Karl Heldmann (historian)

Karl Christian Wilhelm Heldmann , also Carl Heldmann ( September 19, 1869 in Viermünden - March 12, 1943 in Kassel -Wilhelmshöhe) was a German historian and pacifist. From 1899 to 1933 he was a professor at the University of Halle-Wittenberg .

life and work

Heldmann passed his school leaving examination in 1888 and studied history, classical and German philology and geography at the Philipps University in Marburg, then in Berlin and then again in Marburg. In Marburg he recorded the wingolf tape . From 1894 to 1898 he worked as a laborer at the municipal library in Kassel. In Marburg, he received his doctorate in 1894. phil. with a thesis on the history of rural legal relationships in the German order committees in Marburg and Schiffenberg. In 1896 he passed the state examination. In 1897 he undertook archival trips to southern Germany and Tyrol. In 1899 he qualified as a professor at the University of Halle for Middle and Modern History and auxiliary sciences . In 1903 he was appointed a permanent professor with a full teaching post for history and historical auxiliary sciences in Halle. He worked for the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie . From 1908 to 1912 he acted as secretary of the Thuringian-Saxon History Association.

The scientist was a staunch pacifist , was in contact with opponents of the war such as Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster and campaigned for an end to the world war. This had massive consequences: he was monitored, tried and sentenced to imprisonment for secret bundling and lese majesty , but no longer imprisoned because of the 1918 revolution. Even before the judicial conviction, the Philosophical Faculty in Halle issued an armed statement in which it distanced itself from its own staff, condemned his behavior and attitudes in the strictest possible manner, and demanded that he be removed from the position of professor. The faculty considered him “scientifically and morally unsuitable for continuing to teach history at a German university.” The hustle and bustle against the historian continued after 1918, as he advocated a federal rebuilding of the Weimar Republic. Although the Faculty's position was disapproved by the Minister of Culture of the Prussian state government, Konrad Haenisch , in 1919, the Faculty never withdrew it. Heldmann fought unsuccessfully for his rehabilitation, but remained in office.

His work The Empire of Charlemagne , Theories and Reality from 1928 was reprinted unchanged in 1971 and reprinted in 2015 by Severus Verlag in the original font, i.e. Fraktur. Heldmann wrote articles for the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie about Wigbert or Witta von Büraburg .

In 1930 Heldmann asked the Ministry of Culture - referring to his work on Charlemagne - for appointment as a full professor, but to no avail. The application was supported by the German Peace Society :

"We pacifists demand that our mindset is finally represented at a German university, based on Article 148 of the Imperial Constitution, after the militaristic direction has been more than sufficiently taken into account."

- German Peace Society : Submission of the local group Bingen to Minister of Education Adolf Grimme , September 15, 1931, signed Karl Reichmann as chairman

But this petition was also unsuccessful. After the "seizure of power" by the National Socialists , Heldmann's position became untenable and on April 29, 1933 , probably also to forestall a dismissal , he applied to be released from his official duties and retired at the end of the year.

family

Karl Heldmann had two children, the son Reinhard Heldmann and the daughter Renate Heldmann, married Slenczka. He is the grandfather of the Protestant theologian Reinhard Slenczka , the virologist Werner Slenczka and the classical philologist Konrad Heldmann .

Publications

• Contributions to the history of rural legal relationships in the Teutonic Order Commenden Marburg and Schiffenberg . (Diss.) Marburg 1894
• The hypotheses about the Kölngau and the oldest constitution of the city of Cologne . (Habil.) Halle / S. 1899 archive.org
• The Kölngau and the Civitas Cologne. Historical-geographical studies on the origin of the German urban system . Hall / S. 1900 archive.org
• The Roland images of Germany in three hundred years of research and according to the sources. Contributions to the history of medieval games and forgeries . Hall / S. 1904 archive.org = archive.org
• Roland figures, pictures of judges or pictures of kings? New investigations into the Rolande of Germany, with contributions to medieval culture, art and legal history . Hall / S. 1905 archive.org
• Medieval folk games in the Thuringian-Saxon countries . Hall / S. 1908
• Letters of princes and generals from the time of the Thirty Years' War. Published from the archive of Hans Georg von Arnim with historical introductions . Göttingen 1913 archive.org
• Two generations of German history in German lighting. Historical-political reflections on the German question in the past and future . (= After the World War. Writings on the reorientation of foreign policy. 11) Leipzig 1920
• German Germany. 30 sentences from the German Federation of Federalists. With an appendix: Federal Bibliography . Peace through law [publ.] Ludwigsburg 1921
• War experiences of a German history professor at home . [Autobiog.] Peace through law [publ.] Ludwigsburg 1922 table of contents.
• The St. Maria Magdalenen Chapel on the Moritzburg in Halle. Four hundred years of church and cultural history in Halle . Hall / S. 1923
• Hessian homeland care at the universities of Marburg and Gießen . Hessischer Volksbund, Kassel 1923
• The Waldeck question. A chapter from the history of the German Prussia . From Ederanus [d. i. Karl Heldmann], Hessischer Volksbund, Homberg 1927
• The empire of Charlemagne. Theories and Reality (= sources and studies on the constitutional history of the German Empire in the Middle Ages and modern times. 6.2). Münster 1928, new edition in Gothic script by Severus 2015
• The stone grave of Bishop Werner von Merseburg and his fate . From: Merseburger Tageblatt. 1932 [Merseburg 1932]

literature

• Helmut Maier: Karl Heldmann (1869–1943) - an opponent of the war at the University of Halle. In: Scientific journal of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Linguistics and humanities series. Volume 16, H. 2/3 (1967), pp. 223-240.

Web links

• Entry on Karl Heldmann in the Catalogus Professorum Halensis

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Acta Borussica. New episode. 2nd row: Prussia as a cultural state. Department 2: The Prussian cultural state in political and social reality. Volume 9 Science Policy in the Weimar Republic Documents on the development of higher education in the Free State of Prussia and on selected professorships in six disciplines (1918 to 1933) Published by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (formerly the Prussian Academy of Sciences) under the direction of Wolfgang Neugebauer . Berlin 2016, p. 952.
2. ↑ Quoted from Henrik Eberle : The Martin Luther University in the time of National Socialism 1933–1945. Halle (Saale) 2002, p. 40.
3. ^ Karl Heldmann: The empire of Charlemagne. Theories and reality. Weimar 1928.
4. ^ Karl Heldmann:  Wigbert . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 44, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1898, pp. 512-516.
5. ^ Karl Heldmann:  Witta . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 43, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1898, p. 585 f.
6. ^ Acta Borussica. New episode. 2nd row: Prussia as a cultural state. Department 2: The Prussian cultural state in political and social reality. Volume 9 Science Policy in the Weimar Republic Documents on the development of higher education in the Free State of Prussia and on selected professorships in six disciplines (1918 to 1933) Edited by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (formerly the Prussian Academy of Sciences) under the direction of Wolfgang Neugebauer. Berlin 2016, p. 954.
7. ↑ Printed in Henrik Eberle: The Martin Luther University in the time of National Socialism 1933–1945. Halle (Saale) 2002, p. 41 f.