Otto Hintze

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Otto Hintze (born August 27, 1861 in Pyritz , Pomerania , † April 25, 1940 in Berlin ) was a German historian . Hintze is considered to be one of the most important German social historians from the time of the late German Empire and the Weimar Republic, as well as a pioneer of a modern political structural history .

Life

Berlin memorial plaque on the house, Kastanienallee 28, in Berlin-Westend

Hintze, son of a middle-class civil servant, studied first in Greifswald and then in Berlin a . a. with Johann Gustav Droysen . During his studies he became a member of the Germania Greifswald fraternity . In 1884 he received his doctorate from Julius Weizsäcker on the subject of "The Kingship of William of Holland". He then studied law and political science for six semesters, a. a. with Rudolf von Gneist in a second degree. Between 1887 and 1910 Hintze worked on the large-scale edition project on the Prussian administrative history of the 18th century, the "Acta Borussica", edited seven volumes of files and wrote two presentations. After completing his habilitation in 1895, he was appointed associate professor in 1899 and then, in 1902, full professor for constitutional, administrative, economic and political history in Berlin. Hintze gave up this professorship in 1920 because of health problems. In the 1920s he published some extensive reviews of the works of Max Weber , Franz Oppenheimer , Max Scheler, and Hans Kelsen, as well as some fundamental questions of general constitutional and social history.

In 1912 Hintze had married his student Hedwig Guggenheimer , who came from a Jewish banking family in Munich. A few years later, Hintze, who was increasingly suffering from heart disease and poor eyesight, had to rely on his wife's support for her scientific work. He dictated and she wrote his manuscripts. At the same time, she pursued her own academic career, doing her doctorate on French constitutional history with Friedrich Meinecke and habilitation at the Berlin University.

In 1913, Hintze gave the speech on the 25th anniversary of the throne of Kaiser Wilhelm II in the auditorium of Berlin University. In 1915, he published the anniversary publication on the 500th anniversary of the Hohenzollern throne.

After the National Socialists “take power” (1933) , Hintze almost completely stopped his publishing activities. His wife Hedwig was now being persecuted by the state. Your license to teach has been suspended by the Ministry of Culture. When Friedrich Meinecke dismissed her from the editorial office of the “ Historischen Zeitschrift ” in 1933 because she came from a family of Jewish origin, Hintze resigned from his co- editing role. In 1938 he had his own removal from the Prussian Academy of Sciences , to which he had belonged since 1914, by leaving. Before that, Max Planck had sent him a questionnaire from the academy on his "race":

"For the sake of simplicity, I am devoted to filling out the attached questionnaire and making a note of your possible explanation on it. The Chairman Secretary Planck "

The questionnaire had the following content:

“Are you a Jewish mixed race? Yes No
Are you Jewish ? Yes No
Cross out what does not apply.
(A Jewish mongrel is considered to be someone who has one or more fully Jewish grandparents. Anyone whose wife is Jewish or mixed is considered to be Jewish.)
Signature "

Hedwig Hintze, deprived of her job opportunities in Germany and discriminated against, tried to build up a living abroad. Otto Hintze had to stay in Berlin because of his age and illness. They remained closely connected until death. Hedwig Hintze commuted back and forth between Paris and Berlin from 1933 to 1939 . In Paris, she did not succeed in starting a new career. In 1939, shortly before the outbreak of war, she emigrated to the Netherlands , but even there she was unable to establish herself professionally. At the end of April 1940 Otto Hintze died largely isolated and withdrawn in Berlin. Hedwig Hintze was thus deprived of her husband's protection, insofar as she was reasonably safe from deportation as the wife of a so-called Aryan. On July 19, 1942, two years after the death of her husband, Hedwig Hintze committed suicide in Utrecht under unexplained circumstances - possibly shortly before the deportation and murder by the Nazis.

reception

After the Second World War, historical studies received the work of Otto Hintze in various ways and in different phases. In the 1950s, Hintze received little attention, and there are isolated references to Otto Brunner , Hermann Heimpel and Theodor Schieder . After the first edition of the Hintzeschen Abhandlungen by Fritz Hartung, which appeared during the war, had received little response, the considerably expanded three-volume new edition by Gerhard Oestreich was widely accepted in the 1960s. In addition to Oestreich and Schieder, Meinecke students Dietrich Gerhard and Felix Gilbert pushed Hintze's reception forward. Gilbert in particular inspired Anglo-American research with his 1975 translation. In addition, it was above all the developing German social historiography around Hans-Ulrich Wehler and Jürgen Kocka that Hintze claimed as an ancestor alongside Max Weber . The link between constitutional and social history received emphatic praise, the typological-comparative method was emphasized, and Hintze's interdisciplinary perspective was also noted.

Works (excerpt)

  • The kingdom of William of Holland , Veit, Leipzig 1885.
  • The Prussian silk industry in the 18th century and its establishment by Frederick the Great , 3 vols., Parey, Berlin 1892.
  • About individualistic and collectivistic view of history. In: Historical magazine . Volume 78, Oldenbourg, Munich and Leipzig 1897, pp. 60-67.
  • Introductory presentation of the organization of the authorities and general administration in Prussia when Frederick II took office , Parey, Berlin 1901 (= Acta Borussica , Volume 6.1).
  • State Constitution and Army Constitution. Lecture given at the Gehe Foundation in Dresden on February 17, 1906, v. Tooth u. Jaensch, Dresden 1906.
  • Historical and political essays , 10 vols., Deutsche Bücherei, Berlin 1908.
  • The monarchical principle and the constitutional constitution . In: Prussian year books , Volume 144, 1911, pp. 381-412.
  • The English plans for world domination and the present war , Verlag Kameradschaft, Berlin 1914.
  • The Hohenzollern and their work - 500 years of patriotic history , Parey, Berlin 1915.
  • Germany and the World War , 2 vols., Teubner, Leipzig a. a. 1916.
  • Nature and spread of feudalism (= meeting reports of the Prussian Academy of Sciences ), de Gruyter, Berlin 1929.
  • Officials and bureaucracy. (Reprint of the 3 works: The civil servant status [lecture in the Gehe Foundation 1911], The Commissarius and its importance in the general administrative history [1910] and The emergence of modern state ministries [1908]), ed. by Kersten Krüger , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1981 (= Kleine Vandenhoeck series. Vol. 1473).
  • Collected treatises in 3 volumes . Edited by Gerhard Oestreich . Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht , Göttingen (partly expanded editions compared to Hartung, eds., Koehler & Amelang , Leipzig 1941–1943).
  1. State and Constitution. Collected treatises on general constitutional history . Introduction by Fritz Hartung , 1962.
  2. Sociology and history. Collected treatises on sociology, politics and the theory of history . Introduction of the ed., 1964.
  3. Government and Administration. Collected treatises on the state, legal and social history of Prussia. Register of persons and subjects for vol. 1–3. Introduction of the ed., 1967.

literature

  • Ewald Grothe : From Prussia to Japan and back. Otto Hintze, Fritz Hartung and German constitutional historiography . In: Andrea Gawrich , Hans J. Lietzmann (Hrsg.): Politics and history. “Good politics” and their time. Wilhelm Bleek on his 65th birthday . Münster 2005, p. 76-93 .
  • Ewald Grothe: Otto Hintze: "State formation and constitutional development" . In: Detlef Lehnert (Ed.): Verfassungsdenker. Germany and Austria 1870–1970 , Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2017 (= Historische Demokratieforschung , 11), pp. 47–62.
  • Jürgen Kocka : Otto Hintze, Max Weber and the problem of bureaucracy . 1981, p. 65-105 .
  • Jürgen Kocka : Otto Hintze . In: Hans-Ulrich Wehler (Ed.): Deutsche Historiker , Volume 3, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1972, pp. 275–298.
  • Wolfgang Neugebauer : Otto Hintze. Thinking spaces and social worlds of a historian in globalization 1861-1940 . Schöningh, Paderborn 2015, ISBN 978-3-506-78191-8 .
  • Gerhard Oestreich : Otto Hintze and the administrative history . Göttingen 1967.
  • Gerhard Oestreich:  Hintze, Otto. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , pp. 194-196 ( digitized version ).
  • Manfred Ressing: On the methodology and historiography of the Prussian historian Otto Hintze (=  European University Writings Series III . Volume 714 ). Frankfurt am Main 1996.
  • Pierangelo Schiera : Otto Hintze . Napoli 1974.
  • Luise Schorn-Schütte : Hintze, Otto (1861-1940) . In: Rüdiger vom Bruch , Rainer A. Müller (Hrsg.): Historikerlexikon. From antiquity to the present . Munich 2002, p. 152 f .
  • Herbert Wartenberg: Otto Hintze as a history thinker . Berlin 1953.
  • Matthias Zimmer: Hintze, Otto. German historian . Ed .: Kelly Boyd (=  Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing . Volume I). London / Chicago 1999.

Web links

Commons : Otto Hintze  - Collection of Images
Wikisource: Otto Hintze  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hugo Böttger (ed.): Directory of the old fraternity members according to the status of the winter semester 1911/12. Berlin 1912, p. 85.
  2. ↑ U. Daniel / CK Frey (ed.): The Prussian-Welf Wedding 1913. The dynastic Europe in its last year of peace. Braunschweig 2016, p. 9.
  3. ↑ Peter T. Walther: "Aryanization", Nazification and Militarization. The Prussian Academy of Sciences in the “Third Reich” . In: Wolfram Fischer (Ed.): The Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin 1914–1945 (= Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences: Research Reports, Vol. 8). Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-05-003327-4 , p. 95. Online on the document server of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences.
  4. ↑ Otto Hintze and Hedwig Hintze: “Don't despair and don't stop fighting…” The correspondence 1925–1940. Arranged by Brigitta Oestreich. Edited by Robert Jütte and Gerhard Hirschfeld. Klartext, Essen 2004, ISBN 3-89861-142-6 , p. 12.
  5. ↑ V & R = 587 p .; Koehler 1941 = 467 pp.
  6. ↑ V&R = 543 p .; Koehler 1942 = 239 pp.
  7. ↑ V&R = 675 p .; Koehler 1943 under the title Spirit and Epochs of Prussian History . 682 p .; an excerpt from it in: Rainer Siegle (Ed.): Heinrich von Kleist : Michael Kohlhaas . With materials. Klett, Stuttgart 1979 a. ö. (= editions ), ISBN 3-12-351500-1 , p. 119 fudT: Legal Relationships in Brandenburg in the 16th Century.
personal data
SURNAME Hintze, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian and history professor
DATE OF BIRTH August 27, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH Pyritz
DATE OF DEATH April 25, 1940
Place of death Berlin