Ludwig Jedlicka

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Ludwig Jedlicka in his study (1958)

Ludwig Franz Jedlicka (born May 26, 1916 in Vienna , † April 29, 1977 in Salzburg ) was an Austrian historian . He was a full professor at the University of Vienna and co-founder of the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance (DÖW) and the Institute for Contemporary History . Jedlicka is considered the founder of scientific contemporary history research in Austria.

Life

Origin and studies

Jedlicka was born in Vienna in 1916 as the son of a primary school teacher who fell as an ensign in the reserve in infantry regiment No. 64 of the Austro-Hungarian Army at the end of the First World War . He had a congenital hip problem and suffered from polio at an early age , which made him unable to walk. After graduating from the Realgymnasium in Vienna 14 ( Penzing ) in 1934 , he studied history , German and antiquity at the University of Vienna a . a. with Josef Nadler , Edmund Glaise-Horstenau and Hans Hirsch , worked as an aspirant in the administration of the City of Vienna as early as 1937 and became Freiherrn von 1939 with Heinrich von Srbik and Hans Hirsch at the Philosophical Faculty with the dissertation Emperor and Empire in the works of Ludwig Timotheus von Spittler to Dr. phil. PhD. Jedlicka then turned to military history .

time of the nationalsocialism

Jedlicka joined the Hitler Youth (HJ) in 1930 . In 1935 and again in 1938 he was accepted as an “illegal” member of the NSDAP , which was banned in Austria at the time, and was given membership number 6,303,250. In the same year he became Hitler Youth leader . He was also the press officer of the illegal HJ press, temporarily in the NSDAP's intelligence service in 1936, also a member of the NSDStB and briefly headed the historians' council. Jedlicka was one of the ringleaders of the Hitler Youth on October 8, 1938, when they stormed the Archbishop's Palace in Vienna. From 1940 to 1941 he worked as a school and university representative for the Hitler Youth in the City School Council of Vienna. In 1941 he was promoted to HJ regular leader.

Because he was also a member of the Austrofascist Fatherland Front in 1934 and cell leader there in 1938, but without reporting this to the party, he came into conflict with Reich Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach . Jedlicka's political double life led to internal party investigations in the NSDAP. Statements by prominent witnesses (such as the authorized German general in Croatia Edmund Glaise-Horstenau , the head of the personnel department of the Hitler Youth in Vienna Janetschek and SS-Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Höttl ) made Jedlicka's political reliability in the sense of the NSDAP before the Gaugericht in April 1941 approved. Classified as an “ old fighter ”, Jedlicka was appointed City Inspector in January 1941 at the age of 24. At first he acted as a “liaison leader between the regional leadership of the Hitler Youth and the city of Vienna” and was then assigned to the cultural office, where he worked on the scientific description of the monuments in Vienna. From November 1941 to October 1944 Jedlicka, who was classified as “unfit”, served as a private in the Army Museum of the Wehrmacht in the arsenal. Jedlicka already emerged as a publicist during the Nazi era - for example with a brochure about the high and German masters. 700 Years of German Soldierhood , which appeared in 1943 and was also published as a short version in Die Pause 7/1943. In another short article, Jedlicka tried to interpret the Vienna arbitration and the border shifts in favor of Hungary over Romania. Loyal to the line, he praised the minority policy towards all Germans in these countries and celebrated the seizure of power by the fascist and anti-Semitic Iron Guard in Romania. On the contrary, from 1943 he was active in the field of military resistance. From autumn 1944 he was in contact with the Austrian resistance movement O5 , which he joined in spring 1945. In the Szokoll group, he probably provided the Allies with valuable information, which later led to his de-registration as an “old fighter” through a declaration of no objection by the ÖVP. During the Battle of Vienna in April 1945, he allegedly hoisted the first recognizable red-white-red flag at the Vienna City Hall .

Post-war period and work in the Second Republic

After the Second World War it was largely unencumbered. He worked undisturbed as a publishing editor for Universum Verlag until 1950 , a. a. as part of a lexicon project (Österreichisches Taschenlexikon), to which he contributed modern topics. Proceedings before the People's Court (Vg 8b / Vr 1040/49) were discontinued by the public prosecutor's office on June 28, 1949, because the authorities came to the conclusion that the golden HJ badge Jedlicka was “wrongly” awarded. From May 1950 to October 1953 Ludwig Jedlicka was employed as a publishing secretary at the medical specialist publisher Urban & Schwarzenberg . From 1952 to 1961 he was again curator at the Army History Museum; from 1954 civil servant in the Ministry of Defense . In 1961 he became a teacher at the Theresian Military Academy in Vienna. He himself held the rank of captain of the reserve.

Politically, Jedlicka joined the ÖVP after 1945 through the Cartell Association. He was a member of the Catholic Landsmannschaft Maximiliana and also an honorary member of an association in the Austrian Cartell Association and the academic Corps Marchia Vienna . He developed his first intensive ÖVP contacts after 1945 as a freelancer for the “Österreichischen Furche” around the former editor-in-chief of the Christian-social “Reichspost” Friedrich Funder , in which he also published the first short articles on contemporary history. Since autumn 1945 Jedlicka had found a connection to a discussion group close to the ÖVP, "The Fireside Round" around Friedrich Funder and the missiologist Father Thauren, through the Furche collaboration. According to the US secret service, Jedlicka was also involved in bringing about the meeting between top ÖVP officials and former NSDAP functionaries in Oberwais in 1948, at which a “national wing” of the ÖVP was to be established after the 1949 National Council elections. Ludwig Jedlicka joined the ÖVP as a member in 1949.

As early as the 1950s, Ludwig Jedlicka made first contacts with the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich and the Library for Contemporary History in Stuttgart . He was also active as a speaker at the Catholic Academy and at the University Weeks in Alpbach . In 1955 Böhlau-Verlag published his study on An Army in the Shadow of the Parties. The military-political situation in Austria 1918-1938 , which was subsequently proposed as a habilitation thesis by Hugo Hantsch and Heinrich Benedikt . Jedlicka's habilitation, which took place in June 1957, was not without controversy, in particular the lack of international contextualization was criticized. In December 1960, the Austrian Society for Contemporary History was founded under the chairmanship of University Professor Alfons Lhotsky . Jedlicka took on the role of general secretary. At the beginning of 1961, this association founded the Institute for Contemporary History , where Jedlicka was employed from the start. Several university professors supported the institute, including Lhotsky, the Benedictine father Hugo Hantsch and the returned exile (and later critic Jedlicka) Friedrich Engel-Jánosi , but above all the ÖVP education minister Heinrich Drimmel . The first scientific project task of the Institute for Contemporary History was the publication of a historical account of Austria's contribution to its liberation in the sense of the Moscow Declaration , which, at the request of SPÖ Foreign Minister Bruno Kreisky , decided in the Council of Ministers on February 27, 1962 as a contribution to the anniversary celebrations in 1965 had been. In the course of this file edition project, which Jedlicka ad personam was commissioned to carry out at the suggestion of the Ministry of Education, the latter also worked with Karl R. Stadler , a consultant belonging to the SPÖ and historian who had returned from exile in Great Britain, and Herbert Steiner , who would later become the scientific director of the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance (DÖW). Jedlicka and Steiner knew each other from the immediate post-war period, when Steiner, as general secretary of the (communist) Free Austrian Youth, carried out a training campaign for former Hitler Youth leaders in cooperation with the state police. When the DÖW was founded, then under the name of the Austrian Documentation Archive of the Resistance Movement, in the spring of 1963, Jedlicka acted as one of the proponents of the association alongside Steiner, the socialist resistance fighter and insurance manager Paul Schärf, and the (left Catholic) university professor of sociology August Maria Knoll . In the following years Jedlicka initiated or supervised several dissertations on topics of resistance and persecution. In the Second Republic, Jedlicka developed politically into a convinced “grand coalition” with a “readiness for acceptance from the left that was rare at the university at the time”.

On July 12, 1965, Ludwig Jedlicka was appointed to the title of "extraordinary university professor". In this context, his Nazi past was discussed and his first application for an extraordinary position was rejected. On March 15, 1966, however, the Council of Ministers approved his appointment as associate professor with special emphasis on modern history at the University of Vienna. On June 7, 1966, the Institute for Contemporary History was established and Jedlicka was appointed to the board. In March 1969, Ludwig Jedlicka was finally appointed full professor, although the university commission had initially rejected this for budgetary reasons. Jedlicka acted alongside Rudolf Neck , the later one, for the Scientific Commission of the Theodor-Körner-Stiftungsfonds and the Leopold-Kunschak-Prize for the research of Austrian history from 1927 to 1938, which was established in 1972 and was active until 1983 General director of the Austrian State Archives, as chairman. The conferences held at irregular intervals and the published conference minutes, for example for February and July 1934 , reflected the current state of contemporary historical research (with a focus on the First Republic).

His academic students included a. Gerhard Botz , Peter Fiala , Hans Hautmann , Peter Huemer , Gerhard Jagschitz , Otto Klambauer , Heinz Magenheimer , Wolfgang Neugebauer , Norbert Schausberger , Anton Staudinger , Karl Stuhlpfarrer and Georg Tidl . Gertrude Burcel started her dissertation at Jedlicka.

Ludwig Jedlicka worked on numerous radio programs as a consultant, but also as a copywriter. He was linked to Austrian television as a consultant by a contract. These activities gave him a publicity that went far beyond the classic academic framework, but which also covered up the structural weaknesses of contemporary history research in Austria for a long time - both in terms of methodological backwardness and thematic time delays, regarding National Socialism and the Holocaust and subsequently regarding the period after 1945, as well as the strong Austrozentrierung.

Honorary grave of Ludwig Jedlicka in the Neustift cemetery (2009)

Jedlicka, a Roman Catholic, was married and had two children. He died in Salzburg in 1977 and was buried in a grave of honor in the Neustift cemetery in Vienna. In addition, a Ludwig Jedlicka Memorial Prize was established in 1978 for work on Austrian history in the 19th and 20th centuries , which was awarded annually on the anniversary of his death.

Awards and memberships

time of the nationalsocialism

In the Second Republic

Fonts (selection)

  • "Hoch- und Deutschmeister". 700 years of German soldierhood. Walter, Vienna a. a. 1944.
  • An army in the shadow of the parties. The military-political situation in Austria 1918–1938. Böhlau, Vienna a. a. 1955.
  • July 20, 1944 in Austria (= The lonely conscience , Volume 2). 2nd, expanded edition. Herold, Vienna a. a. 1965.
  • End and beginning. Austria 1918/1919. Vienna and the federal states (= specific policy ). SN-Verlag, Salzburg 1969.
  • Dr. Alfred Maleta and the Social Working Group (SAG) . In: Andreas Khol u. a. (Ed.): About parliament and party. Alfred Maleta on his 70th birthday , Graz a. a .: Styria 1976 (series of studies by the political academy of the Austrian People's Party; 1), pp. 69–84.
  • From the old to the new Austria. Case studies on contemporary Austrian history 1900–1975 . 2nd Edition. Verlag Niederösterreichisches Pressehaus, St. Pölten u. a. 1977, ISBN 3-85326-412-3 .

Ludwig Jedlicka Memorial Prize

The main prize and sponsorship award winners of the Ludwig Jedlicka Memorial Prize for Contemporary History, which has been awarded since 1978, included a. Günter Bischof , Walter Blasi , Peter Broucek , Wolfgang Etschmann , Michael Gehler , Ernst Hanisch , Siegfried Nasko , Roman Sandgruber , Walther Schaumann , Erwin A. Schmidl , Horst Schreiber , Gerald Steinacher , Arnold Suppan , Erika Thurner and Reinhold Wagnleitner .

literature

  • Peter Broucek (ed.): A general in the twilight. The memories of Edmund Glaise von Horstenau . Volume 2: Minister in the corporate state and general in the OKW (= publications of the Commission for Modern History of Austria , Volume 70). Böhlau, Vienna a. a. 1983, ISBN 3-205-08743-7 , p. 58 (professional career in the footnote) and p. 553 (curriculum vitae in the footnote).
  • Felix Czeike : Historical Lexicon Vienna. In 6 volumes . Volume 3: Ha-La . K & S, Vienna a. a. 2004, ISBN 3-218-00744-5 , p. 350.
  • Felix Czeike: Jedlicka, Ludwig . In: Rudolf Vierhaus (Ed.): German Biographical Encyclopedia (DBE). Volume 5: Hitz-Kozub . 2nd edition, KG Saur, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-598-25035-5 , pp. 327–328.
  • Jedlicka, Ludwig . In: Fritz Fellner , Doris A. Corradini: Austrian History in the 20th Century. A biographical-bibliographical lexicon (= publications of the Commission for Modern History of Austria. Vol. 99). Böhlau, Vienna et al. 2006, ISBN 978-3-205-77476-1 , p. 205.
  • Hanns Haas: Ludwig Jedlicka (1916-1977) . In: zeitgeschichte 9/10 (1976/77) 4, pp. 363–365.
  • Robert A. Kann : In Remembrance: Ludwig Jedlicka . In: Austrian History Yearbook 12 (1976), pp. 643-644.
  • Rudolf Neck , Adam Wandruszka (Ed.): Contributions to contemporary history. Festschrift Ludwig Jedlicka for his 60th birthday . Verlag Niederösterreichisches Pressehaus, St. Pölten 1976, ISBN 3-85326-423-9 .
  • Kurt Peball , Peter Broucek: Jedlicka, Ludwig . In: Ders .: History of Austrian Military Historiography . Böhlau, Cologne a. a. 2000, ISBN 3-412-05700-2 , pp. 423-424; P. 424 ff. (List of publications).
  • Oliver Rathkolb : Ludwig Jedlicka: Four lives and a typical Austrian. Biographical sketch of one of the founders of contemporary history research . In: zeitgeschichte 32 (2005) 6, pp. 351–370, digitized online at ANNO .
  • Adam Wandruszka: Obituary for Ludwig Jedlicka . In: Almanac of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. 127, pp. 567-570 (1977).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kurt Dieman-Dichtl : Always faithful. Another Neustadtbuch. Ketterl, Mauerbach 1999, ISBN 3-85134-012-4 , p. 58.
  2. ↑ Oliver Rathkolb : Ludwig Jedlicka: Four lives and a typical Austrian. Biographical sketch of one of the founders of contemporary history research. In: contemporary history . 32 (2005) 6, p. 354.
  3. ↑ Peter Broucek : A General in the Twilight. The memories of Edmund Glaise von Horstenau. Böhlau, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-205-08749-6 , p. 45.
  4. ↑ Oliver Rathkolb: Ludwig Jedlicka: Four lives and a typical Austrian. Biographical sketch of one of the founders of contemporary history research. In: contemporary history . 32 (2005) 6, p. 357.
  5. ↑ Oliver Rathkolb: Ludwig Jedlicka: Four lives and a typical Austrian. Biographical sketch of one of the founders of contemporary history research. In: contemporary history . 32 (2005) 6, p. 357.
  6. ↑ Oliver Rathkolb: Ludwig Jedlicka: Four lives and a typical Austrian. Biographical sketch of one of the founders of contemporary history research. In: contemporary history . 32 (2005) 6, pp. 357f.
  7. ↑ Oliver Rathkolb: Ludwig Jedlicka: Four lives and a typical Austrian. Biographical sketch of one of the founders of contemporary history research. In: contemporary history . 32 (2005) 6, p. 358.
  8. ↑ Oliver Rathkolb: Ludwig Jedlicka: Four lives and a typical Austrian. Biographical sketch of one of the founders of contemporary history research. In: contemporary history . 32 (2005) 6, p. 359.
  9. ^ The Austrian Society for Contemporary History (ÖGZ)
  10. ↑ Oliver Rathkolb: Ludwig Jedlicka: Four lives and a typical Austrian. Biographical sketch of one of the founders of contemporary history research. In: contemporary history . 32 (2005) 6, p. 359.
  11. ↑ Oliver Rathkolb: Ludwig Jedlicka: Four lives and a typical Austrian. Biographical sketch of one of the founders of contemporary history research. In: contemporary history. 32 (2005) 6, p. 367.
  12. ^ Hanns Haas: Ludwig Jedlicka (1916-1977). In: zeitgeschichte 9/10 (1976/77) 4, p. 365.
  13. ↑ Oliver Rathkolb: Ludwig Jedlicka: Four lives and a typical Austrian. Biographical sketch of one of the founders of contemporary history research. In: contemporary history . 32 (2005) 6, p. 361.
  14. ^ Renée Winter: Politics of History and Television. Representations of National Socialism on early Austrian TV (1955–1970). transcript, Bielefeld 2014, pp. 96-101.
  15. ↑ Oliver Rathkolb: Ludwig Jedlicka: Four lives and a typical Austrian. Biographical sketch of one of the founders of contemporary history research. In: contemporary history . 32 (2005) 6, p. 366.
  16. ↑ Graves of honor, Neustift am Walde cemetery , viennatouristguide.at, accessed on March 15, 2014.
  17. ↑ http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno-plus?aid=ztg&date=1976&page=431&size=45
personal data
SURNAME Jedlicka, Ludwig
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jedlicka, Ludwig Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian historian
DATE OF BIRTH May 26, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH April 29, 1977
Place of death Salzburg