Kurt Breysig

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kurt Breysig (born July 5, 1866 in Posen ; † June 16, 1940 in Bergholz-Rehbrücke ) was a German historian with a strong sociological and cultural anthropological influence.

Life

Kurt Breysig was the second son of the grammar school professor and classical philologist Dr. Alfred Breysig and his wife Clara Haffner were born. Breysig spent most of his childhood and youth in Erfurt , where his father had been transferred. In 1884 Breysig began studying law in Berlin , moved to Tübingen in 1885, particularly because of the history of art, and finally returned to Berlin in 1886 to devote himself to historical studies.

Among his professors were Hans Delbrück , Hans Droysen , Reinhold Koser and Heinrich von Treitschke . Breysig was particularly impressed by Gustav von Schmoller , with whom he received his doctorate in 1888/89 on the trial against Eberhard Danckelmann . From 1894 he published the files on the "Development of the Prussian Estates" on his behalf. In 1892 he received his habilitation, in 1896 he became an extraordinary professor with Schmoller's support, but not until 1923, at the instigation of Carl Heinrich Becker , a full professor of universal history and social studies, both at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin . In order to continue working on his books in peace, Breysig retired in 1933. From 1914 until his death, Breysig lived in Bergholz-Rehbrücke, south of Potsdam , in "Haus Ucht", which the " Werkring " architect Curt Stoeving had built for him.

plant

In the age of Wilhelminism , the focus was on political history - but Breysig felt more drawn to art history . Breysig shared his esteem for great personalities with Leopold von Ranke and Heinrich von Treitschke (although he wanted to overcome German historicism ), with Karl Lamprecht and Karl Marx his interest in economic history , although he disliked their anti-personalism. With Jacob Burckhardt and Friedrich Nietzsche he shared the knowledge of the importance of art in the development of peoples.

Around 1900 Breysig became aware of the vast extent of the field that lay in front of him: it “took 200 years,” he says. He wrote about 30 books - many of them remained unfinished. In his work "Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit" from 1900 and 1901, there are already essential aspects of his approach: Every people starts from a "primeval time" and could potentially rise to civilization, but only a few succeed in depending on their " race " such as the Greeks, Romans and the peoples of the core of Europe. Others remained so far and probably forever in the primeval stage ("Negroes" and others), some "stuck" on "ancient" (Persians) or "medieval" levels (China, Byzantium); the development of the Central American peoples was "strangled" during the transition into the Middle Ages. The idea that prehistoric times, antiquity, etc. are unique to each people (and no general human-historical development structure) can already be found in Carl Friedrich Vollgraff and, with a slightly different emphasis, also became authoritative for Oswald Spengler .

Breysig illustrated the development in 1905 with the picture of a conical spiral , which he further specified in 1928 with his kinetology of historical developments. This spiral is multi-dimensional: it is traversed at different speeds and in different directions, its tip can be "above" or "below", the course can be centripetal or centrifugal, it relates to the development of the culture as a whole or to partial aspects. What is important here is the spiral movement, which also allows one to look at points lying one above the other in context (cf. Toynbees Religious Helix). In the same year, 1905, his profound, “evolutionary” derivation of theism from animistic ideas of the “savior” appears.

Breysig repeatedly emphasized that his results could only be obtained through empirical research. Around 1910 he tried to set up a seminar for comparative and cultural history at the Friedrich Wilhelms University, but failed. Breysig's establishment by the non-party Minister Becker (see above) was also a thorn in the side of other historians.

Already in 1901 Breysig applied his classification grid with great enthusiasm to the three cultures that are best known to us: “ Antiquity ” begins for the Greeks no later than 1400, for the Romans probably later and for the “Germanic peoples” around 400; this is followed by the “early Middle Ages ” from 1000, “753” and approx. 800; the “late” from approx. 750, 500 or 1300; then the modern times begin, namely the “newer times” around 500, 380 or approx. 1500, and the “newest times” from 338 (up to 30), 133 (or 31; up to 476) or 1789 (up to the present ).

During the war he realized that he also needed scientific knowledge in order to be able to get closer to the "primeval times" (the importance of which, like Oswald Spengler, he values more and more): he chose the vitalist Hans Driesch as his mentor .

In contrast to his interpretation of Spengler's The Fall of the Occident , Breysig did not see the Occident doomed or not for a long time. Spengler recognized the inevitability of cultural development, while Breysig also allowed self-movement in a vitalist manner. The Aryan race is threatened with "disnodification" (and ruin, as the Greeks and Romans prove), but that can now be stopped - Breysig wrote that as early as 1905. Nevertheless, he was unimportant to the Nazi regime: too liberal, too cosmopolitan (In 1912 he published his thoughts on the future of German people).

When Breysig died, large parts of his work were unpublished. Three books were published during the war (1942, 1944). Another three followed after 1949, published by his fourth wife, Gertrud Breysig, nee. Friedburg, whom he married in 1924. She had to spend two years in Theresienstadt , during which time the manuscripts were stored e.g. Sometimes left unattended and parts were lost. An authentic edition of the “complete works” is therefore impossible. Interest in it was very low for a long time after 1945 - it only reawakened in the 1990s: in 2001 Hartmut Böhme re-published the five-volume (universal) “History of Humanity”, the concept of which Breysig had not changed since 1901 (with a foreword by Arnold Joseph Toynbee [1955]).

Works (selection)

  • History of Brandenburg's finances from 1640 to 1697 . Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1895. Digitized edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf . Volumes 1 and 2
  • Cultural history of the modern age. (An attempt at universal history.) Vol. 1: Tasks and standards of a general historiography , Vol. 2: Antiquity and the Middle Ages as preliminary stages of the modern age. Berlin 1900/01.
  • The structure of steps and the laws of world history . Berlin 1905, 2nd, greatly increased edition 1927, 3rd edition 1950.
  • The origin of the idea of ​​God and the savior. Berlin 1905.
  • The peoples of eternal primeval times. Berlin 1907.
  • Of the present and the future of German people. Berlin 1912.
  • The Power of Thought in History, in Confrontation with Hegel and with Marx. Stuttgart 1926.
  • The structure of the personality of Kant. Stuttgart 1931.
  • Natural history and human history. Berlin 1933.
  • The development of humanity from natural events to spiritual events. Wroclaw 1935.
  • About being and knowing historical things. Vol. 1: Psychology and History. Vol. 2: The masters of developing historical research. Breslau 1935/36.
  • The will of the world in what we do. Berlin 1942. (Ethics.)
  • The new image of history in the sense of developing historical research. Berlin 1944.
  • The right to personality and its limits. Berlin 1944.
  • Social theory. History. Edited by Gertrud Breysig , Berlin 1958.
  • From my days and dreams . Edited by Gertrud Breysig, Berlin 1962.
  • Thought sheets. Edited by Gertrud Breysig. Berlin 1964.
  • The history of mankind. Introduction by Hartmut Böhme . Foreword by Arnold Toynbee (1954), new edition of the 1955 edition, 5 volumes, de Gruyter, Berlin 2001, ISBN 978-3-11-017037-5 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hartmut Böhme: Universalistic delimitations and versatile analogies in the history of mankind by Kurt Breysig. In: Wolfgang Hardtwig, Philipp Müller (Ed.): The past of world history. Universal historical thinking in Berlin 1800–1933 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-525-30007-7 , pp. 176 . Bernhard vom Brocke: Kurt Breysig. History between historicism and sociology. Matthiesen Verlag, Lübeck and Hamburg 1971, ISBN 978-3-7868-1417-7 , pp.
     22 .
  2. ↑ Breysig gave a speech at Nietzsche's coffin in Weimar. The next day (August 28, 1900) Breysig also took the funeral procession to the funeral in Röcken. Breysig was one of the first in Germany who dared to give a lecture on Nietzsche (around 1897).
  3. ↑ Tim B. Müller: Thinking about the whole thing. Universal history at the science location Berlin. In: Report of the conference "Thinking about the whole", May 22, 2008– May 24, 2008, Berlin. H-Soz-u-Kult, June 14, 2008, accessed October 10, 2018 .
  4. ↑ K. Breysig: The Prophet of Downfall Oswald Spengler. In: Velhagen & Klasings monthly books . tape 35 . Velhagen & Klasing, Leipzig 1921, p. 261-270 .
personal data
SURNAME Breysig, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian
DATE OF BIRTH July 5, 1866
PLACE OF BIRTH Poses
DATE OF DEATH June 16, 1940
Place of death Bergholz-Rehbrücke