Max Steinmetz (historian)

Max Steinmetz (born October 12, 1912 in Frankfurt am Main , † September 11, 1990 in Leipzig ) was a German historian .

The son of an insurance employee grew up in modest circumstances in Mannheim. In 1932 he passed the Abitur at a humanistic grammar school in Mannheim. Steinmetz began studying philosophy and art history at the University of Heidelberg in 1932/33 and joined the NSDStB . He was a member of the SA from 1933 to 1940. He discovered his passion for history and changed subjects. After a short stay at the University of Frankfurt am Main , he continued his studies at the University of Freiburg i. Br. Continued. He received his doctorate in Freiburg i. Br. With Gerhard Ritter on the politics of the Electoral Palatinate under Ludwig V. After completing his doctorate, Steinmetz took up an assistant position in the project “German biography of the Reformation period” under the direction of Wilhelm Maurer (1900–1982) at the University of Marburg . In 1940 he was drafted into the German army. Due to his poor eyesight he was not fit for the field service and therefore served as a clerk in the military administration in France. In November 1944 he was transferred to Courland . In the last days of the Second World War, Steinmetz fell into Soviet captivity. During his four-year imprisonment, he began to grapple with Marxism-Leninism .

He was released in July 1949. A week after his release, he joined the German Administration for Popular Education . At the same time, he taught at the workers and farmers faculty and at a library school in Berlin. As early as 1949 he had applied for admission to the SED , but was initially denied membership. It was not until 1952 that he received the party membership card. In 1952 he held a teaching position at the Humboldt University in Berlin . Since 1954 he was Karl Griewank's successor at the University of Jena . In 1957 he completed his habilitation with a thesis on Thomas Müntzer . Between 1958 and 1962 he worked for the MfS . In 1961 he was appointed professor at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig . Steinmetz worked for decades in the editorial department of the Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft and was director of the Institute for German History in Leipzig. His main scientific topic was the early bourgeois revolution in Germany . At the beginning of 1960 he initiated the discussion about the revolutionary character of the time of the Reformation and the Peasant War with his theses on the early bourgeois revolution . Steinmetz also dealt with humanism research, university history, and the history of art and literature. In 1977 he retired. Steinmetz received the Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze in 1972 and the National Prize of the GDR III in 1975 . Class "for his outstanding achievements in the field of the history of the German Peasant War". The Karl Marx University in Leipzig awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1977.

Fonts

Monographs

• Thomas Müntzer's way to Allstedt. A study of its early development. Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-326-00402-8 .
• Germany from 1476 to 1648 (from the early bourgeois revolution to the Peace of Westphalia) 2., revised. and exp. Ed., Berlin 1978.
• The Müntzer picture from Martin Luther to Friedrich Engels. Berlin 1971.

Editorships

• The early bourgeois revolution in Germany. Berlin 1985.

literature

• Lothar Mertens : Lexicon of the GDR historians. Biographies and bibliographies on the historians from the German Democratic Republic. Saur, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-598-11673-X , pp. 579-580.
• Max Steinmetz 60 years . In: Journal of History . 20 Jg., H. 8, 1972, p. 1020.
• Max Steinmetz 65 years . In: Journal of History. 25 Jg., H. 9, 1977, pp. 1092-1093.
• Max Steinmetz 70 years . In: Journal of History. 30 Jg., H. 9, 1982, pp. 836-837.
• Max Steinmetz 75 years . In: Journal of History. 35 vol., H. 9, 1987, pp. 819-820.
• Laurenz Müller: Dictatorship and Revolution. Reformation and the Peasants' War in the history of the “Third Reich” and the GDR. Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-8282-0289-6 , pp. 288-320 ( sources and research on agricultural history 50), (also: Bern, Univ., Diss., 2003).

Web links

• Max Steinmetz (historian) in the professorial catalog of the University of Leipzig
• Siegfried Hoyer : Max Steinmetz (1912–1990) . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .

Remarks

1. ↑ Harry Waibel : Servants of many masters. Former Nazi functionaries in the Soviet Zone / GDR. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2011, ISBN 978-3-631-63542-1 , pp. 324-325.
2. ↑ Berliner Zeitung , October 2, 1975, p. 5.