Walter grave

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Walter Grab (born February 17, 1919 in Vienna , † December 17, 2000 in Tel Aviv ) was an Israeli historian . In the professional world, Grab became known for his studies of the early democracy movements in Vormärz in Germany. Grab was one of the leading Jacobin researchers . In 1971 he founded the Institute for German History at Tel Aviv University and headed it until his retirement in 1986.

Life

Walter Grab came from a middle-class family. His father Emil Grab was a West Jew from Bohemia, his mother an East Jew came from Galicia near Kolomea . The father came to Vienna from Prague in 1908. There he settled and produced leather goods. Grab's mother ran a fashion salon in Vienna. First and foremost, Grab felt like an “Austrian” and only then as a “Jew”. He attended a humanistic high school. After graduating from high school in the early summer of 1937, he wanted to study German literary history. But at the request of his parents, he began to study law. He completed a semester of law with Heinrich Mitteis at the University of Vienna, among others . Grab demonstrated against the threatened " Anschluss of Austria " to the National Socialist German Reich . As a result of the terror against the "Jews" that began with the violent German invasion, Grab had to break off his law degree and in 1938 emigrated to Palestine. His brother Wilhelm was murdered in Auschwitz . Grab began studying history and English at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the fall of 1938 . His parents only received their identity papers from the Nazi authorities after paying a large amount of bail. After arriving in Tel Aviv, they set up a small shop for shopping bags and beach bags. Because of the difficult economic situation, he had to drop out of studies and supported his parents in his parents' business. In 1942 he became a member of the Tel Aviv “Circle for Progressive Culture”. In this group, among others, Arnold Zweig and Paul Landau , the actors Friedrich Lobe and Hermann Vallentin and the art historian Kurt Freyer gave lectures. It was there that he met his wife Alice in 1943.

From 1951 to 1959 he had to do military reserve service for one month each year. Until 1962 he was a wholesaler in his parents' shop. During the day he worked as a leather dealer and in the evenings he read numerous ancient classics as well as works by contemporary historians. In 1958 Grab began studying for the third time. He studied history, English and political philosophy at the newly founded Tel Aviv University . He was taught in Weimar history by the left-wing professor Charles Bloch from Germany . He had contributed to the founding of the university as a specialist in modern history. Grab befriended the two years younger colleague. In 1961, when he was forty-two, Grab passed his bachelor's degree in history and philosophy. A year later he received a dissertation grant in Germany. On study trips to the GDR he came into contact with Hedwig Voegt , who had published a book about the German Jacobins in 1955. In 1963 he became friends with the left-wing political scientist Wolfgang Abendroth in Germany. In 1965 he received his doctorate in Hamburg under Fritz Fischer on democratic currents in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein 1792–1799 . Shortly after completing his doctorate, he attended a scientific colloquium on the French Jacobins in Vienna, where he came into contact with the left-wing historian Albert Soboul . From 1965 to 1970 he was a lecturer in Modern European History at Tel Aviv University. In 1968 he became a scientific councilor, an associate professor in 1970 and a full professor in 1972. In 1971 Grab founded the “Minerva Institute for German History” at Tel Aviv University with the support of the Volkswagen Foundation and was its director until his retirement in 1986. In close cooperation with German universities, conferences were held on German policy on the Orient, on the Jews in the revolution of 1848 or in the Weimar Republic, and on the Jewish contribution to the German labor movement. From 1971 he published the Tel Aviv yearbook for German history . In 1977/1978 and 1984/1985 he was visiting professor in Duisburg and Hamburg . In 1980 Grab refused to accept the Federal Cross of Merit, First Class , as the former member of the Waffen SS, Hans Wissebach , was to be honored with the same award on the same day . The University of Duisburg awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1985, and in 1994 he received the gold medal of the federal capital Vienna .

The relationship with his new homeland Israel remained distant for a lifetime. Grab didn't like the language, the culture, or the Israeli politics. He had joined the Communist Party of Palestine in 1942 , to which his wife was a member. The rejection of Zionism and solidarity with the Soviet Union in the war against Adolf Hitler were decisive for this step. Grab was an advocate of a Jewish state. However, he wanted complete equality with the Arab population and foreign policy orientation towards the Soviet Union. From 1967 to 1973 he was on the board of the Movement for Peace and Security, which opposed further annexations of non-Jewish areas and for equal rights for the Palestinians. After the bombing of Beirut in May 1983, Grab took part in several demonstrations against Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon , which then gave rise to the " Peace Now " movement in Israel. On August 8, 1984, Hiroshima Day, he was a participant in the protests of opponents of atomic bombs in the USA.

In 1999, Grab's autobiography My Four Lives was published. Memory artist, emigrant, Jacobin researcher, democrat . On the occasion of his 100th birthday, an interdisciplinary colloquium took place in Hamburg in February 2019. The conference dealt with his work and with the question of the future of democracy in Europe.

Research priorities

His main research interests were the study of democratic currents in Germany from the French Revolution to the Revolution of 1848/49 . Grab justified his research interest in the Jacobean revolutionaries in Germany against Fischer by stating that he wanted to find out “why the German people, unlike the French, did not free themselves from the corporate privileges on their own and why democratic ideas from the political equality of all People are inferior ”. He wanted to bring back to mind the champions of political progress who had undeservedly fallen into oblivion. His preoccupation with the Jacobins resulted in the works of North German Jacobins (1967) and Life and Works of North German Jacobins (1973), the Freyheit or Mordt und Todt collection of sources . The calls for the revolution of German Jacobins (1979) and in 1984 the more than six hundred pages comprehensive presentation A people must conquer their own freedom. On the history of German Jacobinism . His portrayal of the French Revolution. Aufbruch zur Demokratie was published in five languages ​​in 1989 for the 200th anniversary. In the political currents of German Jacobinism, he saw "three interlocking movements in the German-speaking area, which, however, differed in terms of their social location, fighting methods and addressees, and which, despite its political and confessional turmoil, formed a socio-cultural unit." As a "decisive criterion" of German Jacobinism he saw "the realization that the overthrow of the privilege system was necessary and could only be brought about by the victory of the revolution in France and by joint actions of all anti-feudal population classes in Germany".

Other focal points of his work were Heinrich Heine as a political poet and problems of German-Jewish emancipation history. In 1982 he published a study on Heine. The aim of the work was to examine the social and political conceptions on the basis of his philosophical learning process and his own historical experience and to analyze the functions that he assigned statesmen, party leaders, the democratic intelligentsia and the popular masses to the hoped-for social upheaval to help you succeed. In this presentation he dealt in detail with the interpretation of the poems from the 1940s. In 1992 the work was published in a thoroughly revised and considerably expanded edition. He wrote several essays on revolutionary democrats such as Harro Harring , Eulogius Schneider , Friedrich von der Trenck and Andreas Riedel . He was friends with Wolf Biermann . In his speech at the opening of the international Heinrich Heine Congress on the occasion of the poet's 200th birthday, Biermann drew a direct connection between Heine and the crimes of communism. This led to the break between the grave and Biermann. Further works dealt with Georg Büchner , Arnold Zweig , theater practice and political poetry in the early 19th century, the reception of Goethe and journalism in the 20th century.

After his retirement, he continued his lectures in East or West Germany, France or the USA on the various democratic-revolutionary movements in European history in the 18th and 19th centuries. In Hamburg he gave a lecture on the North German Jacobins as Lessing's heirs at the big international conference on the impact of this revolution on Germany . He took the position that , if Lessing had lived longer, he would have supported the violent measures of the French Jacobins. In 1986 he was the editor of an anthology with Julius H. Schoeps. The contributions deal with Jewish personalities of the Weimar Republic and go back to an international symposium organized by the research focus “Religion and History of Judaism” at the University of Duisburg and the Institute for German History at the University of Tel Aviv.

Fonts (selection)

A list of all of Grab's works up to his 60th birthday can be found in: Julius H. Schoeps , Imanuel Geiss , Ludger Heid (eds.): Revolution and Democracy in History and Literature. On the 60th birthday of Walter Grab (= Duisburg University Contributions. Vol. 12). Braun, Duisburg 1979, ISBN 3-87096-149-X , pp. 397-406.

Autobiography

  • My four lives. Memory artist - emigrant - Jacobin researcher - democrat. PapyRossa-Verlag, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-89438-167-1 .

Monographs

  • Democratic currents in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein at the time of the First French Republic (= publications by the Association for Hamburg History. Vol. 21, ISSN  0931-0231 ). Christians, Hamburg 1966 (at the same time: Hamburg, University, dissertation, from October 20, 1966).
  • North German Jacobins. Democratic aspirations at the time of the French Revolution (= Hamburg studies on modern history. Vol. 8, ZDB -ID 505204-x ). European publishing company, Frankfurt am Main 1967.
  • with Uwe Friesel : Germany is not lost yet. A historical-political analysis of suppressed poetry from the French Revolution to the founding of the Empire. Hanser, Munich 1970 (unabridged, revised edition. Ibid 1980, ISBN 3-87628-168-7 ).
  • Conquest or Liberation? German Jacobins and the French rule in the Rhineland 1792 to 1799. In: Archives for social history. Vol. 10, 1970, ISSN  0066-6505 , pp. 7-94, ( online ; also as: (= writings from the Karl-Marx-Haus . Issue 4). Karl-Marx-Haus, Trier 1971).
  • Life and works of north German Jacobins (= German revolutionary democrats. Vol. 5). Metzler, Stuttgart 1973, ISBN 3-476-00240-3 .
  • Heinrich Heine as a political poet. Quelle and Meyer, Heidelberg 1982, ISBN 3-494-01098-6 (Thoroughly revised and considerably expanded edition. Book guild Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-7632-4016-0 ).
  • A people must conquer their own freedom. On the history of the German Jacobins. Olten, Vienna 1984, (Gutenberg Book Guild, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1985, ISBN 3-7632-2965-5 ).
  • Georg Büchner and the revolution of 1848. The Büchner essay by Wilhelm Schulz from 1851. Text and commentary (= Büchner studies. Vol. 1). Athenäum-Verlag, Königstein 1985, ISBN 3-7610-8310-6 .
  • Dr. Wilhelm Schulz from Darmstadt. Companion of Georg Büchner and inspirer of Karl Marx. Book guild Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1987, ISBN 3-7632-3322-9 .
  • The German way of emancipation of the Jews. 1789-1938 (= Piper. Vol. 1008). Piper, Munich et al. 1991, ISBN 3-492-11008-8 .
  • Two sides of the same coin. Democratic revolution and emancipation of the Jews. PapyRossa-Verlag, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-89438-209-0 .

Editorships

  • The French revolution. A documentation. 68 source texts and a time table (= Nymphenburg Texts on Science. Vol. 14). Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, Munich 1973, ISBN 3-485-03214-X (Also: (= Bastei-Lübbe-Taschenbuch 64085). Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1989, ISBN 3-404-64085-3 ).
  • with Julius H. Schoeps: Jews in the Weimar Republic. Supplement 9 of the Tel Aviv Yearbook for German History. Tel-Aviv 1986, parallel edition Burg Verlag, Sachsenheim 1986 ISBN 978-3-922801-94-8 . A slightly abridged new edition was published in 1998 by Primus, Darmstadt.

literature

  • Dan Diner : Obituary: Neither home nor exile - Walter Grab in memory. In: Tel Aviver yearbook for German history. 30 (2002), pp. 361-368.
  • Susanne Blumesberger (Red.): Handbook of Austrian authors of Jewish origin, 18th to 20th century. Volume 1: A - I, 1 - 4541. Published by the Austrian National Library. Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-11545-8 , p. 452.
  • Jörn Garber , Hanno Schmitt (Hrsg.): The civil society between democracy and dictatorship. Festschrift for the 65th birthday of Prof. Dr. Walter Grab (= series of publications of the study society for social history and workers' movement. Vol. 49). Publishers labor movement and social sciences , Marburg 1985, ISBN 3-921630-51-7 .
  • Jost Hermand : Walter Grab (1919–2005). Historian. In: Jost Hermand: Role Models. Partisan professors in divided Germany. Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2014, ISBN 978-3-412-22365-6 , pp. 212-231.
  • Arno Herzig : Grave, Walter. In: Franklin Kopitzsch , Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . Lexicon of persons. Volume 3. Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0081-4 , pp. 140-141.
  • Arno Herzig: Obituary for Walter Grab. In: Lars Lambrecht (Hrsg.): Young Hegelianism as an anti-fascist research program (= research on Young Hegelianism. Source studies, area research, theory, history of effects. Vol. 10). Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2003, ISBN 3-631-52121-9 , p. 113.
  • Mario Keßler : Jacobinism, Democracy and the Labor Movement. The historian Walter Grab. In: Yearbook for Research on the History of the Workers' Movement Vol. 1, 2002, pp. 55–68.
  • Joshep A. Kruse: Obituary for Walter Grab. In: Heine-Jahrbuch 2001, pp. 191–192.
  • Iris Nachum : It doesn't always have to be reparations - Walter Grab and the Minerva Institute for German History at Tel Aviv University. In: José Brunner , Iris Nachum (ed.): "The Germans" as the others. Germany in the imagination of its neighbors (= Tel Aviver Yearbook for German History. Vol. 40). Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8353-0986-9 , pp. 237-277, online .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Jost Hermand: Walter Grab (1919–2005). Historian. In: Jost Hermand: Role Models. Partisan professors in divided Germany. Cologne et al. 2014, pp. 212–231, here: p. 215.
  2. ↑ Walter Grab: My four lives. Memory artist, emigrant, Jacobin researcher, democrat. Cologne 1999, p. 9.
  3. ↑ Wolf Biermann: The soft heart. In: Ders .: Barbara. Love novels and other predator stories. Berlin 2019, pp. 149–172, here: p. 171; Mario Keßler: Jacobinism, Democracy and the Labor Movement. The historian Walter Grab. In: Yearbook for Research on the History of the Labor Movement, Vol. 1, 2002, pp. 55–68, here: p. 56.
  4. ^ Jost Hermand: Walter Grab (1919–2005). Historian. In: Jost Hermand: Role Models. Partisan professors in divided Germany. Cologne et al. 2014, pp. 212–231, here: p. 217.
  5. ↑ Quoted from: Iris Nachum: It doesn't always have to be reparation - Walter Grab and the Minerva Institute for German History at Tel Aviv University. In: José Brunner, Iris Nachum (ed.): "The Germans" as the others. Germany in the imagination of its neighbors. Göttingen 2012, pp. 237–277, here: p. 241 f. ( online ).
  6. ↑ Mario Keßler: Jacobinism, Democracy and Workers' Movement. The historian Walter Grab. In: Yearbook for Research on the History of the Labor Movement, Vol. 1, 2002, pp. 55–68, here: p. 56.
  7. ↑ Walter Grab: My four lives. Memory artist - emigrant - Jacobin researcher - democrat. Cologne 1999, p. 143.
  8. ^ Jost Hermand: Walter Grab (1919–2005). Historian. In: Jost Hermand: Role Models. Partisan professors in divided Germany. Cologne et al. 2014, pp. 212–231, here: p. 222.
  9. ^ Jost Hermand: Walter Grab (1919–2005). Historian. In: Jost Hermand: Role Models. Partisan professors in divided Germany. Cologne et al. 2014, pp. 212–231, here: p. 226.
  10. ↑ Mario Keßler: Jacobinism, Democracy and Workers' Movement. The historian Walter Grab. In: Yearbook for research on the history of the labor movement. Vol. 1 (2002), pp. 55-68, here: p. 56.
  11. ^ Jost Hermand: Walter Grab (1919–2005). Historian. In: Jost Hermand: Role Models. Partisan professors in divided Germany. Cologne et al. 2014, pp. 212-231, here: p. 219.
  12. ^ Jost Hermand: Walter Grab (1919–2005). Historian. In: Jost Hermand: Role Models. Partisan professors in divided Germany. Cologne et al. 2014, pp. 212–231, here: p. 227.
  13. ^ Jost Hermand: Walter Grab (1919–2005). Historian. In: Jost Hermand: Role Models. Partisan professors in divided Germany. Cologne et al. 2014, pp. 212-231, here: p. 228.
  14. ^ Walter Grab and the democracy movement in Europe. A life for science between Vienna, Tel Aviv and Hamburg. In: H-Soz-Kult , January 27, 2019, ( online )
  15. ↑ Quoted from: Iris Nachum: It doesn't always have to be reparation - Walter Grab and the Minerva Institute for German History at Tel Aviv University. In: José Brunner, Iris Nachum (ed.): "The Germans" as the others. Germany in the imagination of its neighbors. Göttingen 2012, pp. 237–277, here: p. 243 ( online ).
  16. ↑ Mario Keßler: Jacobinism, Democracy and Workers' Movement. The historian Walter Grab. In: Yearbook for Research on the History of the Labor Movement, Vol. 1, 2002, pp. 55–68, here: p. 58.
  17. ↑ Walter Grab: A people must conquer their own freedom. On the history of German Jacobinism. Frankfurt am Main 1984, p. 35.
  18. ↑ See the review by Ulrich Otto in: Jahrbuch für Volksliedforschung 31, 1986, p. 139 f.
  19. ↑ Walter Grab: Heinrich Heine as a political poet. Heidelberg 1982, p. 28.
  20. ↑ Walter Grab: Heinrich Heine as a political poet. Frankfurt am Main 1992.
  21. ↑ Walter Grab: Harro Harring. Revolutionary poet and Odysseus of freedom. In: Gert Mattenklott, Klaus R. Scherpe (ed.): Democratic-revolutionary literature in Germany: Vormärz. Kronberg (Taunus) 1974, pp. 9-84.
  22. ↑ Walter Grab: Eulogius Schneider, a citizen of the world between monk cell and guillotine. In: Gert Mattenklott, Klaus Scherpe (Hrsg.): Democratic-revolutionary literature in Germany. Kronberg (Taunus) 1975, pp. 61-138.
  23. ↑ Wolf Biermann: The soft heart. In: Ders .: Barbara. Love novels and other predator stories. Berlin 2019, pp. 149–172, here: p. 150.
  24. ↑ Iris Nachum: It doesn't always have to be reparation - Walter Grab and the Minerva Institute for German History at Tel Aviv University. In: José Brunner, Iris Nachum (ed.): "The Germans" as the others. Germany in the imagination of its neighbors. Göttingen 2012, pp. 237–277, here: p. 276 ( online ).
  25. ^ Jost Hermand: Walter Grab (1919–2005). Historian. In: Jost Hermand: Role Models. Partisan professors in divided Germany. Cologne et al. 2014, pp. 212–231, here: p. 229.
personal data
SURNAME Grave, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 17, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH December 17, 2000
Place of death Tel Aviv