Karl Bittel (historian)

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Karl Bittel (born June 22, 1892 in Darmstadt , † April 18, 1969 in East Berlin ) was a German Marxist historian and journalist .

Life

Karl Bittel was the son of a bank clerk. He attended pre-school in Darmstadt and the high school in Freiburg im Breisgau , where he graduated from high school in 1911 . Since 1909 he was a member of the Wandervogel and there co-founder of the Freiburg local group and editor of Wandervogel writings. After graduating from high school, he studied law and history at the universities of Heidelberg , Freiburg and Tübingen from 1911 to 1915 . In Tübingen he joined the German Academic Freischar . In 1915 he graduated as Dr. rer. pole.

Bittel volunteered at the Freiburger Volksstimme and from 1913 to 1916 was secretary at the Esslingen consumer association . At the same time he published on the subject of cooperatives. During the November Revolution he was a member of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council in Karlsruhe . Bittel became a member of the KPD in 1919 . He was a lecturer at the central party school of the KPD in Jena in 1920 and then editor of the newspaper Kämper in Chemnitz . In 1922 he became head of the cooperative department of the Central Committee of the KPD. For the KPD he was a city councilor in Weißenfels (1922). In 1923 he became a delegate at the 1st World Congress of the Peasant Organization of the Communist International , the Krestintern . Until 1927 he stayed in the USSR and was secretary of the COOP section of the ECCI . He returned to Germany in 1928. Between 1928 and 1933 he was head of the organizational office of the Soviet trade agency and held the same position at the German-Soviet DEROP AG in Berlin. After the transfer of power to Adolf Hitler on January 30, 1933, Bittel fled to Ludwigshafen on Lake Constance . In May 1933 he was arrested by the Gestapo on Lake Constance and imprisoned in the Heuberg and Ulm concentration camps until 1934 . From 1934 to 1945 he was under police supervision.

In 1945 he became a member of the secretariat and the state management of the KPD Baden and chairman of the VVN in Baden. He also became a co-founder and license holder of the KPD newspaper Unser Tag in Offenburg (1946 to 1948).

In May 1949, after the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany , he moved to the Soviet occupation zone . Between 1949 and 1957 he headed the German Institute for Contemporary History and was editor-in-chief of the journal Documentation of Time .

From 1951 to 1953 he held the post of 1st chairman of the Association of the German Press . He was honorary professor at Karl Marx University and, since 1957, full professor of general history at Humboldt University . In 1957 he gave guest lectures in the USSR. Finally in 1958 he became a scientific advisor to the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the GDR . From 1963 to 1969 he was a member of the Presidium of the Kulturbund in the Rostock district . From 1964 he lived in Ahrenshoop .

Karl Bittel, together with a small group of like-minded people, pushed forward the orientation of the historical seminars and institutes in the GDR according to the specifications of the SED. The "guild" of GDR historians was initially by no means in the Marxist tradition. According to Lothar Mertens , Bittel - similar to Horst Bartel , Walter Bartel , Rudolf Lindau and Albert Schreiner - lacked the necessary technical competence, so that he was even regarded within the party as a pure propagandist, along with the others mentioned.

Honors

Fonts (selection)

  • Eduard Pfeiffer and the German consumer cooperative movement , publications of the Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 151/1, Munich and Leipzig 1915
  • The history of the consumer and savings association Eßlingen am Neckar. For the 50th anniversary 1865 - 1915 , Esslingen 1915
  • Ed. U. Editor: Cooperative Culture. A pamphlet collection from the Society for Cooperative Culture , Wilhelm Langguth, Esslingen 1915–1916
  • Ed. U. Editor: The Free State. Free German pamphlets on socialism , Karlsruhe 1918
  • Ed. U. Editor: Political Circular Letters , Esslingen 1918–1921
  • Ed. U. Editor: Süddeutsche Arbeiter-Zeitung , continuation of the political newsletters, Verlag Dr. Karl Bittel, Esslingen, first issue from October 31, 1921
  • Ed. U. Editor: The Communist Cooperative , 1919–1924
  • Ed. U. Editor: The Cooperative in the Class Struggle , 1924
  • Ed .: DEROP-Blätter , in-house magazine of the German sales company for Russian oil products, Berlin 1931/32
  • Sernatinger Chronik , Karlsruhe 1939
  • The famous Herr Doctor Mesmer 1734-1815 , Friedrichshafen 1940
  • Rudolf Tischner , Karl Bittel: Mesmer and his problem. Magnetism, suggestion, hypnosis , Hippokrates Verlag, Stuttgart 1941
  • Wilhelm Wolff : The revolt of the weavers in Silesia (June 1844) and other writings . With an introduction by Karl Bittel, (series of publications for journalistic training. Ed. By the Association of the German Press), Berlin 1952 (2nd extended edition 1952)
  • The enemies of the German nation. A historical documentation on the German policy of the imperialist Western powers from 1942 to 1949 , Berlin 1952 (five editions until 1955)
  • Karl Marx as a journalist , Aufbau Verlag, Berlin 1953
  • Paracelsus and his hometown Villach , Klagenfurt 1953
  • Work and tasks of the German Institute for Contemporary History in Berlin . In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft 4 (1956), pp. 1253-1255
  • Ed .: The Communist Trial in Cologne 1852 as reflected in the contemporary press , Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1955
  • The Landbote by Georg Buchner . In: Neue deutsche Presse , 9th year 1955, No. 9, pp. 4–8.
  • Contemporary history as science , Berlin 1956
  • A Federation of German States (Confederation) , Berlin 1957
  • Nuclear-weapon-free zone in Europe , Berlin 1958
  • Division and reunification of Germany , two volumes, Berlin 1958 and 1959
  • Allied Control Council and Foreign Ministers' Conferences. From the practice of the German policy of the four powers since 1945 , Berlin 1959
  • The Warsaw Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance , Berlin 1960
  • Revanchism as preparation for war in the Federal Republic of Bonn , Berlin 1961
  • We accuse !: the truth about the fascist concentration camps in the Baltic Sea area; A short tour of the exhibition on the occasion of the Baltic Sea Week from July 10th to August 13th, 1966 in the House of the National People's Army, Stralsund , Ahrenshoop 1966

estate

  • District archive at Salem Castle (bequests and deposits: Karl Bittel (1892–1969))

literature

  • Karl Bittel in memory . In: Journal of History . 17th year (1969), Heft 7, Berlin 1969, p. 902
  • Bittel, Karl . In: SBZ biography. A biographical reference book about the Soviet occupation zones in Germany . 3rd edition, Bonn; Berlin 1964, p. 38
  • Manfred Bosch: Karl Bittel . In: Baden-Württemberg biographies . Vol. III. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1999, p. 46 ff.
  • Siegfried Prokop : Karl Bittel. as a publicist and contemporary historian . In: Helsinki 1975. Opportunities used and opportunities missed . Berlin 2000.
  • Bernd-Rainer Barth , Andreas HerbstBittel, Karl . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Eduard Pfeiffer and the German consumer cooperative movement in Tübingen.
  2. Bernd-Rainer Barth , Andreas HerbstBittel, Karl . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  3. ^ Minutes of the First International Farmers Congress. From October 10 to 16, 1923 in Moscow. New Village, Berlin. 1924 (Library of the International Farmers Council, Vol. 7).
  4. ^ Lothar Mertens: Priest of the Klio or court chronicler of the party? Collective biographical analyzes of the GDR historians , V & R unipress, Göttingen 2006, p. 125, ISBN 3-89971-307-9 .
  5. Monika Zorn: Hitler's victims twice killed. West German final solution of anti-fascism in the area of ​​the GDR . Ahriman-Verlag, Freiburg (Breisgau) 1994, p. 248.