Klaus Werner Epstein

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Klaus Werner Epstein (born April 6, 1927 in Hamburg , † June 26, 1967 in Bonn ) was a German - American historian .

Life

Klaus Epstein, son of the Eastern European historian Fritz T. Epstein and grandson of the mathematician Paul Epstein , had been expelled from Germany, attended the Quaker School Eerde in the Netherlands from 1934 and came to the USA at the age of ten . He received his doctorate in 1953 from Harvard on the English House of Lords , where he was promoted to assistant professor until 1960 and has since been associate professor, since 1963 full professor at Brown University in Providence . As a visiting professor, he also taught and researched in Hamburg , Cologne and Bonn .

In addition to his great biography of the central politician Matthias Erzberger and his important study on conservatism , Epstein has made a name for himself primarily through his reviews and extensive essays in discussions:

“In many cases, the result of the thorough and sensitive treatment of important new publications, these large essays are characterized by far-reaching portrayals of the problems and prudent and clear judgment. […] The focus of his work was the effort to make the new approaches of German historiography, which emerged above all in the field of contemporary history research, accessible to American and international discussions in a series of large, factually and methodologically equally important essays and reviews . "

- Karl Dietrich Bracher : Foreword . In: Klaus Epstein: History and History in the 20th Century. A guide . Frankfurt am Main 1972.

Epstein intervened in the Fischer controversy and defended - despite his own differently nuanced view - the "free expression of controversial theses" by Fritz Fischer . He used the term "megalomania" for the German war policy. In 1948 he married Elizabeth Chamberlin, the daughter of the US Russia correspondent William Henry Chamberlin (1897-1969), with whom he had three children. He died at the age of forty as a result of a traffic accident in Bonn, where he was doing archive studies to continue his conservatism studies.

Fonts

  • Klaus Epstein: The British Constitutional Crisis, 1909–1911 . New York 1987 (dissertation, Harvard 1953).
  • Klaus Epstein: Matthias Erzberger and the dilemma of German democracy . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1976, ISBN 3-548-03227-3 , ( table of contents , PDF , 1 kB); German first as:
    • Klaus Epstein: Matthias Erzberger and the dilemma of German democracy . Leber, Berlin a. a. 1962; English version:
    • Klaus Epstein: Matthias Erzberger and the dilemma of German democracy . Done, New York 1971; english first as:
    • Klaus Epstein: Matthias Erzberger and the dilemma of German democracy . Princeton University Press, Princeton 1959.
  • Klaus Epstein: Germany after Adenauer . Foreign Policy Ass., New York 1964.
  • Klaus Epstein: The Origins of Conservatism in Germany. The starting point: the challenge posed by the French Revolution 1770–1806 . Propylaen-Verlag, Berlin 1973, ISBN 3-550-07288-0 ; first english as:
    • Klaus Epstein: The Genesis of German Conservatism . Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 1966.
  • Klaus Epstein: History and History in the 20th Century. A guide . Edited by Eberhard Pikart, Detlef Junker and Gerhard Hufnagel with a foreword by Karl Dietrich Bracher , Propylaen-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1972, ISBN 3-549-07272-4 ; Collection of 20 review articles by Epstein , also under the title Vom Kaiserreich zum Third Reich , ISBN 3-548-02949-3 .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. On Epstein's stay at the Quaker School in Eerde see: Hans A. Schmitt: Lucky Victim. An Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times 1933-1946 , Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1989, ISBN 0807115002 , p. 94.
  2. ^ Journal of contemporary history , 2, 1967, p. 256.