Reinhard Wittram

Reinhard Wittram (born August 9, 1902 in Bilderlingshof, today Bulduri , Jūrmala , near Riga , Livonia Governorate ; † April 16, 1973 in Meran ) was a German historian .

Life

Reinhard Wittram came from a German-Baltic family. After attending the Ritterschaftliche Landesgymnasium Birkenruh and the German Stadtgymnasium in Riga, he studied history, geography and religious history at the universities in Riga , Jena and Tübingen from 1920 . In 1925 he received his doctorate under Johannes Haller . From 1928 Wittram worked at the Herder Institute in Riga on the Livonian agricultural reformer Hamilkar von Fölkersahm .

During the time of National Socialism , he wrote in 1937 in Volk und Hochschule im Aufbruch : "Where a feeling for breed and race has awakened, our people's reconsideration of racial hereditary values ​​will be understood as a process of recovery". Wittram became the area representative for Latvia of the North-East German Research Association (NOFG). In 1938 Wittram was appointed to the institute's chair for history in Riga and in 1941 he was appointed full professor at the newly founded University of Posen in occupied Poland . On June 1, 1941, he was accepted into the NSDAP . As Dean of the Philosophical Faculty, Member of the Senate and Director of the History Department, Wittram played a leading role in Nazi science policy in occupied Poznan during the Second World War.

In 1945 Wittram had to flee Posen and came to Göttingen , where he worked as a lecturer from 1946 and from 1955 until his retirement in 1970 at the chair for Eastern European History.

His “Baltic History” has been published since 1939 in different versions adapted to the changing political situation, the last of which (1954) is still considered the standard work for the period up to the end of the First World War. Before 1945 Wittram actively promoted the spirit of National Socialism through his publications ; he distanced himself gradually from this past and called his behavior during the Nazi era as the “wrong path of a conservative”. His book Livland , published in 1941 by Verlag Volk und Reich . The fate and legacy of the Baltic Germans was added to the list of literature to be sorted out in the Soviet occupation zone in 1946 , and in the GDR in 1952 an additional return to the Reich (Kluge & Ströhm, Posen 1942), as well as The German as a Soldier of Europe (Kluge & Ströhm, Posen 1943) .

In his publications after 1945 he focused on the responsibility of the person, often speaking of guilt (“Public Evil and the Eighth Commandment”). By questioning his own behavior, Wittram differs from other leading figures in German history who remained silent about their behavior during the Nazi dictatorship.

His book The Interest in History (1958) was for Joachim Radkau "the first entry into history studies".

He was a member of the Johann Gottfried Herder Research Council , the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen , the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and the Societas Historica Turkuensis and from 1951 to 1973 chairman of the Baltic Historical Commission .

Works

• Nationalism and secularization. Contributions to the history and problems of the national spirit . Helaind-Verlag, Göttingen 1949.
• Baltic history. The Baltic countries of Livonia, Estonia, Courland 1180–1918 . Wissenschaftliche Buchgemeinschaft, Darmstadt 1973, ISBN 3-534-06475-5 (reprint of the Göttingen edition 1954).
• The national as a European problem. Contributions to the history of the nationality principle primarily in the 19th century . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1954.
• Peter the Great. The entry of Russia into modern times . Springer Verlag, Berlin 1954 (= Understandable Science ; 52).
• Interest in history . Twelve lectures on questions of contemporary understanding of history. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1958 (= Small Vandenhoeck series ; 59–61).
• Peter I. Czar and Emperor. On the history of Peter the Great in his time. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1964 (2 vol.).
• Future in history. On the borderline questions of history and theology . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1966 (= small Vandenhoeck series ; 235–236).
• Claim and questionability of the story. Six lectures on the methodology of historical science and the determination of the location of history . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1969 (= small Vandenhoeck series ; 297–299).
• Russia and Europe . Thames & Hudson, London 1973, ISBN 0-500-32028-4 .
• The nationality struggles in Europe and the shaking of the European state system 1848–1917 . 4th edition, Klett, Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-12-420400-X (= sources and workbooks on history and politics ; 4204).

literature

• Błażej Białkowski: utopia of a better tyranny. German historian at the University of Posen (1941–1945). Schöningh, Paderborn 2011. ISBN 978-3-506-77167-4
• Błażej Białkowski: Reinhard Wittram at the “Imperial University of Posen”. The illusion of a Baltic variant of National Socialism. In: Michael Garleff (Ed.): Baltic Germans, Weimar Republic and Third Reich. 2nd, revised and supplemented edition. Vol. 2, Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2008, pp. 353–384.
• Bernhard Laxy:  Reinhard Wittram. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 25, Bautz, Nordhausen 2005, ISBN 3-88309-332-7 , Sp. 1529-1543.
• Jörg Hackmann: Reinhard Wittram. In: Michael Fahlbusch , Ingo Haar , Alexander Pinwinkler (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Völkischen Wissenschaften. Actors, networks, research programs. With the assistance of David Hamann. 2nd, fundamentally expanded and revised edition. Vol. 1, De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-042989-3 , pp. 908-911.
• Rudolf von Thadden , Gert von Pistohlkors , Hellmuth Weiss (eds.): Festschrift for Reinhard Wittram on his 70th birthday. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1973, ISBN 3-525-36161-0 .
• Gert von Pistohlkors: Reinhard Wittram in Riga 1925–1939. Attempt to approach. In: Jahrbuch des Baltic Deutschtums 60, 2013, pp. 122–155.

Web links

• Literature by and about Reinhard Wittram in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Reinhard Wittram  in the German Digital Library
• Baltic Historical Commission (ed.): Entry on Reinhard Wittram. In: BBLD - Baltic Biographical Lexicon digital

Individual evidence

1. ^ Quotation from Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 683.
2. ^ Ingo Haar : Historians in National Socialism. German history and the “national struggle” in the east. , Göttingen 2000, p. 302.
3. ^ Roland Gehrke: Baltic Germans at the University of Posen . In: Michael Garleff (Ed.): Baltic Germans, Weimar Republic and Third Reich, Vol. 1 . 2, revised and supplemented edition. Böhlau, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-412-12199-0 , pp. 389-426, here p. 397.
4. ^ Błażej Białkowski: Reinhard Wittram at the "Imperial University of Posen". The illusion of a Baltic variant of National Socialism , in: Michael Garleff (Ed.): German Baltic, Weimar Republic and Third Reich , Vol. 2, Cologne et al. 2008, pp. 353–384.
5. ↑ His colleague from Riga and Posen Leonid Arbusow (historian, 1882) was also a lecturer at the University of Göttingen from 1946.
6. ^ List of literature to be sorted out 1946 .
7. ^ List of the literature to be discarded 1953 .
8. ↑ Joachim Radkau: History of the future. Forecasts, visions, errors in Germany from 1945 until today. Munich 2017, p. 14.
9. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 263.