Karl Drechsler (historian)

Karl Drechsler (born October 17, 1932 in Annaberg ) is a German historian . He was one of the few historians in the GDR who dealt with foreign policy during the National Socialist era . He also worked on American foreign policy since Franklin Delano Roosevelt . From 1986 to 1990 he was director of the Institute for General History of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR .

Live and act

After graduating from high school in 1951, Drechsler first studied Protestant theology for four semesters at the University of Halle . For "ideological reasons" he broke off this course and enrolled to study history. He completed his studies in 1956 as a graduate historian and became a research assistant in the department “Documents and materials on the history of the German labor movement” at the Institute for History of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin , Halle branch .

Drechsler received his doctorate in April 1962 at the University of Halle under Leo Stern and Heinz Tillmann on "Relations between Hitler's Germany and China and Japan 1936–1939". From 1965 he was head of the research group “History of the Main Imperialist Countries” at the Central Institute for History of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR in East Berlin . In December 1973 he received his PhD B with “Studies on the history of Germany and international relations in World War II”. In September 1976 he was appointed professor at the Central Institute for History , as its deputy director until June 1986. Here he was involved in research and editing for the six-volume work Germany in the Second World War (1975–1985). In 1982 he received the Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze.

In July 1986 Drechsler was appointed director of the Institute for General History of the Academy of Sciences. He held this position until July 1990. He was a member of the Council for Historical Science , as head of the Commission for History of the USA, the Council for USA Research and the National Committee of Historians of the GDR . After Drechsler had asked the general meeting of employees of the Institute for General History in January 1990 and the majority of the trust had not been expressed, he asked to be dismissed, but stayed in office at the request of the Academy President Werner Scheler until the regular end of his term of office.

From 1988 to 1990 Drechsler was a member of the editorial staff of the Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft and the Jahrbuch für Geschichte . From February 1989 to February 1990 he was Vice President of the Historians' Society of the GDR . In 1992 he took early retirement .

Publications

• Germany-China-Japan, 1933–1939. The dilemma of German policy on the Far East. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1964.
• (Ed.): 1917 - 1945. New problems in the history of the German labor movement in research and teaching; [Minutes of the constituent meeting of the Department of Modern History 1917–1945 on October 31 and November 1, 1964 in Brandenburg (Havel)]. Akad.-Verl, Berlin 1965.
• (Ed.): Monopolies and State in Germany. 1917-1945; Minutes of the 2nd meeting of the Specialist Group History of the Latest 1917–1945 on March 20 and 21, 1965 in Berlin as part of the 3rd Congress of the German Society of Historians. Akad.-Verl, Berlin 1966.
• ua (Hrsg.): Germany from 1939 to 1945. Germany during the second world war. 1st edition. German Science Publishing House, Berlin 1969.
• with Hans Dress, Gerhart Hass: European plans of German imperialism in World War II. In: Journal of History. 19, No. 7 (1971), pp. 916-931.
• Karl Drechsler: The East and Southeast Asian Policy of Hitler Germany and the Alliance with Japan (1939-1943). Berlin 1972.
• Karl Drechsler among other things: Forced resettlement and Germanization in the war target planning of the fascist German monopoly bourgeoisie. In: Journal of History. 22, No. 2 (1974), pp. 208-218.
• ua (Ed.): The USA and Europe 1917–1945. Studies on the history of US-European relations from the Great October Socialist Revolution to the end of the Second World War. Akad.-Verl, Berlin 1975.
• with Wolfgang Schumann, Gerhart Hass (Hrsg.): Germany in the second world war. Akademie-Verlag / Pahl-Rugenstein, Berlin / Cologne 1975–85, ISBN 978-3-7609-0573-0 .
• (Ed.): The Alliance of Rivals. The Berlin - Tokyo Pact; new documents to the east u. Southeast Asia Policy d. fascist. German imperialism in World War II. German publisher d. Wiss., VEB, Berlin 1978.
• The USA between anti-Hitler coalition and Cold War. Akad.-Verl, Berlin 1986.
• (Ed.): Alternative concepts of United States foreign policy. 1943-1947; European and global aspects of postwar relations with the Soviet Union; documents. Akad.-Verl, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-05-001806-2 .
• Against player. John F. Kennedy - Nikita Khrushchev. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verl, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-596-14158-3 .
• From the Ore Mountains to New York, Moscow and Beijing. Serious, cheerful and curious things from the life of a historian or how my career as a secret agent ended before it began. 1st edition. trafo, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86465-003-1 .

literature

• Wolfgang Küttler , Walter Schmidt: The East-West Conflict and its End. Contributions to a colloquium on the occasion of Karl Drechsler's 65th birthday. Trafo Verlag Dr. W. Weist, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-89626-192-4 .
• Lothar Mertens : Lexicon of the GDR historians. Biographies and bibliographies on the historians from the German Democratic Republic. Saur, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-598-11673-X .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Lothar Mertens: Lexicon of the GDR historians. Biographies and bibliographies on the historians from the German Democratic Republic. Saur, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-598-11673-X , p. 186.
2. ↑ Werner Röhr: settlement. The end of the history of the GDR. Edition Organon, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-931034-16-0 , p. 324.