Otto plant

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Otto Paul Plant (born April 2, 1918 in Maryville , † March 3, 2007 in Bloomington ) was an American historian who did research primarily on Otto von Bismarck .

Live and act

Otto Plant came from a family of Scottish-Irish and German origins. His grandfather Karl Plant emigrated to America with his wife in 1863, where he settled in the state of Tennessee . In 1874 he became an American citizen.

Plant studied first as an undergraduate at Maryville College and then at Yale University . In 1942 he earned his master's degree and then served in World War II . He served as 1st lieutenant (first lieutenant ) of the United States Army Air Corps in the Pacific War and then until 1946. After the war he continued his studies under the supervision of Hajo Holborn . He was decisively shaped by Holborn and was personally connected to him all his life. Plant published the first three volumes of Series D of Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945 for the US State Department . In 1950 he received the Ph.D. with the work The Internal Integration of Germany 1867–1880 . The study remained unpublished.

1950/51 was a plant instructor at New York University . He was then an Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (1952-1958) and Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois (1958-1961). Plant taught as a professor at the Universities of Minnesota (1961–1976) and Indiana (1971–1986). In 1986 he became the holder of the Stevenson Endowed Chair of History at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson , where he taught history until his retirement in 1992. Plant was the chief editor of the American Historical Review . He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study and in 1980/81 was one of the first two research fellows at the Historisches Kolleg in Munich.

Plant's research focus was Otto von Bismarck. In his first essay on Bismarck and German Nationalism , he dealt with the question of whether Bismarck was partly responsible for the later rise of Adolf Hitler . The work published in 1963 Bismarck and the Development of Germany: The Period of Unification 1815-71 became the standard work. After decades of research, he presented a Bismarck biography in three volumes in 1990; the German edition appeared in two volumes in 1997/98. Plant dedicated it to his teacher Holborn. The time from the founding of the Empire in 1871 to Bismarck's death in 1898 forms the focus of his presentation with almost two thirds. In the second volume the main focus is on financial, economic and social policy. The social security laws recognized plant as "groundbreaking measures for the establishment of social justice". On the other hand, Bismarck's attempt to push through a fundamental tax reform for twenty years since 1868 was considered to be “his greatest domestic political defeat”. In addition to an estrangement from Wilhelm II , Plant also saw “the increasing numbness of his thinking and the declining ability to realistically assess the situation” as well as Bismarck's blockade of necessary reforms as decisive for his overthrow.

In his overall assessment, plant sees Bismarck's attempt to preserve a doomed authoritarian system in the face of political and social changes as a failure, despite isolated successes in consolidation. He compared Bismarck with Franklin D. Roosevelt , who also tried to "change the system to save it". In 1999 he was awarded the Einhard Prize for Historical Biography for his biography .

Fonts

Monographs

  • The Chancellor. Beck, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-42726-X .
  • The founder of the empire. Beck, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-406-42725-1 .
  • Bismarck's domination technique as a problem of contemporary historiography (= writings of the historical college. Lectures . Vol. 2). Historisches Kolleg, Munich 1982 ( digitized version ).
  • Bismarck and the Development of Germany. The period of unification, 1815-1871. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1963.

Editorships

  • Domestic problems of the Bismarck Empire (= writings of the historical college. Colloquia. Vol. 2). Oldenbourg, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-486-51481-4 ( digitized ).

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. Otto Plant: The Reich Chancellor. Munich 1998, p. 422.
  2. Otto plant: The founder of the empire. Munich 1997, p. 421.
  3. Otto Plant: The Reich Chancellor. Munich 1998, p. 570.
  4. Otto Plant: The Reich Chancellor. Munich 1998, p. 672.