Karl Ferdinand Werner

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Karl Ferdinand Werner (born February 21, 1924 in Neunkirchen (Saar) , † December 9, 2008 in Tegernsee ) was a German historian . Werner was director of the German Historical Institute in Paris from 1968 to 1989 . Under Werner's leadership, the institute developed into an internationally renowned research institution.

Live and act

Karl Ferdinand Werner came from Neunkirchen in Saarland. He went to school in Saarbrücken. Werner fell ill with tetany in 1942 while working in the Ukraine . It was therefore no longer used in the war. From 1943 he studied at the University of Heidelberg with Fritz Ernst . He received his doctorate from Ernst in 1950 with the work of Andreas von Marchiennes and the Reditus regni Francorum ad stirpem Karoli . From 1951 to 1953 he studied at the École pratique des hautes études in Paris , where he specialized in the Middle Ages , in particular the history of the Franks . During this time Werner made friends with Jean-François Lemarignier (1908–1980), Olivier Guillot (* 1932), Jean Favier and Georges Duby . In 1954 he received an assistant position at the University of Heidelberg . In 1961 he completed his habilitation in Heidelberg with a thesis on the origins of the principality within the Carolingian empire ( The emergence of the principality (8th – 10th centuries) ). In his unpublished habilitation, Werner refuted the opinion of French historiography that after the collapse of the Carolingian Empire in the 9th and 10th centuries, an "anarchy féodale" had occurred. Despite the difficult source poverty in the 9th and 10th centuries, Werner was able to demonstrate the continuity of the nobility and state structures in these "dark centuries".

From 1965 to 1968 he was professor of medieval history at the University of Mannheim . His most important students were Hartmut Atsma , Jürgen Voss (* 1939), Martin Heinzelmann and Werner Paravicini . From 1968 to 1989 Werner was director of the German Historical Institute (DHI, Institut historique allemand ) in Paris. Under Werner's leadership, the institute began to flourish. Outwardly, this was expressed through the DHIP's move to a new, much larger house in rue Maspéro. The number of employees at the institute was, for the most part, increased considerably by Werner, a student. In 1973 Werner founded the institute magazine Francia . In addition, Werner founded a completely new series that appeared in 1975 with the “Aufhefte der Francia”. A year later, the series “Documentation Western Europe” followed, which was available in five volumes until 1981 and was then discontinued. The library was expanded into a research library through targeted purchases of literature on Western Europe. According to Werner Paravicini, Werner gave the institute “the rank it has held since then” “through the extraordinary format of his personality” from a modest Franco-German research center and established the institute's high reputation with “enthusiastic foresight”.

His main research interests were medieval source studies, Western European history and the history of science. Werner became one of the best experts on the origins of Germany and France. One focus of Werner's work was the search for the influences of 19th and 20th century German historiography on the development of National Socialism . With his pioneering work Das NS-Historbild und die Deutschen Historswirtschaft (1967) Werner showed for the first time the close proximity of leading historians to the National Socialist conception. However, the historians' joint responsibility for National Socialism only became an object of research decades later in historical studies. Many of his ratings have since been revised. In his almost 100-page study, he relied mainly on published sources. In his presentation, Werner advocated the thesis that the "synchronization of German historical science" had failed. At the same time, Werner drew attention to the "profound political affinities between the historical view of historical science in Germany and the worldview of National Socialism". The harmonization and ideologization of the subject of history was therefore not necessary, because many historians had “hurried ahead of the Nazi theses, indeed they had helped create.” The consequence that he drew from this was a “turning away from the national past and theirs An image of history that led to the catastrophe, especially the moral one, and a turn to the European present and future ”. Werner's thesis that the subject of history had failed to be brought into line at German universities was still the predominant view thirty years later. However, an offset to Werner has already stated in the 1990 Peter Schoettler : "The self-leveling-out of universities and especially the historical seminars worked very smoothly." Ingo Haar , which refers to the Historians in 1998 and then with the involvement of German historians in the Holocaust employed, assessed Werner's thesis of the failed synchronization "as no longer tenable". In 2000, Haar spoke of “bringing German history into line”.

In prosopographical research on people, Werner tried to systematically record all of the traditional names from late antiquity to the high Middle Ages with his Prosopographia regnorum occidentalium long before electronic data processing. The project reached approximately 270,000 records and was discontinued in the mid-1970s. His work Naissance de la Noblesse. In 1998 he was able to publish L'essor des élites politiques en Europe . Further projects, including a monograph on Charlemagne, failed due to a long illness.

Werner received high awards from the French side. In 1986 he became a corresponding member and in 1991 Associé étranger (associated external member) of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres . In 1988 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Sorbonne and in 1996 from the University of Orléans . In 1988 he received the silver medal of the Center national de la recherche scientifique . Festschriften were dedicated to him on his 65th and 75th birthday. On the German side, he became a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in 1988 . In 2000 he was awarded the Arenberg Prize. Werner also became a corresponding member of the commission for historical regional studies in Baden-Württemberg and the central management of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica . In 2003 he was counted among the nineteen most important historians of the 19th and 20th centuries by a collective work in Paris. Since 2009 the Karl-Ferdinand-Werner-Fellowship of the DHI Paris commemorates Werner, “who decisively shaped the institute between 1968 and 1989” and who “made lasting contributions to the promotion of scientific relations and the research exchange between Germany and France” .

Fonts

Monographs

  • The Nazi image of history and German history. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart et al. 1967.
  • The origins of France up to the year 1000 (= History of France. Vol. 1). DVA, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-421-06451-2 .
  • Marc Bloch and the beginnings of a European historiography (= Saarbrücker Universitätsreden. 38, ISSN  0486-7734 ). Lecture given on June 16, 1994 on the occasion of the return of the 50th anniversary of the death of the French medievalist Marc Bloch. Saarland University, Saarbrücken 1995.
  • Charlemagne or Charlemagne? From the topicality of an outdated question (= Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Philosophical-Historical Class. Meeting reports . 1995, no. 4). Presented by Horst Fuhrmann on February 17, 1995. Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-7696-1581-6 .
  • Naissance de la noblesse. L'essor des élites politiques en Europe. Fayard, Paris 1998, ISBN 2-213-02148-1 .
  • Unity of history. Studies on historiography (= Francia . Supplements. 45). Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1999, ISBN 3-7995-7347-X ( online at perspectivia.net ).

Editorships

  • Court, culture and politics in the 19th century. Files from the 18th Franco-German Historians' Colloquium in Darmstadt from September 27th - 30th, 1982 (= Paris historical studies. Vol. 21). Röhrscheid, Bonn 1985, ISBN 3-7928-0481-6 .

literature

  • Karl Ferdinand Werner: From the Frankish Empire to the development of Germany and France. Origins, structures, relationships. Selected contributions. Celebration for his sixtieth birthday. Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1984, ISBN 3-7995-7027-6 .
  • Media in Francia ... Recueil de mélanges offer à Karl Ferdinand Werner à l'occasion de son 65e anniversaire par ses amis et collègues français. Hérault, Maulevrier 1989, ISBN 2-903851-57-3 .
  • Karl Ferdinand Werner: A historian of the "Generation 1945" between "German history", "subject" and history. In: Hartmut Lehmann , Otto Gerhard Oexle (Hrsg.): Memorabilia. Paths to the past. Dedicated to Rudolf Vierhaus on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Böhlau, Wien et al. 1997, ISBN 3-205-98824-8 , pp. 237–248.
  • Olivier Guillot: Karl Ferdinand Werner “novissimus fundator”. In: Ulrich Pfeil (Ed.): The German Historical Institute Paris and its founding fathers. A personal history approach (= Paris historical studies. Vol. 86). Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-58519-3 , pp. 221-231, digitized .
  • Joseph Hanimann : Nobility of long duration. To the historian Karl Ferdinand Werner on his eightieth. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . No. 44, February 21, 2004, p. 35.
  • Claudia Märtl : Karl Ferdinand Werner February 21, 1924 - December 9, 2008. In: Yearbook of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. 2009, pp. 236-238, online .
  • Werner Paravicini : Karl Ferdinand Werner (1924-2008). In: Historical magazine . Vol. 288, Issue 2, 2009, pp. 542-549.
  • Werner Paravicini: Karl Ferdinand Werner. In: Nicole Colin, Corine Defrance, Ulrich Pfeil and Joachim Umlauf (eds.): Lexicon of German-French cultural relations after 1945 (= Éditions Lendemains. Volume 28). 2nd, revised and expanded edition. Narr Verlag, Tübingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8233-6882-3 , pp. 483-485.
  • Otto Gerhard Oexle : Karl Ferdinand Werner: February 21, 1924 - December 9, 2008. In: Francia. Vol. 36, 2009, pp. 409-410, digitized .
  • Peter Schöttler : Karl Ferdinand Werner et l'histoire du temps présent. In: Francia. Vol. 38, 2011, pp. 179-189, digitized .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Werner Paravicini: Karl Ferdinand Werner (1924-2008). In: Historical magazine. Vol. 288 (2009), pp. 542-549, here p. 543.
  2. ^ Werner Paravicini: Karl Ferdinand Werner. In: Nicole Colin, Corine Defrance, Ulrich Pfeil and Joachim Umlauf (eds.): Lexicon of German-French cultural relations after 1945. 2nd, revised and expanded edition. Tübingen 2015, pp. 483–485, here: p. 484.
  3. ^ Werner Paravicini: growth, bloom, new houses. The institute from 1968–2007. Croissance, floraison, demeures nouvelles: l'institut pendant les années 1968–2007. In: Rainer Babel, Rudolf Große (Ed.): The German Historical Institute Paris. L'Institut historique allemand 1958–2008. Ostfildern 2008, pp. 85–169, here: p. 88.
  4. ^ Werner Paravicini: growth, bloom, new houses. The institute from 1968–2007. Croissance, floraison, demeures nouvelles: l'institut pendant les années 1968–2007. In: Rainer Babel, Rudolf Große (Ed.): The German Historical Institute Paris. L'Institut historique allemand 1958–2008. Ostfildern 2008, pp. 85–169, here: pp. 89 f.
  5. ^ Werner Paravicini: growth, bloom, new houses. The institute from 1968–2007. Croissance, floraison, demeures nouvelles: l'institut pendant les années 1968–2007. In: Rainer Babel, Rudolf Große (Ed.): The German Historical Institute Paris. L'Institut historique allemand 1958–2008. Ostfildern 2008, pp. 85–169, here: p. 91 f.
  6. ^ Werner Paravicini: growth, bloom, new houses. The institute from 1968–2007. Croissance, floraison, demeures nouvelles: l'institut pendant les années 1968–2007. In: Rainer Babel, Rudolf Große (Ed.): The German Historical Institute Paris. L'Institut historique allemand 1958–2008. Ostfildern 2008, pp. 85–169, here: pp. 86 and 123. Matthias Werner agrees : The beginnings of the German Historical Institute in Paris and the return of German history to the 'ecumenical movement of historians'. The publications on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the DHIP as a contribution to scientific and contemporary history and its Rhenish references. In: Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter . Vol. 79 (2015) pp. 212–245, here: p. 240.
  7. ↑ Matthias Berg: History and the burden of the past. Thoughts on the historicization of the history of the discipline under National Socialism. In: Susanne Ehrlich, Horst-Alfred Heinrich, Nina Leonhard, Harald Schmid (eds.): Difficult memory: Political science and National Socialism. Contributions to the controversy over continuities after 1945. Baden-Baden 2015, pp. 81–100, here: p. 91.
  8. ^ Karl Ferdinand Werner: The NS-historical image and the German historical science. Stuttgart et al. 1967, p. 96.
  9. ↑ Karl Ferdinand Werner: A historian of the “Generation 1945” between “German history”, “subject” and history. In: Hartmut Lehmann, Otto Gerhard Oexle (Hrsg.): Memorabilia. Paths to the past. Dedicated to Rudolf Vierhaus on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Vienna et al. 1997, pp. 237–248, here: p. 242.
  10. ↑ Karl Ferdinand Werner: A historian of the “Generation 1945” between “German history”, “subject” and history. In: Hartmut Lehmann, Otto Gerhard Oexle (Hrsg.): Memorabilia. Paths to the past. Dedicated to Rudolf Vierhaus on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Vienna et al. 1997, pp. 237–248, here: p. 240.
  11. ↑ Ursula Wolf: Litteris et patriae. The Janus face of history. Stuttgart 1996, p. 19.
  12. ^ Peter Schöttler: History as a science of legitimation 1918–1945. Introductory remarks. In: Ders .: Historiography as a science of legitimation 1918–1945. Frankfurt am Main 1997, pp. 7–30, here: p. 7.
  13. ↑ Ingo Haar: "Fighting Science". Origin and decline of national history in the alternation of systems. In: Winfried Schulze, Otto Gerhard Oexle (Hrsg.): German historians in National Socialism. Frankfurt am Main 1999, pp. 215-240, here: p. 215.
  14. ^ Ingo Haar: Historians in National Socialism. German history and the “national struggle” in the east. Göttingen 2000. pp. 106 and 156.
  15. ^ Werner Paravicini: Karl Ferdinand Werner (1924-2008). In: Historical magazine. Vol. 288, 2009, No. 2, pp. 542-549, here p. 547; Werner Paravicini: growth, bloom, new houses. The institute from 1968–2007. Croissance, floraison, demeures nouvelles: l'institut pendant les années 1968–2007. In: Rainer Babel, Rudolf Große (Ed.): The German Historical Institute Paris. L'Institut historique allemand 1958–2008. Ostfildern 2008, pp. 85–169, here: p. 123.
  16. ^ Winner of the Arenberg Foundation
  17. ↑ Michel Parisse : Karl Ferdinand Werner. In: Véronique Sales (ed.): Les historiens. A. Colin, Paris 2003, ISBN 2-200-26286-8 , pp. 267-283.
  18. ^ Gudrun Gersmann : Karl Ferdinand Werner Fellowship (DHI Paris) . In: H-Soz-u-Kult , December 3, 2009.
personal data
SURNAME Werner, Karl Ferdinand
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 21, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Neunkirchen (Saar)
DATE OF DEATH December 9, 2008
Place of death Tegernsee (city)