Ulrich Völklein

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Ulrich Völklein (born February 13, 1949 in Würzburg ) is a German historian , journalist and publicist . He is the author of several biographies on personalities from contemporary history .

Life

Völklein's ancestors come from Liegnitz in Lower Silesia . Father and grandfather were supporters of National Socialism a . a. Member of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler . Until the flight and expulsion in 1945, the family owned the Sophienthal manor near Liegnitz.

Völklein was born in 1949 in Würzburg, Lower Franconia , studied history and worked for the Würzburg city magazine Pupille and the daily newspaper Volksblatt . The family is the heiress of the so-called "Judenackers" in the Geroldshausen community in the Würzburg district .

From 1977 he worked as a political editor for the weekly newspaper Die Zeit . In 1980 he went to the weekly magazine Stern , where he became head of the “Politics and Contemporary History” department. Völklein's Stern article was sometimes viewed as critical of retrofitting and thus related to the peace movement of the time .

His research on Herbert Wehner in the early 1990s also extended to the CPSU party archive in Moscow . The texts drawn up in the context of Völklein Star article "Squad acts Herbert Wehner" (1993) was based on a ruling by the Hamburg district court to documents of the magazine standing for a preprint available book manuscript "The file Wehner" by Reinhard Müller. Stern was sentenced to compensation of 60,000 D-Marks for lack of conformity with the contract.

Since 1995, Völklein, living in Hamburg , has worked as a freelance author of articles for newspapers and magazines such as Focus and manager magazin as well as contemporary history books.

Journalism

Some of Völklein's writings (“Der Judenacker”, “Abschied von Sophiental”) have a family-biographical character. He had his journalistic breakthrough with the non-fiction books Hitler's death. The last days in the Führerbunker (1998) and Josef Mengele - the doctor from Auschwitz (1999), the first German-language biography in book form on the subject. According to the physician Klaus Püschel, “unique documents” were used in the Hitler book, which were made accessible by the Russian military historian Lev Besymensky .

The Mengele biography from 1999/2000 was on the one hand positively reviewed u. a. Discussed by Friedrich Hofmann and Wolfgang U. Eckart in the Ärzte-Zeitung and individual theses by historians such as Hans-Walter Schmuhl in the literature, but on the other hand criticized in professional circles such as by Ernst Klee : “The interested reader has read everything somewhere before. References to sources are rare, in the literature list of the books used the authors do not even have a first name. [...] As questionable as the witnesses, so questionable is a main source of the book. [...] Völklein uses the Mengele myth. So the real monster remains hidden ”. Hubert Leber , active in the history editing department at S. Fischer Verlag , commented for the Süddeutsche Zeitung in the evaluation in between that the work fulfills the “basic requirements for a serious discussion with Mengele”, but fails because of the “broad historical context”. There is no “new knowledge”.

The economic historian Mark Spoerer summarized the book Business with the Enemy in the historical journal . The secret alliance of big money during the Second World War on both sides of the front (2002) with: "The [...] unrevocable history of German corporations in World War II is dealt with in a rather superficial way". The reviewer attested Völklein “simple truths” and denied the work's scientific nature. Harald Wixforth , also an economic historian, describes the study as "rather essayistic and in the style of investigative journalism than scientifically well researched". In addition, it is peppered with "stereotypes". The latest research results are only given “insufficient” consideration.

The Honecker -Biografie (2003) is, according to Frank Pergande , the reviewer of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , in part, "polemical" what the "Book the seriousness" take. In addition, the author "apparently after all his research could not get a picture of Honecker".

About the Weizsäcker family history (2004) it was said by Tillmann Bendikowski ( Deutschlandfunk ) that when asked, “What was it about 'the Weizsäcker', how did they actually deal with power and morality?”, There was no real one in the book Answer give. For the contemporary historian Daniel Koerfer , Völklein has even failed because it is a work that is poor in literature, sometimes dubious and sometimes incomprehensible in terms of the evaluations. There is also no detailed account of Ernst von Weizsäcker 's involvement in the Nazi regime . The pedagogue Joachim H. Knoll made "some hasty judgments" from Völklein. Ultimately, Völklein's biography narrowed down to a few family members and failed to show “cross connections”.

In a review of Wirths biography (2006), the Nazi researcher Helgard Kramer found that the work promotes the "participation of the murderers [...] gloss over []" and unreasonable counter-enlightenment.

Fonts (selection)

  • (Arr.): Gypsies. The despised people . Stalling, Oldenburg u. a. 1981, ISBN 3-7979-1362-1 .
  • (Ed.): Liselotte Orgel-Purper : Do you want to be my widow ?. A German love in war . Construction Verlag, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-351-02431-2 .
  • One day in April. The "civil murders" of Altötting. Solving a war crime after more than fifty years . Steidl, Göttingen 1997, ISBN 3-88243-516-X .
  • Debris, dreams and a man of action. A report . Edited by the Ludwig-Erhard-Stiftung , ST-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1997, ISBN 3-9804358-3-0 .
  • (Ed.): Hitler's death. The last few days in the Führerbunker . Steidl, Göttingen 1998, ISBN 3-88243-554-2 .
  • Josef Mengele - the doctor from Auschwitz . Steidl, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 3-88243-685-9 .
  • with Lew Besymenski : The Truth About Raoul Wallenberg. Secret documents and KGB veterans describe the mission and murder of the Swedish diplomat who tried to save Hungary's Jews during World War II . Steidl, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-88243-712-X .
  • The Jewish field. An inheritance . Bleicher, Gerlingen 2001, ISBN 3-88350-119-0 .
  • Doing business with the enemy. The secret alliance of big money during WWII on both sides of the front . Europa Verlag, Hamburg u. a. 2002, ISBN 3-203-83700-5 .
  • Honecker. A biography . Structure paperback, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-7466-1921-1 .
  • The Weizsäcker. Power and morals - portrait of a German family . Droemer, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-426-27319-5 .
  • Pity was not to be expected from anyone. The fate of the German expellees . Droemer, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-426-27340-3 .
  • The "Prince Charming". Eduard Wirths. From follower to resistance. As an SS doctor in the Auschwitz extermination camp . Haland & Wirth, Giessen 2006, ISBN 978-3-89806-924-3 .
  • Farewell to Sophiental. A trip to Silesia . Droemer, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-426-27372-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hubert Unverricht : German-speaking poets and writers from the city and district of Liegnitz after 1945 . In: Edward Białek , Hubert Unverricht (ed.): Literarisches Liegnitz (= supplements to the Orbis linguarum, volume 76). Niesse Verlag, Dresden 2008, ISBN 978-3-940310-29-3 , p. 211.
  2. ↑ a b Peter Roos : "Nothing more know!" . In: Die Zeit , No. 51, December 31, 2004.
  3. ↑ Andreas Debski: Family history Silesian roots . In: Leipziger Volkszeitung , March 16, 2006, p. 4.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Peter Roos : Ulrich Völklein . In: Main-Post , November 8, 2001.
  5. ^ Michael Ploetz, Hans-Peter Müller: Ferngelenkte Friedensbewegung ?. GDR and USSR in the fight against the NATO double resolution (= dictatorship and resistance, volume 6). Lit, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-7235-1 , p. 98.
  6. ↑ Christian Semler : The moral crusade of the "star" against the communist Herbert Wehner . In: the daily newspaper , February 18, 1993, p. 4.
  7. ↑ dpa: No great hour for the 'star' . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , October 30, 1993, p. 16.
  8. ↑ Current article by Ulrich Völklein , Focus Online , accessed on April 7, 2015.
  9. ^ Klaus Püschel : How did Adolf Hitler die? . In: Rechtsmedizin 18 (1998) 3, pp. 202-204. doi : 10.1007 / s00194-007-0492-5
  10. ↑ Friedrich Hofmann : The historian Ulrich Völklein presents a comprehensive biography. Josef Mengele - The doctor from Auschwitz . In: Ärzte-Zeitung , No. 209, November 17, 1999, p. 21.
  11. ↑ Wolfgang U. Eckart : The beautiful Satan - what kind of person was Josef Mengele? . In: Ärzte-Zeitung , No. 60, April 2, 2002, p. 19.
  12. ^ Hans-Walter Schmuhl : The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics, 1927–1945. Crossing Boundaries (= Boston studies in the philosophy and history of science, Vol. 259). Springer, Dordrecht 2008, ISBN 978-1-4020-6599-6 , p. 366.
  13. ↑ Ernst Klee : Myth Mengele . In: Die Zeit , No. 40, September 30, 1999.
  14. ↑ Hubert Leber : Josef Mengele - just a careerist with character deficits? . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , October 18, 1999, p. 20.
  15. ↑ Mark Spoerer : Business with the enemy. The secret alliance of big money during the Second World War on both sides of the front by Ulrich Völklein . In: Historische Zeitschrift 276 (2003) 3, p. 832.
  16. ↑ Harald Wixforth : Collective review: banking history . H-Soz-Kult , July 19, 2002.
  17. ↑ Frank Pergande : Image of stupidity . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , No. 119, May 23, 2003, p. 8.
  18. ^ Tillmann Bendikowski : Ulrich Völklein: The Weizsäcker. Power and morals - portrait of a German family . Political literature ( Deutschlandfunk ), January 31, 2005.
  19. ↑ Daniel Koerfer : If you don't feel it, you won't chase it . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , November 26, 2004, No. 277, p. L22.
  20. ^ Joachim H. Knoll : Bourgeois life in the mirror of 'German families' . In: Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 58 (2006) 4, pp. 357–364.
  21. ^ Helgard Kramer : Collective review: U. Völklein: Dr. med. Eduard Wirths . H-Soz-Kult , November 30, 2006.
personal data
SURNAME Völklein, Ulrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German contemporary historian, journalist and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH February 13, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Wurzburg