Thomas Klein (historian)

Thomas Klein (born June 6, 1933 in Berlin ; † May 28, 2001 ) was a German historian . From 1972 to 1998 he taught as a professor of modern history at the Philipps University of Marburg . He was an expert on northern and central German administrative and regional history, but also on the more recent history of Saxony-Anhalt.

Live and act

The son of a social worker attended the 17th elementary school in Berlin-Staaken from 1939 to 1943 . In 1951 he passed the Abitur at the Freiherr-vom-Stein-Gymnasium in Berlin-Spandau . From the summer semester of 1952 he studied history and Latin in Berlin and for two semesters in Göttingen . At the Free University of Berlin he received his doctorate in December 1960 with the thesis The Struggle for the Second Reformation in Electoral Saxony 1586–1591 . In 1961 he passed the first state examination in history and Latin as well as in education and philosophy. Klein was an academic student of Gerhard Oestreich . At the suggestion of Oestreich, he had taken on a topic on Electoral Saxon cryptocalvinism for his dissertation from 1586 to 1591. In 1961 he became his assistant at the Friedrich Meinecke Institute and followed him as an assistant for the summer semester of 1962 at the University of Hamburg and for the winter semester of 1966/67 at the Philipps University of Marburg. From 1966 to 1972 he was an academic advisor and from 1972 to 1998 professor for modern history at the University of Marburg. He was dean of Faculty 06 History three times .

Klein became a member of the Historical Commission for Hesse in 1972 , then a member of the main committee in 1977 and was deputy treasurer on the board from 1993 to 1995. From 1976 to 1991 he was editor of the Hessian Yearbook for State History . From 1976 until shortly before his death he was deputy chairman of the academic examination office for teaching at grammar schools on a part-time basis. After reunification he became a member of the Historical Commission for Saxony-Anhalt .

As an academic teacher, he supervised 15 dissertations. Olaf Mörke is one of his academic students . Klein died of heart failure.

His list of publications includes 83 titles. Klein did not focus exclusively on the early modern period , but also dealt with topics from modern history and contemporary history . The focus of his research was on the Reformation and confessionalization as well as German national history. In 1970 he presented an edition on the history of the Catholic Church and School Reformation by Urban Pierius . In 1975 he published an article on the consequences of the German Peasant War of 1525. In 1986, he also published a fundamental study of the surveys of the German imperial princes from 1550 to 1806. Klein was also very interested in modern administrative history . He worked on the outline of German administrative history from 1815–1945 founded by Walther Hubatsch . He was responsible for volumes 6 and 11 of series A and was editor of series B. He worked on the four-volume German administrative history published from 1983 to 1985 by Kurt GA Jeserich , Hans Pohl and Georg-Christoph von Unruh . He wrote around forty articles on this.

Another focus of Klein was the history of parties. In 1985 the major study Prussian-German Conservatism and the Origin of Political Anti-Semitism in Hessen-Kassel (1866-1893) was published. A contribution to the Hessian party history . Klein took over the edition of the Gestapo situation reports for Hessen-Nassau . As a result of his editing activities, two volumes were published in 1986. The edition created the basis for a series of essays on the history of the early years of the Nazi dictatorship. In 1999 he also published the situation reports of the President of the Supreme Court and Attorneys General of Kassel, Frankfurt and Darmstadt for the years 1940 to 1945.

With his study, published in 1968, Reichstag elections and representatives of the provinces of Saxony and Anhalt 1867–1918, the subjects of parties, political elections and parliamentarism came into his focus for the first time. Two decades later, from 1989 to 1995, he published the electoral history source collection Die Hessen as Reichstag voters in three volumes . The source collection was recognized as an “indispensable and hardly to be underestimated standard work”. Since the mid-1990s, he dealt with the election review negotiations of the German Reichstag . The research was largely completed in 1998. He was able to finish the manuscript before his death. It was edited and published by his last doctoral student Guido Gerstgarbe.

Fonts

A list of scripts appeared in: Thomas Klein: "Valid - Invalid". The electoral examination procedure of the German Reichstag 1867-1918 (= publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse. Vol. 51). Edited and introduced by Guido Gerstgarbe. Elwert, Marburg 2003, ISBN 3-7708-1236-0 , pp. 533-545.

Editions

• The situation reports of the judiciary from Hesse 1940-1945 (= sources and research on Hessian history. Vol. 123). Self-published by the Hessian Historical Commission, Darmstadt 1999, ISBN 3-88443-075-0 .
• The situation reports of the secret state police on the province of Hessen-Nassau, 1933-1936 (= publications from the archives of Prussian cultural property. Vol. 22). 2 volumes. Böhlau, Vienna 1986, ISBN 3-412-05984-6 .
• with Urban Pierius: History of the Catholic Church and School Reformation. Elwert, Marburg 1970, ISBN 3-7708-0408-2 .

Monographs

• "Valid - Invalid". The electoral examination procedure of the German Reichstag 1867-1918 (= publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse. Vol. 51). Edited and introduced by Guido Gerstgarbe. Elwert, Marburg 2003, ISBN 3-7708-1236-0 .
• Prussian-German conservatism and the emergence of political anti-Semitism in Hessen-Kassel (1866–1893). A contribution to the Hessian party history (= publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse. Vol. 59). Elwert, Marburg 1995, ISBN 3-7708-1057-0 .
• Senior officials in the general administration in the Prussian province of Hessen-Nassau and in Waldeck 1867–1945 (= sources and research on Hessian history. Vol. 70). Historical Commission for Hesse, Darmstadt 1988, ISBN 978-3-88443-159-7 .
• The struggle for the second Reformation in Electoral Saxony 1586–1591 (= Central German Research. Vol. 25). Böhlau, Cologne et al. 1962.

literature

• Klaus Malettke : In memoriam Thomas Klein (1933-2001). In: Hessisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 52 (2002), pp. 201–210.
• Hans K. Schulze , Hellmut Seier : In memory of Thomas Klein. In: Saxony and Anhalt. Yearbook of the Historical Commission for Saxony-Anhalt 23 (2001), pp. 277–279.

Web links

• Literature by and about Thomas Klein in the catalog of the German National Library

Remarks

1. ↑ See also the list of Prof. Dr. Thomas Klein supervised dissertations. In: Thomas Klein: "Valid - Invalid". The Election Examination Procedure of the German Reichstag 1867–1918. Edited and introduced by Guido Gerstgarbe. Marburg 2003, pp. 547-548.
2. ↑ Klaus Malettke: In memoriam Thomas Klein (1933-2001). In: Hessisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 52 (2002), pp. 201–210, here: p. 201.
3. ↑ Thomas Klein: The consequences of the peasant war of 1525. Theses and antitheses on a neglected topic. In: Hessisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 25 (1975), pp. 65–116.
4. ↑ Thomas Klein: The surveys in the German imperial princes 1550-1806. In: Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte 122 (1986), pp. 137–192 ( online ).
5. ↑ Klaus Malettke: In memoriam Thomas Klein (1933-2001). In: Hessisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 52 (2002), pp. 201–210, here: p. 207.
6. ^ Thomas Klein: Reichstag elections and members of the provinces of Saxony and Anhalt 1867–1918. An overview. In: Walter Schlesinger (Hrsg.): Festschrift for Friedrich Zahn. Vol. 1, Cologne et al. 1968, pp. 65-141.
7. ↑ See the review by Peter Steinbach in: Hessisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 48 (1999), pp. 346–349, here: p. 348.