Ruth Bettina Birn

Ruth Bettina Birn (born 1952 in Stuttgart ) is a German historian.

Life

Ruth Bettina Birn studied history, oriental studies and ethnology in Munich, Tübingen and Stuttgart. After completing her master's degree, she worked at the Department of Contemporary History at the University of Tübingen from 1976 and from 1978 to 1981 at the Collaborative Research Center for the Late Middle Ages and the Reformation. She conducted research in the Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the investigation of National Socialist crimes in Ludwigsburg and received her doctorate in Stuttgart in 1985 with a thesis on the Higher SS and Police Leaders (HSSPF). From 1991 to 2005, Birn was a senior historian in the War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Section in the Department of Justice (Ministère de la Justice) and lived in Toronto during this time .

Birn published in 1997 in the journal The Historical Journal a review of the 1996 bestseller Hitler's willing executors by Daniel Goldhagen . The review then appeared in a book in which Norman G. Finkelstein's criticism of Goldhagen was printed. In the introduction to the German book edition, Hans Mommsen tried to evaluate the controversy that Goldhagen had fought out with legal threats.

In 2006, Birn presented a research paper on the German police force in occupied Europe, which is based on archival holdings from the German-occupied Estonia in World War II .

Fonts (selection)

A Nation on Trial (1998)

• The Higher SS and Police Leaders: Himmler's representatives in the Reich and in the occupied territories . Düsseldorf: Droste, 1986.
• with Volker Riess : Historiographical review: Revising the Holocaust. In: The Historical Journal , 1997, pp. 195-215.
  • with Norman G. Finkelstein : A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth . New York: Henry Holt, 1998, ISBN 978-0-8050-5871-0 .
  • with Norman G. Finkelstein: A nation put to the test. The Goldhagen thesis and the historical truth . Translation by Bernd Leineweber. Introduction by Hans Mommsen . Hildesheim: Claassen, 1998.
• The Security Police in Estonia 1941–1944: A Study of Collaboration in the East . Paderborn: Schöningh, 2006, ISBN 3-506-75614-1 .
• Criminals as manipulative witnesses: a case study of SS General von dem Bach-Zelewski. In: Journal of International Criminal Justice , 9 (2011), 2, pp. 441–474.
• Ruth Bettina Birn, Volker Rieß: Sex, Crime and Women in Genocide. The Holocaust has recently been used as a projection surface for gender studies - with questionable findings: an objection. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 7, 2016, p. 14.

literature

• Ruth Bettina Birn , short author profile, with: Ronald Smelser , Enrico Syring (Hrsg.): The SS: Elite under the skull . Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000, ISBN 3-506-78562-1 , p. 457.
• "Holocaust as a devotional picture". Interview with Nazi expert Ruth Bettina Birn about Daniel Goldhagen's attacks on critics . In: Der Spiegel . No. 46 , 1997 ( online ).
• Max Frankel : Willing Executioners? Essays by two scholars dissect the work of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen , in: NYT, June 28, 1998.
• Dominique Vidal : Holocaust book sparks fresh controversy. From “Mein Kampf” to Auschwitz , in: Le Monde diplomatique , October 1998.
• Volker Ullrich : Goldhagen put to the test. Ruth Bettina Birn and Norman G. Finkelstein attack the international bestseller "Hitler's willing executors" , in: Die Zeit, 15/1998.

Web links

• Literature by and about Ruth Bettina Birn in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by and about Ruth Bettina Birn in the bibliographic database WorldCat