Veit Valentin (historian)

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Veit Rudolf Valentin (born March 25, 1885 in Frankfurt am Main ; † January 12, 1947 in Washington, DC ) was a German historian and archivist .

Life

Veit Rudolf Valentin was the son of high school professor Veit Valentin (1842–1900), who emerged as a Goethe researcher and art historian . His mother Caroline Valentin (born Pichler, 1855–1923, daughter of the architect Oskar Pichler ) was a music historian who worked particularly on the regional history of Frankfurt.

After graduating from high school, Valentin studied history. At the age of 21 he received his doctorate at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg under Erich Marcks with a thesis on " The Revolution of 1848/49 ". In 1910 he completed his habilitation with a study on Prince Karl von Leiningen at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg im Breisgau . There he initially worked as a private lecturer and was responsible for the celebrations at the inauguration of the new college building. In 1916 he was appointed associate professor.

First of all, in the early phase of the First World War , Valentin was one of the signatories of the declaration of the university professors of the German Reich of October 23, 1914 which reads: “We teachers at Germany’s universities serve science and do a work of peace. But it fills us with indignation that the enemies of Germany, England at the head, allegedly want to make a contradiction in our favor between the spirit of German science and what they call Prussian militarism. In the German army there is no other spirit than in the German people, for both are one, and we also belong to them. (...) Our belief is that salvation for the entire culture of Europe depends on the victory that German 'militarism' will fight for, male discipline, loyalty and the self-sacrifice of the free German people. "

When, in the further course of the war, Valentin was called to Berlin on behalf of the Foreign Office to work on a presentation of German foreign policy since Bismarck , conflicts arose with the Pan-German Association . Valentin had explicitly warned against the plans of conquest propagated by Pan-Germans and rejected the notion of a “fateful enmity” between Germany and England. Massive pressure from politics and his own faculty, fueled above all by Freiburg prorector Georg von Below , forced him to renounce his Venia legendi in 1917 . Valentin was therefore not offered a full professorship at a German university.

From 1918 Valentin was a member of the left-wing liberal DDP , the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold and an employee of the League for Human Rights . During the flag dispute in the 1920s, Valentin argued in favor of the Weimar Republic . As a liberal activist, he, together with his party friend and specialist colleague Ludwig Bergsträsser , saw it as his task to track down the radical and pacifist roots in the history of German freedom in order to contribute to the formation of tradition in the still young first German republic.

After 1920 he worked at the Reichsarchiv in Potsdam . In addition, he was able to hold teaching positions at the Berlin Commercial College and the School of Politics . During this time, Valentin first worked biographically on Friedrich II of Prussia and Otto von Bismarck, following his academic teacher . In particular, he was one of the most important historiographers of the revolution of 1848/49 . His two-volume history of the German revolution of 1848/49, first published in 1930/31, is now considered a standard work. As an important step in a democratically oriented reinterpretation of this period, he links the life story of actors such as Friedrich Hecker with their influence on the history of ideas and their careers right up to the formative social structures.

After the start of the National Socialist dictatorship in Germany, Valentin was released and initially emigrated to London . He taught at the University College, where he frequented Franz Xaver Aenderl (1883–1951) in the “Bavarian Circle” , which also included Hermann Sinsheimer (1883–1950) and Martin Beradt (1881–1949). In 1939 his German citizenship was revoked and Valentin emigrated to the USA. There he worked at the Library of Congress and was an agent of the Rockefeller Foundation in Washington. A three-volume “Weltgeschichte” (which later appeared in one and two volumes) was published in America, and in 1946 the last work followed was a “History of the Germans”, initially written in English. The German edition followed only after the successful translations into Spanish, Swedish and Dutch.

The combination of democratic ideas of the 1848 revolution with national demands against a nationalist appropriation of German history on the one hand and the emphasis on "personality" and "responsibility" made Veit Valentin an outsider in his specialist discipline in Germany during his time (until 1945).

Works

  • Political, intellectual and economic life in Frankfurt am Main before the beginning of the revolution of 1848/49. Union Deutscher Verlag, Stuttgart 1907 (At the same time: University of Heidelberg, Phil. Diss. 1907), (Also as: Frankfurt am Main and the revolution of 1848/49. Cotta, Stuttgart et al. 1908).
  • Prince Karl Leiningen and the German problem of unity. Cotta, Stuttgart et al. 1910 (at the same time: University of Freiburg (Breisgau), habilitation paper, 1910).
  • The powers of the tri-association. Oldenbourg, Munich et al. 1914.
  • Bismarck and his time (= From Nature and Spiritual World 500, ZDB -ID 516263-4 ). Teubner, Leipzig et al. 1915.
  • Belgium and the great politics of the modern age (= world culture and world politics. German and Austrian series of publications. German series Bd. 1, ZDB -ID 1076923-7 ). Bruckmann, Munich 1915.
  • Colonial history of modern times. A demolition. Mohr, Tübingen 1915.
  • with Max Frischisen-Köhler, Joseph Jastrow , Eduard Freiherrn von der Goltz , Gustav Roloff and Franz von Liszt : The English Face. England in culture, economy and history (= men and peoples. Vol. 3, ZDB -ID 541981-5 ). Ullstein, Berlin et al. 1915.
  • Count Reventlow as a historian. In: Prussian year books . Bd. 165, 1916, ISSN  0934-0688 , pp. 243-252 (Also special reprint. With the answer from Count Reventlow and a concluding word. Preuss, Berlin 1916).
  • Entente and neutrality. Hirzel, Leipzig 1917.
  • The 48 democracy and the idea of the League of Nations (= monographs on the League of Nations. Vol. 2, ZDB -ID 634224-3 ). Engelmann, Berlin 1919.
  • The first German National Assembly. A historical study of the Paulskirche in Frankfurt. Oldenbourg, Munich et al. 1919.
  • The first German parliament and us (= German Revolution. Bd. 10, ZDB -ID 1031130-0 ). Klinkhardt, Leipzig 1920.
  • History of the League of Nations in Germany. An attempt at intellectual history. Engelmann, Berlin 1920.
  • Germany's foreign policy from Bismarck's departure to the end of the world war. = Germany's foreign policy, 1890–1918. German Publishing Society for Politics and History, Berlin 1921.
  • Baden and Prussia in 1894. In: Ludwig Bergsträßer et al. (Ed.): From state becoming and being. Festschrift for Erich Marck 's 60th birthday. Cotta, Stuttgart et al. 1921, pp. 103-122 (reprint: Scientia-Verlag, Aalen 1981, ISBN 3-511-10086-0 ).
  • On the prehistory of the armistice in 1918. In: Historische Zeitschrift . Vol. 134, 1926, pp. 56-66.
  • The political parties in Germany. In: Teubner's handbook of political and economic science. Department 1: Political Science. Vol. 2, H. 1: Basic rights and basic duties , Teubner, Leipzig 1926, ZDB -ID 261598-8 , pp. 24-47.
  • as editor: Heinrich von Treitschke : German history in the nineteenth century. 2 volumes. Erich Reiss, Berlin 1927.
  • Frederick the Great. With many previously unpublished images from that time. Erich Reiss, Berlin 1927.
  • with Ottfried Neubecker : The German colors. Preface by Edwin Redslob . Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1929.
  • History of the German Revolution from 1848–1849. 2 volumes. Ullstein, Berlin 1930-1931 (reprinted. Beltz Quadriga, Weinheim et al. 1998, ISBN 3-88679-301-X );
    • Volume 1: Until the Frankfurt Parliament meets.
    • Volume 2: Until the end of the popular movement of 1849.
  • The Hambach National Festival . (1832-1932). HPV - Historisch-Politischer Verlag, Berlin 1932 (reprint: Gutenberg Book Guild, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1982, ISBN 3-7632-2682-6 ).
  • Bismarck's founding of an empire in the judgment of English diplomats. Elsevier, Amsterdam 1937.
  • World history peoples, men, ideas. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne et al. 1939 (at the same time: Longmans, Green & Co., New York 1939; Lange, Amsterdam 1939 (in two volumes)).
  • Bismarck and Lasker. In: Journal of Central European affairs. Vol. 3, 1943/1944, ISSN  0885-2472 , pp. 400-415.
  • A new world citizenship. In: Contemporary review. Vol. 166, 1944, ISSN  0010-7565 , pp. 212-219.
  • The German people. Their history and civilization from the Holy Roman Empire to the Third Reich. Knopf, New York 1946.
  • History of the Germans. Pontes-Verlag, Berlin 1947.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The flag dispute of the Weimar Republic .
  2. ^ According to Faulenbach 1920 - Bernd Faulenbach: Valentin, Veit (1885–1947). In: Rüdiger vom Bruch, Rainer A. Müller (Hrsg.): Historikerlexikon. From antiquity to the 20th century (= Beck'sche Reihe. Vol. 405). Beck, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-406-33997-2 , p. 326 ff. And after Fehrenbach 1923 - Elisabeth Fehrenbach: Veit Valentin. In: Hans-Ulrich Wehler (Ed.): German Historians (= Kleine Vandenhoeck-Reihe. Vol. 331–333, ZDB -ID 255845-2 ). Volume 1, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1971, pp. 69-85.
  3. ↑ Heiner Timmermann (Ed.): 1848, Revolution in Europa. Course, political programs, consequences and effects (= documents and writings of the European Academy Otzenhausen. Vol. 87). Duncker and Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-09778-5 , p. 467.
personal data
SURNAME Valentin, Veit
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Valentin, Veit Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian and archivist
DATE OF BIRTH March 25, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH January 12, 1947
Place of death Washington, DC