Volker Press

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Volker Press (born March 28, 1939 in Erding , † October 1993 in Tübingen ) was a German historian .

Volker Press was born as the son of the local editor and home keeper Eugen Press and his wife Elisabeth, a master tailor. The Kiel physicist Werner Press is his brother. After attending grammar school in Erding, Press studied history and English in Munich from 1957 to 1965 . Formative academic teachers were the regional historians Max Spindler and Karl Bosl , as well as Franz Schnabel and his pupil Friedrich Hermann Schubert . In 1966, Press became Calvinism and Territorial State working. Government and central authorities of the Electoral Palatinate from 1559 to 1619 . The study was initiated by Schnabel and was supervised by Schubert. Press went to Kiel in 1967 as his assistant and followed him to Frankfurt am Main in 1968 . In the Frankfurt years, Press planned his habilitation thesis, but in 1971 - without habilitation - he was appointed full professor of modern history in Giessen as the successor to Peter Stadler . In 1980 he moved to a chair at the University of Tübingen . There he taught as the successor to Josef Engel until his sudden death in 1993 as a professor of Middle and Modern History. Gabriele Haug-Moritz was one of his academic students . His estate is in the possession of the Tübingen University Archives. Its extensive library became the property of the University of Prague . Volker Press died unmarried and childless. He was buried on October 22, 1993 in his hometown Erding.

Press has been one of the most formative historians of research in the early modern period since the 1970s. He methodically combined constitutional and administrative history with social history and, together with the medievalist Peter Moraw, was one of the pioneers of the "new image of the Old Empire", that the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation again assessed positively before 1800 and thus the Prussian historical image of the 19th Century also for the early modern period. He was particularly effective through his extraordinarily numerous essays, in which he mostly combined regional history with imperial history. His main research interests were Upper Germany , the imperial knighthood , the ecclesiastical principalities occupied by the imperial nobility and the position of the Habsburg emperors in the empire and in their hereditary lands. One of his most important findings is the rediscovery of the resurgence of the Habsburg emperors in the empire after the Thirty Years' War under Leopold I.

After 1990, Press contributed to the reconstruction of historical studies in Thuringia. He was also co-founder of the Zeitschrift für Historischeforschung since 1974 , the direction of which he helped to determine at the beginning. The journal's editorial board relied on a new periodization model. The late Middle Ages were separated from traditional Medieval studies and connected with the early modern period.

Press was an extraordinary member of the Historical Commission for Hesse (1973), the Hessian Historical Commission Darmstadt (1975), the Historical Commission for Nassau (1977) and the Commission for Bavarian State History (1988). Since 1979 he has been a corresponding and since 1981 a full member of the Commission for Historical Regional Studies in Baden-Württemberg , a member of the Scientific Council of the Liechtenstein Institute (1986), the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences (1991) and the Academy of Nonprofit Sciences in Erfurt (1993) . In the college year 1989/1990 he was a research fellow at the historical college in Munich.

Fonts

Monographs

  • The old empire. Selected essays (= historical research. Volume 59). 2nd Edition. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-428-09138-8 .
  • Nobility in the Old Kingdom. Collected lectures and essays (= early modern research. Volume 4). Edited by Franz Brendle and Anton Schindling . bibliotheca academia Verlag, Tübingen 1998, ISBN 3-928471-16-3 .
  • Wars and crises, Germany 1600–1715 (= New German History. Volume 5). Beck, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-406-30817-1 .
  • Calvinism and Territorial State. Government and central authorities of the Electoral Palatinate 1559–1619 (= Kiel historical studies. Volume 7). Klett, Stuttgart 1970.
  • Old Reich and German Confederation. Continuity in discontinuity (= writings of the Historical College. Lectures. Volume 28). Historisches Kolleg Foundation, Munich 1995 ( digitized version ).

Editorships

  • with Dieter Stievermann : Alternatives to the Imperial Constitution in the Early Modern Era? (= Writings of the Historical College. Colloquia. Volume 23). Oldenbourg, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-486-56035-2 ( digitized version )
  • with Dieter Stievermann: Martin Luther. Problems of his time. [Ernst Walter Zeeden on May 14, 1986]. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3-608-91431-5 .
  • with Hans Georg Gundel , Peter Moraw : Gießen scholars in the first half of the 20th century (= publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse in conjunction with the Justus Liebig University of Gießen. Volume 35 = Life pictures from Hesse. Volume 2). 2 parts. Elwert, Marburg 1982.
  • with Peter Moraw: Contributions to the older Gießen university history. For the 375th anniversary presented by the Historical Institute of the Justus Liebig University in Gießen (= publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse. Volume 45). Elwert, Marburg 1982, ISBN 3-7708-0734-0 .

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. The specific date of death is passed down inconsistently.
  2. ^ Peter Moraw: Volker Press. In: Historische Zeitschrift Vol. 259, 1994, pp. 878-883, here: p. 882.
  3. ^ Peter Moraw: Volker Press. In: Historische Zeitschrift , Vol. 259, 1994, pp. 878-883, here: p. 881.
  4. Bernd Schneidmüller : Consensus - Territorialization - Self-interest. How to deal with late medieval history. In: Frühmittelalterliche Studien , Vol. 39, 2005, pp. 225–246, here: p. 239.