Johannes Ziekursch

Johannes Ziekursch (born July 17, 1876 in Breslau ; † May 8, 1945 in Sülzhayn ) was a German historian who mainly dealt with regional and social-historical studies of Silesia under Prussian rule. As a left-wing liberal , he investigated the causes of the collapse of the German Empire . As a result, he was exposed to violent attacks during the Weimar Republic . In 1924/25 he was rector of the Silesian Friedrich Wilhelms University in Breslau .

Live and act

Johannes Ziekursch was the son of a businessman and grew up in Breslau. From 1896 he studied at the University of Bonn , then in Breslau and interrupted from military service as a one-year volunteer in Munich , where he received his doctorate in 1900 under Karl Theodor von Heigel ( Die Kaiserwahl Karls VI (1711) ). He then undertook studies in archives in Rome , Dresden and Breslau and completed his habilitation in 1904 in Breslau ( Saxony and Prussia around the middle of the 18th century ). He was a private lecturer at the University of Breslau and devoted himself primarily to the history of Silesia in the 18th century, on which several monographs appeared, in 1907 on the Prussian administration of Silesia in the 18th century, in 1908 on the municipal administration in Silesia under Prussian rule and in 1915 on agricultural history Silesia in the 18th century. This last work, which was based on intensive archival studies, especially in Wroclaw, is considered to be one of his main works. Since he also questioned the then common positive image of the Prussian administration, he was exposed to criticism from historians like Otto Hintze . For example, he showed that the inner-Prussian colonization and the liberation of the peasants mainly benefited the aristocratic landowners in Silesia and led to the impoverishment of parts of the peasant middle class, which was exacerbated by the beginning of industrialization. He also showed that the Prussian administration worked closely with the nobility in the process of redistributing peasant property to a few large landowners.

Ziekursch became an associate professor in 1912 and was given a personal ordinariate in Breslau in 1917, possibly because he was passed over when filling a vacant chair due to a denunciation. Shaken by the German defeat in World War I in his previous national patriotic stance, he joined the left-liberal DDP and turned to the German Reich at the time of Bismarck as a historian. From 1925 to 1930, his main work, Political History of the New German Empire, appeared in three volumes. The criticism of Bismarck's founding of the empire that was formulated therein met with a largely negative response from his fellow historians at the time. The book focuses on domestic politics and tries to present the founding of the Reich and the political history of Prussia in its run-up to the contrast between the Prussian Junker class, the military and the civil service on the one hand and the liberal bourgeoisie on the other Imperial constitution to maintain power of the conservative Prussian forces. Ziekursch saw Bismarck's founding of the empire as contrary to the basic social and political currents of German history (“against the spirit of the times”) and therefore doomed to decline. In the assessment of Peter Rassow in the obituary for Ziekursch (1950), the first volume was for the first time taken seriously with genuine Bismarck criticism and the third volume on the origins and course of the First World War is a performance that is still not obsolete today .

In 1927 Ziekursch became a full professor at the University of Cologne , contrary to the wishes of the faculty there, but sponsored by the Lord Mayor Konrad Adenauer , who wanted to create a balance with his conservative professor colleague Martin Spahn . He taught until 1943, but only published smaller works (a manuscript for a book about Frederick the Great was burned in a bomb attack in Cologne). The third volume in his history of the empire was no longer allowed to be distributed after the Nazis came to power in 1933. According to Rassow's obituary, he taught from 1933 to 1943 what he had already taught before, undeterred by the Nazi takeover. Ziekursch's best-known student, who completed his habilitation with him in 1933, was the social historian Hans Rosenberg , who was forced to emigrate to the USA .

Karl-Georg Faber described Ziekursch's work on modern Silesian regional history as groundbreaking for regional social-historical analysis in modern times (in contrast to such studies on the Middle Ages, which were already emerging at that time). For Faber, on the other hand, Ziekursch's history of the German Empire is predominantly an outdated document of left-liberal historiography, but especially in the first volume it is a German history from 1859 to 1871 that is captivating due to the unity and power of the presentation .

Johannes Ziekursch rests on the war cemetery in Sülzhayn - Friedhof am Mittelberg (grave 531).

Fonts

• On the history of the campaign in Champagne of 1792 , in: Research on Brandenburg and Prussian History , Vol. 47, 1935, pp. 20–77.
• Political history of the New German Empire , Societäts Verlag, 3 vols. (Vol. 1: The foundation of the empire , Vol. 2: The age of Bismarck , Vol. 3: The age of Wilhelm II. ), Frankfurt a. M. 1925-1930.
• Falkenhayn and Ludendorff in the years 1914–1916 , in: Research on Brandenburg and Prussian History , Vol. 34, 1922, pp. 49–77.
• Ludendorff's war memories , in: Historische Zeitschrift , Vol. 121, 1920, pp. 441-465 (sharp criticism of Ludendorff's memories).
• What should become of Belgium? (= The German War , Volume 91), DVA, Stuttgart 1917 (first The Future of Belgium , Silesian Printing Cooperative, Breslau 1916).
• The Hohenzollern and their people (lecture), in: Annual report of the Silesian Society for Patriotic Culture , born in 1915.
• Hundred years of Silesian agricultural history. From the Hubertusburg Peace to the conclusion of the peasant liberation. Hirt, Breslau 1915, 2nd edition, Preuss and Jünger, Breslau 1927, new print Scientia, Aalen 1978.
• Commemorative sheets for the centenary of the University of Wroclaw , Wroclaw 1911.
• The result of the Frederician city administration and the Stein city code. Shown using the example of the Silesian cities . Wroclaw 1908.
• Contributions to the characteristics of the Prussian administrative officials in Silesia up to the fall of the Frederician state , Wohlfahrt, Breslau 1907, Newprint Scientia, Aalen 1981.
• Saxony and Prussia around the middle of the 18th century. A contribution to the history of the Austrian War of Succession , Breslau 1904.
• The choice of emperor Charles VI. , Perthes, Gotha 1902 (dissertation).

literature

• Karl-Georg Faber : Johannes Ziekursch , in: Hans-Ulrich Wehler (Hrsg.): Deutsche Historiker , Vol. 3, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1972, pp. 109–123.
• Peter Rassow : Obituary , in: Historische Zeitschrift , Vol. 170, 1950, p. 448.
• Hans Schleier : Johannes Ziekursch , in: Yearbook for History , Vol. 3, 1969, pp. 137–196.

swell

• District archive Nordhausen am Harz | Sülzhayn registry office, death register no. 74/1945: Ziekursch, Johannes.
• Evangelical Lutheran Church Congregation Sülzhayn | Directory of the buried in the Sülzhayn Parish (1908–1945). P. 92, entry 54/1945: Ziekursch, Johannes.

Web links

• Ziekursch, Johannes . In: Ostdeutsche Biographie (Kulturportal West-Ost).

Remarks

1. ↑ Faber, in: Deutsche Historiker , Vol. 3, p. 110. The denunciation accused him of an anti-Prussian attitude because of his Jewish origin .
2. ↑ Positive reviews came from Franz Schnabel , Theodor Heuss and Arthur Rosenberg . His critics included u. a. Wilhelm Mommsen , although he was politically close to him.
3. ^ Rassow, in: Historische Zeitschrift 1950, p. 448.
4. ↑ Appointments to Berlin and Halle had failed due to the resistance of conservative faculty members. B. by Hans Delbrück , Gustav Mayer . Faber, in: Deutsche Historiker , Vol. 3, p. 110.
5. ↑ Faber, in: Deutsche Historiker , Vol. 3, Göttingen 1972, p. 121 f.
6. ^ Faber, in: Deutsche Historiker , Vol. 3, p. 116.
7. ^ Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge eV: Gravesearch-Online. In: Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge eV Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge eV, January 31, 2018, accessed on January 31, 2018 (German).