Gerhard Schilfert

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Gerhard Schilfert (born September 23, 1917 in Königsberg ; † November 25, 2001 in Berlin ) was a modern historian in the GDR . He was president of the GDR Historian Society .

Life

The parents were teachers. Schilfert passed his Abitur in Königsberg in 1937. Then he was in the Reich Labor Service . Between 1937 and 1939 he studied history , German and Latin at the University of Königsberg and the College for Teacher Training in Hirschberg . He was a soldier between 1939 and 1945 and was briefly a prisoner of war in 1945.

After the war Schilfert became a member of the KPD and in 1946 the SED . Between 1946 and 1948 he studied history, sociology and philosophy in Halle an der Saale . During this time he was already a part-time lecturer at the preparatory college in Halle. He completed his studies with a doctorate on Friedrich Engels' work on the German Peasant War .

He then worked as an assistant at the University of Halle until 1951. In 1951 he completed his habilitation with a thesis on the revolution of 1848/1849 . For ideological training, he took part in a lectureship at the Karl Marx party college .

After a short time as a lecturer at the University of Rostock , he became a professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1952 . He held this position, as a full professor since 1956, until his retirement in 1982.

From 1952 he was director of the Institute for General History. Between 1952 and 1963 he was head of the history department of the philosophical faculty. In 1957, as a visiting professor, he was director of the historical institute at the University of Greifswald .

Between 1952 and 1968 Schilfert was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for History at the State Secretariat for Higher Education . From 1963 to 1963 he was also a member of the scientific advisory board of the history chairs of the Institute for Social Sciences at the Central Committee of the SED. He was also a member of the Urania Presidium between 1956 and 1970 . As chairman of the members from the GDR, he was a member of the Poland-GDR Historical Commission.

Between 1965 and 1968, Schilfert was President of the Historians' Society of the GDR . Between 1956 and 1990 he was a member of the editorial board of the Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft . Since 1960 he has been a member of the international commission for the history of estates and parliamentarism .

Act

Schilfert belongs to the first generation of historians who received a large part of their training in the Soviet occupation zone or the GDR. His academic focus was on German history in modern times, the history of the revolutions in Western Europe and America, and the history and theory of historical sciences.

He also often expressed himself in questions of history or science policy, always in the interests of the SED. When in 1948 a book by Alfred Meusel on the Revolution of 1848 came under severe criticism because of serious scientific deficiencies and even plagiarism allegations , Schilfert said: "We have to expose bourgeois theories and smash them wherever we meet them." came to attacks on Jürgen Kuczynski , Schilfert was one of his sharpest critics and accused him of a dubious similarity of the views towards the pro-fascist sociologists.

In 1952, the Central Committee of the SED appointed him to a collective of authors to develop a textbook on German history on a Marxist-Leninist basis. In this context he published Germany from 1648 to 1789 . Among other things, he presented the first Marxist account of Brandenburg-Prussian history in the GDR. His verdict on Frederick the Great was negative overall because he pursued an anti-national policy. With regard to the Enlightenment , he simplified its diversity in Germany and postulated a bourgeois and a sub-bourgeois direction. These would differ in their relationship to idealism and materialism . In various writings he devoted himself to the English Revolution of the 17th century . He starts from the Marxist point of view of an advanced English society, to which economically backward Germany could not tie directly. In the long term, however, the English revolution would have served as a model for the German bourgeoisie.

In the 1960s he considered a methodology for a Marxist study of history. This includes:

  1. the doctrine of the procedures that are components of historical materialism, epistemology and logic,
  2. the doctrine of procedures that are of individual scientific origin, as well as
  3. the doctrines that are to be regarded as specifically historical.

Compared to the sociologist Günter Heyden , for example , he defended his view of the primacy of history within the social sciences.

Fonts (selection)

  • Victory and defeat of democratic suffrage in the German Revolution of 1848/1849. Berlin 1952.
  • Textbook of German history (contributions). Part 4: Germany from 1648 to 1789 - From the Peace of Westphalia to the outbreak of the French Revolution. Berlin 1959, 3rd edition 1975.
  • The English Revolution 1640–1649. Berlin 1989.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ralph Jessen : Academic Elite and Communist Dictatorship. The East German university teaching staff in the Ulbricht era. Göttingen 1999, p. 142 f.
  2. ^ Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk: Legitimation of a new state. Party workers on the historical front. History in the Soviet Zone / GDR 1945–1961 , Berlin 1997, p. 214.
  3. ^ Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk: Legitimation of a new state. Party workers on the historical front. History in the Soviet Zone / GDR 1945–1961. Berlin 1997, p. 308.
  4. ^ Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk: Legitimation of a new state. Party workers on the historical front. History in the Soviet Zone / GDR 1945–1961. Berlin 1997, p. 169.
  5. ↑ Peter Meyers: Friedrich II. Of Prussia - "Militaristic Despot" or "The Great"? On the change of the Friedrich image in the historiography of the GDR. In: History in the GDR. Vol. 2, Berlin 1990, p. 335 f.
  6. ↑ Horst Möller : The interpretation of the Enlightenment in the Marxist-Leninist historiography. In: History in the GDR. Vol. 2, Berlin 1990, p. 401.
  7. ^ Roland Ludwig: The reception of the English Revolution in German political thought and in German historiography in the 18th and 19th centuries. Leipzig 2003, p. 9.
  8. ^ Arnold Sywottek : "Marxist History". Problems and bogus problems. In: History in the GDR. Vol. 1, Berlin 1988, p. 278.
personal data
SURNAME Schilfert, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian (GDR), President of the GDR Historian Society
DATE OF BIRTH September 23, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Königsberg (Prussia)
DATE OF DEATH November 25, 2001
Place of death Berlin