residences and manor houses. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1961
  • On the history of the sexual revolution. Countess Franziska zu Reventlow and the Munich cosmists. In: Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 56 (1974), pp. 394–446

literature

  • Grete Grewolls: Who was who in Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania. The dictionary of persons . Hinstorff Verlag, Rostock 2011, ISBN 978-3-356-01301-6 , p. 7932 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Astrid M. Eckert: Battle for the files: the Western Allies and the return of German archives after the Second World War. (= Transatlantic Historical Studies ISSN  0941-0597 20) Stuttgart: Steiner 2004, p. 366
  2. ↑ of individuality, State glorification and German history , in: The Collection 5 (1950), pp 284-299.
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Hecker, Joachim Klein, Hans Karl Rupp (ed.): Politics and science: To the history of the institute. Münster: LIT 2001 ISBN 978-3-8258-5440-9 , p. 72
  4. ^ Genealogical handbook of the Baltic knighthoods. Part 2.2: Estonia, Görlitz, 1930, p. 29
  5. ^ Rantzau, Maria von , in: Maria Keipert (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 3: Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger: L – R. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-506-71842-6 , p. 571
  6. ↑ Entry , central database of bequests
personal data
SURNAME Rantzau, Johann Albrecht von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dissow, Joachim von (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian, university professor and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH October 2, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Schwerin
DATE OF DEATH July 22, 1993
Place of death Fischach