Martin Wellmer

Martin Wellmer (born October 22, 1902 in Bergkirchen , Minden district ; † May 28, 1972 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German historian and archivist .

The son of a doctor grew up in a Protestant environment with six siblings. He attended primary school from 1909 to 1913 and the grammar school in Minden from 1913 to 1922. For financial reasons, he was initially unable to begin studying. Instead, he completed an apprenticeship as a bookseller and worked in this profession in Berlin, Heidelberg and Darmstadt until 1930. This activity was interrupted by educational trips to Paris and London. From 1930 to 1935 he studied history, Romance languages ​​and German literature at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg . His academic teachers were Hermann Heimpel and Gerhard Ritter , Hanns Heiss and Martin Heidegger . He completed his studies in 1935 with the state examination. When Theodor Mayer , he was in 1936 over the four villages forest near Emmendingen Dr. phil. PhD. In 1936/37 he attended the Institute for Archival Studies in Berlin-Dahlem. He married a high school teacher in Karlsruhe in 1939. The marriage had two children. In 1940 he passed the second state examination at the Bismarck-Gymnasium Karlsruhe . Since then he has been active in the General State Archives in Karlsruhe and in the school service.

He was a member of the NSDAP from 1940 to 1941 . During the Second World War , he did military service from 1941 . In January 1944 he was in France with the rank of non-commissioned officer. In September 1944 he was taken prisoner by Bourges , from which he was able to return to Germany in 1947. He was then denazified and worked in Freiburg as an interpreter at the State Commissariat for Political Cleansing.

From 1947 he was the first head of the newly established State Archives Office and from 1953 head of the Freiburg branch of the General State Archives Karlsruhe and from 1966 director of the State Archives. From the summer semester of 1951 to the summer of 1971 he held a lectureship for Upper Rhine regional history at the University of Freiburg. From the summer of 1964 he had another teaching position at the Freiburg University of Education . He retired in 1967.

Wellmer's areas of work were the settlement, economic and constitutional history of the Upper Rhine area. In his dissertation on the history of the Vierdörferwald near Emmendingen, he was able to show “that brand cooperatives are the result of a time in which the traditional use of brands that had no owner was caused by the advancing colonization and the endangerment of natural rights of use until then made it necessary to delimit the spheres of use ”. He made numerous contributions to the history of the area in the German City Book from 1951 to 1960. He earned services to the Alemannic Institute and the Breisgau History Association . From 1935 he worked at the Alemannic Institute. From 1962 he was on the scientific advisory board of the Alemannic Institute and from 1963 long-term managing director. He published the Alemannic Yearbook in 1970. He had also had good relationships with the traditional Breisgau history association since 1938. There he presented his research results on the Vierdörferwald near Emmendingen. He was one of the re-founders of the Breisgau History Association around 1947. From 1956 to 1964 he was first chairman and from 1951 to 1959 editor of the magazine Schau-ins-Land . He was made an honorary member in 1969. In addition, the 90th volume of the magazine was dedicated to him as a festschrift.

He was also involved in the commission for historical regional studies in Baden-Württemberg and in the Konstanz working group for medieval history , which his teacher Theodor Mayer founded in 1951. In 1954 he became a member of the Commission for Historical Regional Studies. He did not participate in the Konstanz working group by giving lectures, but he arranged conference participants and came to the conferences himself regularly. In 1970 he was awarded the Médaille d'Or du Mérite des Arts, Sciences et Lettres of the Democratic Republic of the Congo for his support in cultural projects . Wellmer had participated in the opening of a Congolese art exhibition in Stuttgart and was a reviewer for the magazine Tele-Africa. In addition, the reading room of his office could be used for lectures on schools and education in the Congo.

Fonts

A list of publications compiled by Beatrix Klaiber was published in: Schau-ins-Land: Annual issue of the Breisgau history association Schauinsland. 92, 1974, pp. 85-90 ( online ).

• The history of the origin of the mark cooperatives. The Vierdörferwald near Emmendingen (= publications of the Upper Rhine Institute for Historical Regional Studies Freiburg im Breisgau. Vol. 4). Wagner, Freiburg im Breisgau 1938.

literature

• Renate Liessem-Breinlinger: Martin Wellmer. In: Fred Ludwig Sepaintner (Hrsg.): Baden-Württembergische Biographien. Volume 4. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-17-019951-4 , pp. 390-392.
• Renate Liessem-Breinlinger: Martin Wellmer. Integration figure in matters of cultural studies between archive administration, university, Alemannic Institute and Breisgau history association. In: Alemannisches Institut Freiburg im Breisgau e. V. (Ed.): The Alemannic Institute. 75 years of cross-border communication and research. (1931-2006). Freiburg (Breisgau) et al. 2007, ISBN 978-3-495-48286-5 , pp. 161-166.
• Helmut Maurer : Martin Wellmer 1902–1972. In: Journal for the history of the Upper Rhine. 120, 1972, pp. 497-499.
• Friedrich Facius: Martin Wellmer † In: The archivist . 26, 1973, p. 354 f.

Web links

• Publications by Martin Wellmer in the Opac der Regesta Imperii
• Wellmer, Martin LEO-BW. Baden-Württemberg State Archive

Remarks

1. ↑ See the review by Karl-Hans Ganahl in: Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, German Department. 59, 1939, pp. 467-474.
2. ↑ Martin Wellmer: On the history of the origin of the mark cooperatives. The Vierdörferwald near Emmendingen. Freiburg im Breisgau 1938, p. 181 f.