Otto Haintz

Otto Haintz (born April 16, 1890 in Berlin ; † February 27, 1969 there ) was a German historian , known as the biographer of Karl XII. of Sweden .

Life

Haintz was the son of a teacher and from 1908 studied history, German and geography in Berlin with the aim of becoming a teacher. In 1912 he received his doctorate about the Battle of Novara (1513) and in 1914 he was in the teaching profession (later as teacher and senior teacher ), interrupted by the First World War , in which he 1914-1918 soldier was. From 1937 to 1944 he was an employee of the Foreign Office (press department) in Oslo, Rome and Milan. After that he lived as a private scholar.

He is known for his biography of Charles XII. The first volume was published in 1936, the second first in 1951 in Stockholm (Norstedt u. Söner publishing house), where he deposited the manuscript , which had actually been completed at the beginning of the war, at the Reichsarchiv , the third in 1958. For the biography he evaluated the entire Swedish literature, which was subsequently the review by Erich Hassinger in the historical magazine 1938 then filled a gap. The focus of the presentation was on military history and the history of diplomacy, with regard to military history following the presentation of the campaigns of Charles XII of the Swedish General Staff of 1918/19 and of General Gustaf Petri . In the foreword to the first edition of the first volume, Haintz assessed Karl XII as "a brilliant military man who was the first in Europe to clearly recognize the rising Russian danger on the horizon of the coming times and who was quite capable of conceiving great and bold political ideas" , but who he was the "overwhelming power of adverse circumstances" and an "underestimation of diplomatic craft lying in the irrational depths of his being" failed. He maintains this assessment in the foreword to the second, considerably revised edition in 1958. The detailed, extensive representation was emphasized, for example, in reviews by John Paul , who emphasizes that such a differentiated picture emerges than in the previously existing polarizing representations (those from glorification to the negative portrayal of the grave digger of the Swedish great power position in the aftermath of the influential , literarily prominent but unreliable biography of Charles XII von Voltaire). In the review of the biography in the historical magazine in 1962, Walther Hubatsch called it the most important biography ever written in any language about Karl XII. would have appeared and in 2014, for example, it is counted among the standard works in an essay by Joachim Krüger. Also Ragnhild Hatton praised the work in her biography of Charles XII (except for the tendency of Haintz, in an alliance with Prussia Sweden to see the saving way out for Karl XII). Criticism was expressed, among others, by the GDR historian Jan Peters, because of a Greater German perspective (especially in his essay on the image of Karl XII in posterity from 1936). Haintz himself received full support for his studies from the GDR authorities (unrestricted travel permission for research in the former Prussian state archives in Potsdam and Merseburg) and he also enjoyed prestige among Soviet historians and positions, not least as a student and continuer of Delbrück's work.

Haintz had very good contacts with Swedish historians and the Karolinska förbundet . In 1952 he became a member of the Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Academies .

From 1924 to 1933 he was a member of the German National People's Party and from 1925 of the Stahlhelm .

Fonts

• King Charles XII. von Schweden, 3 volumes, De Gruyter 1936, 1951, 1958 (first volume in second edition 1958).
  • Volume 1: Sweden's struggle for supremacy in Northern and Eastern Europe (1697 - 1709), Volume 2: The Turkish period of Charles XII. and his attempt to restore the position of the Swedish great power (1709 - 1714), Volume 3: The outcome of the royal tragedy (1715 - 1719)
• The question of war guilt, in the series: Lambeck, Rühlmann (ed.), Collection of sources for history teaching in secondary schools, Leipzig: Teubner 1927, 2nd edition 1930, archive
• The historical-political training of the German people through the adult education center: a guide to a uniform orientation of the entire educational system of the nation, Langensalza: Hermann Beyer and Sons 1920
• The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, Berlin: Stilke 1937
• England final option against Germany 1904-1907, New Yearbooks for Science and Youth Education, Volume 6, 1930, pp. 299-314
• Karl XII of Sweden in the Judgment of History, Prussian Yearbooks 1936
• Delbrück, Karl XII and the Swedish General Staff, in: Emil Daniels, Paul Rühlmann (ed.), Am Loom der Zeit. A souvenir from Hans Delbrück to the eighty-year-old from friends and students, Berlin 1928
• The Cannae victory of the Swedish Field Marshal Rehnschiöld near Fraustadt 1706, Prussian Yearbooks, 1931
• Klissow 1702, in: Der Genius des Feldherrn, Potsdam-Berlin: Sanssouci Verlag 1937
• Between breakthrough and Cannae battles in the Nordic war: Narwa and Klissow, Wissen und Wehr , Berlin 1937, p. 524
• The Nordic Council, Archives of International Law, Volume 4, 1954, pp. 450–456
• Peter the Great, Frederick the Great and Voltaire. On the genesis of Voltaire's "Histoire de l'empire de Russie sous Pierre le Grand." Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz, Treatises of the Humanities and Social Sciences Class No. 5, 1961

He also continued the story of the art of war by Hans Delbrück with Emil Daniels (and with him published the first revised volumes), initially in collaboration with Delbrück. With Daniels he wrote the seventh volume from 1936, which dealt with the Civil War , Boer War and Russo-Japanese War (Berlin: Stilke), as well as the fifth (1928) and sixth (1932). In 1962 he published the new edition of Volume 4 (Modern Times) at De Gruyter.

literature

• Haintz, Otto, in German Biographical Encyclopedia, De Gruyter / Saur
• Maria Keipert (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 2: Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger: G – K. Paderborn: Schöningh, 2005, ISBN 3-506-71841-X , pp. 181f.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dissertation From Novara to La Motta: Creazzo, Venice in the Northern Italian battles of 1513
2. ↑ Historical magazine, Volume 157, 1938, pp. 349-350, JSTOR, first page
3. ↑ In particular his presentation of the Battle of Poltava, lecture at Karolinska Förbundet 1956
4. ^ Quoted again by Haintz in the preface to the second edition of the first volume, p. X
5. ↑ Based on the review by Johannes Paul in 1959 and Haintz's own statements in the foreword of the second edition of Volume 1, revised especially with regard to the Battle of Poltava and the studies by Gustaf Petri on it.
6. ^ John Paul, Year Books for the History of Eastern Europe, Volume 7, 1959, pp. 512-514, JSTOR
7. ^ Hubatsch, Historische Zeitschrift, Volume 194, 1962, pp. 449–452
8. ^ Joachim Krüger, Karl XII. - The "heroic" military monarch of Sweden. In: Martin Wrede (Ed.): The staging of the heroic monarchy. Early modern royalty between knightly heritage and military challenge (= historical magazine. Supplement 62). Oldenbourg, Munich 2014, p. 358
9. ↑ A point that Hassinger criticized in his 1938 review. He also pointed out that Haintz evaluated the Swedish sources very carefully, but probably not the Polish and Russian sources for language reasons. He also saw a contradiction in Haintz's exposure of Charles XII as a fighter against Russia's expansionist efforts and Haintz's view that a major mistake made by Charles XII was the missed unification with Russia through the division of Polish property from Augustus the Strong.
10. ↑ Peters, The West German Historiography of the Swedish Great Power Era, Journal of History, Volume 8, 1960, Issue 5, p. 1108, and Peters The Old Swedes: About Viking Warriors , Peasant Rebels and Heroes King , VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften 1981