John AS Grenville
John Ashley Soames Grenville , born as Hans Guhrauer , (born January 11, 1928 in Berlin ; † March 7, 2011 in Birmingham ) was a German-British historian .
John AS Grenville was the son of a district court director. After the November pogroms in 1938 he was expelled from high school. The Nazis destroyed his family. His father was deported to the concentration camp. In 1939, at the age of eleven, Guhrauer fled to England with his two older brothers on a children's transport . He saw his mother for the last time when the train left. In England his older brothers were separated from him. Guhrauer spent the first two years at Mistley Place Preparatory and the third year at Cambridgeshire Technical School. His school career ended in 1941 at the age of 13 as the British authorities expected practical training. His father survived the concentration camp and was able to follow his son to England.
Under his new name John Grenville, he first worked as a chemist in a laboratory and then as a gardener at Peterhouse , a college at Cambridge University. He began the study of history at Birkbeck College of the University of London where Eric Hobsbawm was one of his teachers. Grenville studied with Harold Laski and Charles Webster at the London School of Economics . The study on the British Prime Minister Salisbury, supervised by Webster, earned him a Ph.D. The study was published in 1964 and is a standard work. It earned him great recognition in the professional world. Greenville became a Lecturer and Reader in Nottingham. In 1966 he became Professor of International History at the University of Leeds . Greenville taught from 1969 until his retirement in 1994 as Professor of Modern History at the University of Birmingham . He wrote a history of the twentieth century that saw numerous editions and appeared in many languages. He has also published relevant works on British and American foreign policy and film history.
In 1976 he met the Hamburg historian Bernd Jürgen Wendt at a textbook conference in Braunschweig. At Wendt's invitation, he became a visiting professor at the University of Hamburg in 1980 . This visit aroused his research interest in the history of Hamburg's Jewry. This became a research project, which Grenville 2008 with the book manuscript The Jews and the Germans of Hamburg. The Destruction of a Civilization 1790-1945 completed. The book was published in 2011 and offers an analysis of over 150 years of German-Jewish history in Hamburg.
Since 1981 he has been involved in the Leo Baeck Institute , which researches the history and culture of German-speaking Judaism. From 1993 to 2010 he succeeded Arnold Paucker as editor of the Leo Baeck Institute Year Book . From 2002 to 2011 he edited the yearbook together with Raphael Gross .
Fonts
- The Jews and the Germans of Hamburg. The Destruction of a Civilization 1790-1945. Routledge, London et al. 2012, ISBN 978-0-415-66586-5 ( review ).
- The Collins history of the world in the twentieth century. HarperCollins, London 1994, ISBN 0-00-255169-1 .
- Jews, "non-Aryans" and "German doctors". The adaptation of the doctors in the Third Reich. In: Ursula Büttner (Ed.): The Germans and the persecution of Jews in the Third Reich (= Hamburg contributions to social and contemporary history. Vol. 29). Christians, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-7672-1165-3 , pp. 191-206 (revised new edition. (= Fischer 15896 The time of National Socialism ). Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-596-15896 -6 , pp. 228-246).
- The “final solution” and the “mixed Jews” in the Third Reich. In: Ursula Büttner (Hrsg.): Das Unrechtsregime. International research on National Socialism. (Festschrift for Werner Jochmann on his 65th birthday). Volume 2: Persecution - Exile - Burdensome New Beginning (= Hamburg Contributions to Social and Contemporary History. Vol. 22). Christians, Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-7672-0963-2 , pp. 91-121.
- A world history of the twentieth century. Volume 1: Western dominance. 1900-45. Fontana Paperbacks, London 1980 (only the first volume appeared).
- with Ruth Barker: Nazi Germany (= History through the newsreel. The 1930's ). Macmillan for the Historical Association, Basingstoke 1976, ISBN 0-333-18554-4 .
- Lord Salisbury and foreign policy, the close of the nineteenth century (= University of London Historical Studies. Vol. 14, ISSN 0076-0692 ). Athlone Press, London 1964 (1st Paperback edition, with Corrections. Ibid 1970, ISBN 0-485-12014-3 ).
literature
- Raphael Gross : First the person, then the text. The life and fate of a Jewish German: On the death of Berlin-born British historian John AS Grenville. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , March 18, 2011, No. 65, p. 36, online .
Web links
- Philipp von Studnitz: In Memoriam. From Berlin boy Hans to historian John Grenville. In: BZ , March 29, 2011.
- Wilfried van der Will, Peter Pulzer : John Grenville obituary. Holocaust refugee who became an eminent historian in Britain . In: The Guardian , May 22, 2011.
personal data | |
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SURNAME | Grenville, John AS |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Grenville, John Ashley Soames (full name); Guhrauer, Hans (maiden name) |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German-British historian |
DATE OF BIRTH | January 11, 1928 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |
DATE OF DEATH | March 7, 2011 |
Place of death | Birmingham |