Manfred Kittel

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Manfred Kittel (2013)

Manfred Kittel (born February 2, 1962 in Großhaslach ) is a German historian and professor at the University of Regensburg . He was the founding director of the Federal Foundation for Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation in Berlin.

Life and Scientific Work

Studies, dissertation and habilitation

Kittel studied history , political science and Romance studies . After that he was u. a. works as a (television) journalist. In 1992 he was at Horst Möller at the University of Erlangen for Dr. phil. PhD and then research assistant at the Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) in Munich. From 1997 to 2009 he was also the editor of the quarterly magazine for contemporary history . He has been teaching at the University of Regensburg since 1995 , where he completed his habilitation in 1999 and was appointed adjunct professor for modern and contemporary history in 2005.

Kittel's dissertation dealt with Ralph Giordano's pointed thesis that the Germans had incurred a second guilt after 1945 - after the first one during the “Third Reich” - due to their failures to come to terms with the Nazi past. According to Kittel, however, the Nazi legacy was a central issue in the political culture of the Federal Republic from the start. While Willi Jasper Kittel replied in ZEIT to make coming to terms with the past a “Christian Democratic top priority”, the Frankfurter Allgemeine and other media spoke of a “differentiated, multi-layered” presentation “without glossing over, but also without guilt complex”.

Kittel's habilitation thesis was devoted to a question in the context of the German discussion of `` Sonderweg '': "Why did France, which became a republic early on during the state and economic crisis of the 1930s, vote for a left-wing 'popular front' and embarked on the path of democratic crisis management, while the Germans in the - The Weimar Republic hardly recognized the longed-for Reich until late, after the lost World War, and supported the National Socialist revolution against democracy en masse? " In search of answers to this question, as Heinrich August Winkler commented, the author conducted a case study on West Central Franconia and the Corrèze, “all-round convincing evidence of the benefits of international comparative regional studies”. Kittel published a number of other monographs, thematically ranging from “Protestant Bavaria” in the Weimar Republic to a German-Japanese comparison of coming to terms with the past after 1945 and a book about the “March through the institutions” in Frankfurt am Main after 1968 to studies on the Integration of displaced persons in the Federal Republic is enough.

Political commitment

Before starting his scientific career, Kittel had also been politically active. In 1984 he was elected as the youngest candidate in the municipal council of his home town in Central Franconia, Neuendettelsau . Before that, he was known for his commitment to ecological issues and more citizen participation. In addition, he devoted himself to Germany and Ostpolitik. Most recently, he also headed a working group on these topics in the Junge Union Bayern, of which he was deputy state chairman in the early 1990s. The focus of his activities was on promoting human rights in the GDR , but also in other Eastern Bloc states such as - after the declaration of war at the end of 1981 - in Poland, as well as adhering to the reunification requirement of the Basic Law. A few weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall in autumn 1989 , the working group led by Kittel was one of the first social voices to appeal to the federal government to "openly commit to the peaceful overcoming of the status quo" and to set up a planning staff for reunification .

Director of the Foundation for Flight, Displacement and Reconciliation

In July 2009, Kittel was appointed by the Board of Trustees of the Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation Foundation as director of the institution that had been decided upon in the previous year after long discussions in the Bundestag. During Kittel's tenure, the foundation was built up in terms of personnel and organization and a concept for the future permanent exhibition of the foundation in Berlin's Deutschlandhaus was developed under his leadership. This was adopted in 2012.

In December 2014, Kittel asked for another use at the Deutsches Historisches Museum , the parent foundation of the Escape, Expulsion, Reconciliation Foundation, and started research there on the subject of “The German expellees from the East and the policy of equalizing burdens in the Federal Republic”. This was preceded by a dispute about the temporary exhibition "Twice a stranger", taken over from Greece, on the expulsions in the 20th century. Members of the advisory group accused the director of having snubbed the advisory board by not being involved. In contrast, Kittel emphasized that with the presentation of the project, which had already run successfully abroad, he had followed repeated suggestions from the advisory board. According to the FAZ, part of the background to the process was that part of the advisory board considered Kittel to be too displaced-friendly, not least because of his book “Displacement of the Displaced?” (2007); According to the critics, he is obviously working towards ensuring that the escape and expulsion of Germans should form not just “one” but “the” focus of the planned permanent exhibition in the Deutschlandhaus.

Awards

In June 2015, Kittel was awarded the Human Rights Prize of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft in recognition of his services to the scientific analysis of expulsions in Europe.

Memberships and editorial work

Kittel is among other things:

  • Co-editor of the European Journal on Minority Issues (EJM)
  • Chairman of the Advisory Board at the House of the German East in Munich
  • Member of the Prussian Historical Commission (PHK)
  • Member of the advisory board for a museum in the Sudeten German House and in the sponsoring association of the International Institute for Nationality Law and Regionalism.

Fonts (selection)

Monographs

  • The legend of the "second guilt". Coping with the past in the Adenauer era , Ullstein, Berlin / Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-550-07188-4 (At the same time, dissertation at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg under the title: Coping with the past in the Adenauer era ).
  • Province between empire and republic. Political mentalities in Germany and France 1918–1933 / 36 . Oldenbourg, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-486-56501-X (also habilitation thesis at the University of Regensburg 1999).
  • "Weimar" in Protestant Bavaria. Political mentality and party system 1918–1933 (= Bavarian State Center for Political Education , A 109), Munich 2001.
  • To Nuremberg and Tokyo. “Coming to terms with the past” in Japan and West Germany from 1945 to 1968 . Oldenbourg, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-486-57573-2 . (Published in Chinese translation in Shanghai in 2014).
  • Displacement of the displaced? The historical German East in the culture of remembrance of the Federal Republic (1961–1982) . Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-58087-7 .
  • Bavaria's "fifth tribe". Silesians, East Prussia and many other displaced groups in integration policy comparison with the Sudeten Germans , Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-927977-26-6 .
  • March through the institutions? Politics and culture in Frankfurt am Main after 1968 . Oldenbourg, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-70402-0 .

Editorships

  • with Horst Möller: Democracy in Germany and France 1918–1933 / 40. Contributions to a historical comparison , Munich 2001.
  • with J.-D. Gauger: The Expulsion of Germans from the East in the Culture of Remembrance , Sankt Augustin 2005.
  • with Horst Möller, Jiřjí Pešek and Oldrich Tůma: German-speaking minorities 1945. A European comparison , Munich 2006; Czech edition under the title: Německé menšiny v právnich normách 1938–1948. Československo ve srovnáni s vbybranými evropskými zeměmy , Brno / Prague 2006.
  • with Horst Möller, Jiřjí Pešek and Oldrich Tůma: German-speaking minorities in Europe 1945. Balance sheets of a German-Czech project , Munich 2007.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Manfred Kittel: The legend of the "second guilt": Coping with the past in the Adenauer era , Ullstein, Berlin / Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-550-07188-4 (At the same time dissertation at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg under the title: Coping with the past in the Adenauer era ).
  2. ↑ The time, finally back to normal? , October 1, 1993.
  3. ↑ Impulse , No. 4/1993, p. 41, Der Buchtip.
  4. ↑ Manfred Kittel: Province between Empire and Republic. Political mentalities in Germany and France 1918–1933 / 36 . Oldenbourg, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-486-56501-X (also habilitation thesis at the University of Regensburg 1999).
  5. ↑ See: Manfred Kittel, Habilitation, Rückenklappe.
  6. ↑ Manfred Kittel: "No beautiful country?" In: Martin Vorländer: "Sehnsuchtsort Heimat", edition chrismon, 2018, pp. 118-138.
  7. ^ Fränkische Landeszeitung , March 20, 1984: Rushed from 19th place to the top .
  8. ↑ Bayernkurier : Planning for reunification now, October 14, 1989.
  9. ^ Fränkische Landeszeitung : Human Rights Day of the JU, November 28, 1981.
  10. ^ Fränkische Landeszeitung : JU participates in Poland Aid, March 6, 1982.
  11. ^ Fränkische Landeszeitung : Deutsche Einheit ist aktuell, June 19, 1987.
  12. ↑ Thomas Lackmann: "Welcome to the Deutschlandhaus". In: Tagesspiegel , July 16, 2009.
  13. ↑ Prof. Dr. Manfred Kittel: “Rearguard of the economic miracle”? The German expellees from the East and the policy of equalizing burdens in the Federal Cultural Foundation of the German Expellees.
  14. ↑ Bernhard Schulz: Director of the Expulsion Foundation goes . In: Der Tagesspiegel , December 16, 2014 online .
  15. ↑ Manfred Kittel: Expulsion of the Expellees? The historical German East in the culture of remembrance of the Federal Republic (1961–1982) . Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-58087-7 .
  16. ↑ Reinhard Müller: A new expulsion? The dispute over the Foundation for Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation is about setting the course. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , December 2, 2014.
  17. ↑ Prof. Dr. Manfred Kittel is awarded the Human Rights Prize of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft (Federal Ministry of the Interior).
  18. ↑ See: Manfred Kittel: The expulsion of 'old Germans' and 'German-friendly' Alsatians from their homeland after the First World War. In: EJM , No. 1-2, 2018, pp. 84-102.
  19. ^ House of the German East .
  20. ↑ Prussian Historical Commission ( Memento of the original dated August 9, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / fbpg.de
personal data
SURNAME Kittel, Manfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian
DATE OF BIRTH 2nd February 1962
PLACE OF BIRTH Grosshaslach