Lucian Hölscher

Lucian Hölscher (born August 17, 1948 in Munich ) is a German historian. From 1991 to 2014 he taught at the Ruhr University Bochum as a professor at the chair for modern history and the theory of history.

Life

Hölscher comes from a Protestant family of pastors and scholars in East Friesland. His father was the classical philologist Uvo Hölscher (1914–1996), his mother the Germanist and Goethe researcher Dorothea Hölscher-Lohmeyer (1913–2008). His grandfather was the Old Testament scholar Gustav Hölscher (1887–1954) and his great-grandfather was Wilhelm Hölscher (pastor at the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig , 1845–1911). His brother Tonio Hölscher (* 1940) is a classical archaeologist.

Hölscher attended the Jesuit Canisius College in Berlin , the Kurfürst-Friedrich-Gymnasium Heidelberg and, as a private student, the confirmation classes of the Protestant theologian Helmut Gollwitzer . After studying ancient and new history, sociology, philosophy and economics in Göttingen , Freiburg , Oxford and Heidelberg , he received his doctorate in 1976 under Reinhart Koselleck , where he moved to Bielefeld University as an assistant . There he supervised the research group Language and History (1976–1978) set up by Koselleck as a research assistant at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research and the work of the visiting scientist Norbert Elias (1978–1982). He worked as an editorial assistant and author (Art. Public , Utopia ) on the Lexicon of Basic Historical Terms .

After his habilitation at Bielefeld University , he headed the Protestantism and Citizenship Section within the Bielefeld Collaborative Research Center for Social History of the Bourgeoisie and accepted invitations as a fellow at the Institute for German History at the University of Tel Aviv and as a deputy chair of Helga Grebing at the University of Göttingen. In 1991 he was appointed to the chair for modern history and the theory of history at the Ruhr University Bochum as the successor to Jörn Rüsen , where he taught until 2014.

In Bochum, Hölscher has been involved in setting up the Institute for Genocide and Diaspora Research headed by Mihran Dabag and Kristin Platt since 1994 , to which he has been associated as chairman of the board ever since. From 2001 to 2007 he was a German specialist for history on the Tuning Commission of the European University Association , which accompanied the implementation of the Bologna Process . From 2002 to 2011 he was a member of the Academic Senate of the Ruhr University Bochum. In 2003 he taught as a guest at the European University Institute in Florence , and in 2007 at the Maison de Science de l'Homme in Paris.

Since 2002, Hölscher has been involved in setting up the research focus CERES (Center for Religious Studies) at the Ruhr University Bochum. From 2006 to 2012 he was part of the DFG research group Transformation of Religion in the Modern Age (together with the Catholic contemporary historian Wilhelm Damberg , the social historian Klaus Tenfelde , the Protestant theologian Traugott Jähnichen , the religious scholar Volkhard Krech and the media historian Frank Bösch ). From 2008 to 2012 he was a member of the board of directors and head of the Religious Terms section of the Käte Hamburger Institute Dynamics of Religion between Asia and Europe , which was headed by Volkhard Krech. In 2016, already emeritus, he was appointed the first holder of the Hans Blumenberg visiting professorship in the Cluster of Excellence Religion and Politics at the University of Münster .

plant

Hölscher's scientific work is centered around four main research areas:

Concept history

In his scientific work, in connection with the work of Reinhart Koselleck , Hölscher combined socio- historical approaches with conceptual historical approaches at an early stage . He contributed the articles Utopia and Public to the Lexicon Historical Basic Concepts published by Otto Brunner , Werner Conze and Reinhart Koselleck , the latter in close connection with his dissertation Public and Secret. On the emergence of the public in the early modern period (1979). In the following, Hölscher expanded the spectrum of conceptual historical studies primarily to include the history of religious concepts in modern times (piety, afterlife, religion, denomination). In addition, he participated organizationally and with his own work on the theory of conceptual history in the international expansion of the conceptual history.

Historical futurology

A second research focus on the history of the future arose since the mid-1980s from the habilitation thesis Weltgericht oder Revolution. Protestant and Socialist Future Concepts in the German Empire (1989). In the following two decades, Hölscher expanded these studies with his book The Discovery of the Future (1999, 2nd extended edition 2016) and a large number of essays on a separate field of research, historical futurology, which he has been part of a European research network with a the newsletter published three times a year.

History of religion and piety

Since the end of the 1980s, Hölscher has also been developing a research focus on the history of religion , initially as part of the Bielefeld Collaborative Research Center for the Social History of the Modern Bourgeoisie . The social and mentality history of modern Protestantism, which he describes as the “history of piety”, sees itself as a conceptual counterbalance to church history and tries to expand the history of religion to include secular society. The main works were the statistical data atlas on religious geography in Protestant Germany (4 vols., 2001) and the history of Protestant piety (2005), as well as several compilations, all of which were published in the series History of Religion in Modern Times in Wallstein Verlag .

Theory of historical times

Hölscher's most recent research focus is on the analysis of historical concepts of time since the 18th century. He published a first study on this in 2003 under the title Neue Annalistik. Outlines a Theory of History (2003). Later writings also dealt with this topic. Closely related to this are some studies on the “historical breach” of the First World War, which in particular discuss problems of historical understanding across historical breaches.

Fonts (selection)

Monographs

• Public and secret. A conceptual historical study of the emergence of the public in the early modern period (=  language and society . Volume 4 ). Klett-Cotta , Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-12-912420-9 .
• Last Judgment or Revolution. Protestant and socialist ideas about the future in the German Empire . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-608-91559-1 .
• The discovery of the future . Fischer Verlag , Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-596-60137-1 .
• Data atlas on religious geography in Protestant Germany between the mid-19th century and the Second World War, 4 vols. De Gruyter , Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-11-016905-3 .
• New annals. Outlines of a theory of history . Wallstein Verlag , Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-89244-664-4 .
• History of Protestant Piety, Vol. 1: From the Reformation to the First World War . CH Beck , Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-53526-7 .
• If I were a bird About utopias and reality in modern times. Munich speeches on poetry. Lyrik Kabinett Foundation. Munich, 2008. ISBN 978-3-938776-18-6 .
• Semantics of the void. Frontier questions in historical science . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8353-0408-6 .

Editorships

• The Hereafter. Facets of a religious term in modern times (=  history of religion in modern times . Volume 1 ). Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0201-3 .
• Political Correctness. The linguistic dispute over the National Socialist crimes . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0344-7 .
• (with Frank Bösch ) Beyond the Church. The opening of religious spaces since the 1950s . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1348-4 .

Web links

• Lucian Hölscher on Academia.edu

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Press release of the Cluster of Excellence from March 31, 2016 https://www.uni-muenster.de/Religion-und-Ppolitik/aktuelles/2016/mar/PM_Vortragsreihe_Hans_Blumenberg_Gastprofessur.html .
2. ^ H-Soz-Kult : Review by Alexander Schmidt-Gernig (February 10, 2000) .
3. ^ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung : Review: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 22, 2003, p. 43 .
4. ^ H-Soz-Kult: Review by Barbara Stambolis (January 23, 2006) .
5. ↑ See points: Review by Joachim Schmiedl (January 15, 2006) .
6. ↑ H-Soz-Kult: Review by Achim Landwehr (December 4, 2009) .