Klaus Malettke

Klaus Ludwig Gustav Malettke (born May 30, 1936 in Rastenburg ) is a German historian with a focus on the early modern period .

Malettke taught as a professor of modern history at the Friedrich Meinecke Institute of the Free University of Berlin (1971–1980) and for modern history with a focus on the early modern era at the Philipps University of Marburg (1980–2001). Malettke is one of the leading German experts on early modern French history. In addition to his academic work, he is one of the most important academic mediators between Germany and France in the late 20th century through the promotion of bilateral research projects and European student exchanges .

Life

Malettke's father was an East Prussian and worked as a teacher, the mother came from Westphalia. The mother's ancestors came from an old Alsatian family. This brought Malettke into contact early on with a particular complex of problems in German-French relations. He attended the Rastenburg elementary school, the Engelschoff elementary school, the Dortmund elementary school and the Castrop-Rauxel modern language grammar school . Malettke was already interested in France during his school days. An intensive pen friendship led to a stay in Nancy . In March 1956, he passed the final examination in Castrop-Rauxel.

From the summer semester of 1956 he studied history, Romance languages ​​and education at the Universities of Marburg and Dijon (winter semester 1957/58) and from October 1960 to the end of April 1962 with Pierre Renouvin at the Sorbonne in Paris. Renouvin dealt with the systematic evaluation of newspapers and magazines as historical sources. This also had an impact on Malettke's research. He used the almost two years in Paris for an intensive study of the newspapers and the accessible archives. During his studies, Malettke became a member of the Marburg Burschenschaft Rheinfranken . He received his doctorate under Wilhelm Mommsen in Marburg in 1965 and in the same year passed a state examination as a teacher of history and French. After receiving his doctorate, he moved to the Free University of Berlin as Fritz Dickmann's research assistant . There he completed his habilitation in 1972 and received a professorship for modern history . In 1980, as the successor to Gerhard Oestreich, he accepted a professorship for modern history with a special focus on Western European history at the Philipps University of Marburg. In 1982/83 and 1990/91 he was dean of Faculty 06 History. In the winter semester 1989/90 he taught as a visiting professor at the University of Paris X (Nanterre) .

Malettke's voluntary work in national and international scientific committees and his good contacts with various French universities resulted in a lively exchange, both on the part of students and research. Malettke was a great initiator and promoter of the European Erasmus and Socrates programs . In 2007 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class . On the French side, he became a Knight of the Legion of Honor of the Republic of France in 1998 , and was promoted to Officer of the Legion of Honor in 2005.

Malettke has been a member of the Historical Commission for Hesse since 1981 . From 1984 to 2001 he was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the German Historical Institute in Paris . From 1993 to 1999 he took over the office of deputy chairman. In 1995 he was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Council of Europe special exhibition "1648 - War and Peace in Europe". Since 1997, Malettke has been Vice-President of the International Commission for the Publication of Sources on European History “Monumenta Europae Historica”. In 2000 he became a member of the “Center des Recherche sur l'Histoire de l'Europe centrale” at the Sorbonne University in Paris. Malettke is an associate professor and an honorary doctorate from the Sorbonne.

Malettke met his wife in Paris. He has been married since 1965. The marriage produced a daughter.

Research priorities

Malettke is one of the best connoisseurs of early modern French history in German-speaking countries. First he dealt with the history of the court, nobility and institutions in France in the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the end of the 1980s, he has increasingly researched Franco-German relations from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Malettke also worked on the history of the Old Empire , the development of the fraternity , Prussia and the history of Hesse . In his dissertation he dealt with the attitudes of the Parisian press to the foreign and domestic policy of Otto von Bismarck from 1862 to the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Malettke was able to work out the various political attitudes of the newspapers. The press judgment of Otto von Bismarck was subject to various fluctuations. It was a mixture of harsh criticism and grudging admiration. The work was received largely positively in the professional world.

In his habilitation, published in 1976, he researched the opposition to Ludwig XIV. In contrast to previous research, Malettke assumes in the early years of Ludwig's rule that opposition and conspiracy did exist. He dealt repeatedly with Louis XIV and published a biography about him in 1994. In contrast to previous research, Malettke put more emphasis in his biography on economic, financial and social aspects. Shortly after his habilitation, von Malettke published a biography of Jean-Baptiste Colbert , who, as the most important minister of Louis XIV, paved the way for the absolutist style of rule through his financial and tax system . After completing his habilitation, Malettke continued his research with an international focus. In November 1978, an international colloquium was held at the Free University of Berlin as part of the research focus “Social mobility in the early modern state” on the problem of the ability to buy offices and social mobility in a European comparison . For the first time, the largely neglected phenomenon was examined in detail in historical studies. Malettke published the anthology in 1980. In his introduction to Malettke discussed the offices venality in France and similar phenomena in Venice , the Papal States , in Castile and in several German territories.

With Jürgen Voss he organized a Franco-German colloquium in 1987 on humanism and the court-urban elite in the 16th century . A second edition took place just one year after the publication of the anthology. In 2001, Malettke published a comprehensive study in French on Franco-German relations in the 17th century. A year later, Malettke and Ullrich Hanke published the edition of Théodore Godefroy's Description d'Allemagne , which is one of the most important sources for research into the perception of the German Empire in France around 1630. The source was edited for the first time and thus made available to the public. In 2008 he published a three-volume story of the Bourbons . In 2012, he published the third volume as part of the handbook on the history of international relations edited by Heinz Duchhardt and Franz Knipping . In it he dealt with the period from the Peace of Westphalia (1648) to the Peace of Utrecht (1713/1714). In 2018 he published a 1076-page biography of Richelieu .

Fonts

A list of publications appeared in: Jörg Ulbert, Sven Externbrink (Ed.): Forms of international relations in the early modern period. France and the Old Reich in the European State System. Festschrift for Klaus Malettke on his 65th birthday (= historical research. Vol. 71). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-10277-0 , pp. 531-546.

• Richelieu. A life in the service of the king and France. Schöningh, Paderborn 2018, ISBN 978-3-506-77735-5 .
• Hegemony, multipolar system, equilibrium. International Relations 1648 / 1659-1713 / 1714 (= Handbook of the History of International Relations. Vol. 3). Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-73723-6 .
• The Bourbons. Volume I: From Heinrich IV. To Louis XV. 1589-1715. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-17-020581-9 .
• The Bourbons. Volume II: From Louis XV. until Louis XVI. 1715-1789 / 92. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-17-020582-6 .
• The Bourbons. Volume III: From Louis XVIII. up to Louis Philippe 1814–1848. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-17-020584-0 .
• Opposition and conspiracy under Louis XIV. Studies on criticism and resistance to the system and politics of the French king during the first half of his personal government (= publications by the Max Planck Institute for History. Vol. 49). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1976, ISBN 3-525-35359-6 .

literature

• Inge Auerbach (edit.): Catalogus professorum Academiae Marburgensis. = The academic teachers at the Philipps University of Marburg. Volume 3: From 1971 to 1991. Part 1: Department 01–19 (= publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse. Vol. 15, 3). Elwert, Marburg 2000, ISBN 3-7708-1159-3 , p. 165.
• Jörg Ulbert, Sven Externbrink (Ed.): Forms of International Relations in the Early Modern Age. France and the Old Reich in the European State System. Festschrift for Klaus Malettke on his 65th birthday (= historical research. Vol. 71). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-10277-0 .
• Who is who? The German Who's Who. XLVII. Edition 2013/14, p. 719.

Web links

• Literature by and about Klaus Malettke in the catalog of the German National Library
• Federal Cross of Merit 1st class for Prof. Dr. Dr. hc Klaus Malettke

Remarks

1. ↑ Henning Köhler : Klaus Malettke - an appreciation. In: Jörg Ulbert, Sven Externbrink (Hrsg.): Forms of international relations in the early modern period. France and the Old Reich in the European State System. Festschrift for Klaus Malettke on his 65th birthday. Berlin 2001, pp. 13-20, here: p. 14.
2. ↑ Harald Lönnecker : Sources and research on the history of corporations in the German Empire and in the Weimar Republic. An archive and literature report. In: Stefan Gerber , Matthias Steinbach (eds.): "Classical University" and "Academic Province". Studies at the University of Jena from the middle of the 19th to the thirties of the 20th century. Jena 2004, pp. 401–437 ( online print pp. 1–32, here: p. 14 ).
3. ↑ Federal Cross of Merit 1st class for Prof. Dr. Dr. hc Klaus Malettke .
4. ↑ Henning Köhler: Klaus Malettke - an appreciation. In: Jörg Ulbert, Sven Externbrink (Hrsg.): Forms of international relations in the early modern period. France and the Old Reich in the European State System. Festschrift for Klaus Malettke on his 65th birthday. Berlin 2001, pp. 13-20, here: pp. 13 f.
5. ↑ Who is who? The German Who's Who. XLVII. Edition 2013/14, p. 719.
6. ^ Klaus Malettke: The assessment of the foreign and domestic policy of Bismarck from 1862-1866 in the major Paris newspapers. Lübeck et al. 1966.
7. ↑ Henning Köhler: Klaus Malettke - an appreciation. In: Jörg Ulbert, Sven Externbrink (Hrsg.): Forms of international relations in the early modern period. France and the Old Reich in the European State System. Festschrift for Klaus Malettke on his 65th birthday. Berlin 2001, pp. 13-20, here: p. 15.
8. ^ Klaus Malettke: Opposition and conspiracy under Louis XIV. Studies on criticism and resistance to the system and politics of the French king during the first half of his personal government. Goettingen 1976.
9. ↑ Henning Köhler: Klaus Malettke - an appreciation. In: Jörg Ulbert, Sven Externbrink (Hrsg.): Forms of international relations in the early modern period. France and the Old Reich in the European State System. Festschrift for Klaus Malettke on his 65th birthday. Berlin 2001, pp. 13–20, here: p. 17.
10. ^ Klaus Malettke: Louis XIV of France. Life, politics and achievement. Göttingen et al. 1994.
11. ↑ Henning Köhler: Klaus Malettke - an appreciation. In: Jörg Ulbert, Sven Externbrink (Hrsg.): Forms of international relations in the early modern period. France and the Old Reich in the European State System. Festschrift for Klaus Malettke on his 65th birthday. Berlin 2001, pp. 13–20, here: p. 19.
12. ^ Klaus Malettke: Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Rise in the service of the king. Göttingen et al. 1977.
13. ↑ Henning Köhler: Klaus Malettke - an appreciation. In: Jörg Ulbert, Sven Externbrink (Hrsg.): Forms of international relations in the early modern period. France and the Old Reich in the European State System. Festschrift for Klaus Malettke on his 65th birthday. Berlin 2001, pp. 13-20, here: pp. 18 f.
14. ↑ Klaus Malettke (Ed.): Offices can be bought. Aspects of social mobility in a European comparison (17th and 18th centuries). Berlin 1980.
15. ^ Klaus Malettke: Buying offices and social mobility. Problems and issues of comparative research. In the S. (Ed.): Buyable office. Aspects of social mobility in a European comparison (17th and 18th centuries). Berlin 1980, pp. 3-30.
16. ^ Klaus Malettke, Jürgen Voss: Humanism and courtly-urban elites in the 16th century. 2nd Edition. Bonn 1990.
17. ^ Klaus Malettke: Les relations entre la France et le Saint Empire au XVIIe siècle. Paris 2001.
18. ↑ See the reviews of Peter Claus Hartmann in: Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 73 (2010), p. 179 f; Immo Eberl in: Archive for family history research. Die Zeitschrift für Familienforscher 14 (2010) p. 118.
19. ↑ Klaus Malettke: Hegemony - Multipolar System - Balance. 1648 / 1659-1713 / 1714. Paderborn et al. 2012.
20. ↑ See the reviews by Anuschka Tischer in: Historische Zeitschrift 309 (2019), pp. 195–197; Alexander Querengässer in: H-Soz-Kult , November 27, 2018, ( online ); Andreas Weigl in: Mitteilungen des Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 127 (2019), pp. 489–490; Michael Rohrschneider in: Journal for Historical Research 47 (2020), pp. 133-134.