Richard Koebner

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Richard Koebner (born August 29, 1885 in Breslau , † April 28, 1958 in London ) was a German-Israeli historian .

Life

The time in Wroclaw

The son of a doctor attended the Maria Magdalenen grammar school in Breslau . Together with the later art historian Franz Landsberger he passed the Abitur in 1903 . He then studied at the universities in Berlin , Breslau and Geneva . His teachers in Berlin were the historians Hans Delbrück and Alfred Herrmann , the philosophers Max Dessoir and Alois Riehl , the economist Ignaz Jastrow and the ancient historian Eduard Meyer , in Breslau the sociologist Werner Sombart , the psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus and in Geneva the pedagogue Paul Duproix. In 1911 Koebner received his doctorate in Berlin with the work The marriage conception of the late German Middle Ages .

In Breslau he completed his habilitation in 1919 ( The beginnings of the community of the city of Cologne. On the origin and oldest history of German urbanism , Bonn 1922). From 1920 Richard Koebner taught at the University of Breslau as a private lecturer , from 1924 as an associate professor . In the winter semesters 1930 to 1933 he took over the substitute for Hermann Aubin , who had accepted a visiting professorship for media studies in Cairo . Due to his own wide-ranging studies, Koebner's lectures were often interdisciplinary . His seminars also included interpretations of Thomas Aquinas . In April 1933, Koebner was dismissed from university service due to the Nazi law to restore the civil service . He was appointed to the chair of modern history at the young Hebrew University of Jerusalem and emigrated .

The time in Jerusalem

At his new place of work he founded a historical institute, which he took over as head. After becoming a British citizen , he was able to travel to Germany a few more times and continue his studies there. Richard Koebner was one of the intellectuals and artists whom the Jewish “department store king” Salman Schocken - who emigrated from Berlin to Jerusalem in 1934 - gathered around him. This group included the historian Hans Kohn and the philosophers Hans Jonas and Leo Strauss ; The architect Erich Mendelsohn and the writer Else Lasker-Schüler also enriched the social life of German Jews in emigration. Through his work, Koebner created the foundations of Israeli historical science. In 1980 the Richard Koebner Center for German History was founded at the University of Jerusalem to commemorate him. Moshe Zimmermann was director of this center from 1986 to 2012 .

In 1954 Koebner retired and moved to London , where he spent the last years of his life. A year before his death, his work Vom Schönen und seine Truth was published in German in Berlin . An analysis of aesthetic experiences that he had written together with his wife Gertrud. In 1915 Gertrud published a report on her imprisonment in France.

Fonts (selection)

  • Venantius Fortunatus. His personality and his position in the spiritual culture of the Merovingian Empire . Leipzig / Berlin 1915 ( online )
  • German law and German colonization in the Piast countries. In: Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (VSWG) 25/1932, pp. 313–52.
  • Locatio. On the terminology and history of German colonization. In: Journal of the Association for History of Silesia / ZVG 63/1929 , pp. 1–32.
  • Hermann Reincke-Bloch. In: ZVG Schlesien 63/1929, pp. 343–349.
  • The problem of the Slavic castle settlement and the Opole excavations. In: ZVG Schlesien 65/1931, pp. 91–120.
  • Despot and Despotism: Vicissitudes of a Political Term. In: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 14/1951 , pp. 275-302.
  • Empire , New York 1961.
  • Imperialism: the story and significance of a word, 1840-1960 , Cambridge 1964.
  • German Towns and Slav Markets. In: Sylvia L. Thrupp (ed.), Change in Medieval Society. Europe North of the Alps 1050-1500, Toronto 1988 (first 1964), pp. 30-46.

literature

  • Koebner, Richard. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 14: Kest – Kulk. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-598-22694-2 , pp. 138-143.
  • Ludwig Petry , Richard Koebner in: Ostdeutsche Gedenktage 1985 , Cultural Foundation of German Expellees , Bonn 1984
  • Peter Tietze: From Eastern Studies to Historical Semantics. Richard Koebner, a German-Jewish pioneer in the history of concepts . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 67, 2019, issue 1, pp. 31–72.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gertrud Koebner, 3 months prisoner of war: Experiences of a German in France , Berlin: Kronen-Verl. 1915 dnb
personal data
SURNAME Koebner, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-British historian
DATE OF BIRTH August 29, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH April 28, 1958
Place of death London