Joseph Hansen (archivist)

Johann Joseph (also: Josef) Leonhard Hansen (born April 26, 1863 in Aachen , † June 29, 1943 in Cologne ) was a German historian and archivist .

life and work

Joseph Hansen studied at the universities of Bonn , Berlin and Münster and was in 1883 when Theodor Lindner in Muenster with a thesis on the history of the Soester feud to Dr. phil. PhD . From 1891 until his retirement in 1927 he was director of the historical archive of the city of Cologne . From 1893 to 1927 he was also chairman of the Society for Rhenish History and from 1895 to 1924 part-time director of the Cologne City Museum , succeeding Arthur Pabst .

Inquisition and witch trials were among his research interests. He edited the German translation of Henry Charles Lea's three-volume History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages . A central thesis of his book Magic Mania, Inquisition and Witch Trials in the Middle Ages and the Origin of the Great Witch Hunts, published in 1900, is a one-sided assignment of blame: “The scourge of witch hunt has been woven by the theology of the Christian Church.” A well-founded criticism of this book comes from the US -american historian HC Erik Midelfort . In 1901, Hansen published the volume of sources, Sources and Studies on the History of the Witch Craze and the Witch Hunting in the Middle Ages: With an examination of the history of the word witch , which is still useful as a collection today. He was also a collaborator in the 16th century Nunciature reports from Germany, which were published by the then Prussian Historical Institute in Rome. His publications received the polemical and critical attention of Franz Ehrle and Heinrich Denifle .

From 1913 to 1922 Hansen was chairman of the German Association of Historians . In 1921 he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . In 1925 he was accepted as a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences .

In 1943, at the age of 80, he came with his wife Johanna geb. Rauschen (1872–1943) died in a bomb attack on Cologne.

"Joseph Hansen came from a petty-bourgeois Catholic background, but shed both influences in the course of his life and developed into an upper-class, anti-clerical liberal."

- Andreas Becker

Publications (selection)

• Rhenish files on the history of the Jesuit order 1542–1582 . Bonn 1896 ( digitized version ).
• Sources and research on the history of the witch craze and witch hunt in the Middle Ages. With an investigation into the history of the word witch by Johannes Franck . Carl Georgi - University printing and publishing house, Bonn 1901 ( digitized version ).
• Sources on the history of the Rhineland in the age of the French Revolution 1780–1801 . 4 volumes, Bonn 1931–1938 (reprint Droste, Düsseldorf 2003–2004) ( review ).

literature

• Erich Pelzer: Joseph Hansen (1862–1943) and his contribution to research on the Rhenish Revolution . In: Tel Aviver Yearbook for German History 18, 1989, pp. 271–291.
• Wolfgang Leesch : The German archivists 1500–1945. Volume 1: Directory according to their places of work. Saur, Munich a. a. 1985, ISBN 3-598-10530-4 , p. 221.
• Everhard Kleinertz : Joseph Hansen . In: Rheinische Lebensbilder . Vol. 13, Cologne 1993, pp. 249-276.

Web links

• Literature by and about Joseph Hansen in the catalog of the German National Library
• Description of Hansen's estate on the pages of the Historical Archives of the City of Cologne

Individual evidence

1. ^ Death certificate no. 399 from July 3, 1943, registry office Cologne III. In: LAV NRW R civil status register. Retrieved October 5, 2018 . 
2. ^ Witchcraft and Religion in Sixteenth-Century Germany. The Formation and Consequences of Orthodoxy . In: Archive for Reformation History 62, 1971, pp. 266–278.
3. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 102.
4. ^ Members of the previous academies. Joseph Hansen. Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities , accessed on April 1, 2015 . 
5. ^ Death certificate No. 400 from July 3, 1943, registry office Cologne III. In: LAV NRW R civil status register. Retrieved October 5, 2018 . 
6. ^ Joseph Hansen (ed.): Sources on the history of the Rhineland in the age of the French Revolution 1780–1801 . Review in Sehepunkte 6, 2006, No. 2.