Advancement award for military history and history of military technology

The sponsorship award for military history and the history of military technology is a German science award that was newly announced for 2017. From 1992 to 2012 the prize was called the Werner Hahlweg Prize for Military History and Defense Sciences . After it became known in 2012 that the namesake Werner Hahlweg had joined the SS in June 1933 and the NSDAP in September 1936 , the Federal Ministry of Defense decided not to award the prize named after him. The award was only announced again for 2017 under a new name and is considered the most important military-historical award in Germany.

Foundation of the award

The award has been held every two years since 1992 and serves to promote young scientists. The award is made by the President of the Federal Office for Equipment, Information Technology and Use of the Bundeswehr , formerly the Federal Office for Defense Technology and Procurement , in Koblenz.

The historian award is named after the military historian, military scientist and Clausewitz researcher Werner Hahlweg (1912–1989), long-time professor at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster and president of the German Society for Army Studies . As part of his legacy, he had decreed that to promote military history, military science and the history of military technology, a prize should be awarded every two years for outstanding work in these areas of science (theses, dissertations, habilitation theses and comparable studies).

Prize money of up to 15,000 euros from the Werner Hahlweg Foundation , which has no legal capacity, will be given out.

Scientific Advisory Board

The prize is awarded on the recommendation of a scientific advisory board. Well -known scientists belong to the advisory board . a. Sönke Neitzel , Rolf Wirtgen , Bernhard R. Kroener , Wolfram Funk and Volker Schmidtchen (chairman).

Award history

The historian's prize has been awarded in a worthy setting since it was awarded. In the past this included a. the German Historians' Day as in 1998 in Frankfurt am Main, 2000 in Aachen and 2002 in Halle (Saale). In 2004, the permanent state secretary in the BMVg, Peter Eickenboom , personally presented the certificates to the award winners and gave a speech about Werner Hahlweg's life's work. In 2010 and 2012 a special colloquium for young talents on military history was organized at the Military History Research Office in Potsdam. Involved in it were u. a. the German Committee for the History of the Second World War , the Working Group Military History (AKM) , the Working Group Military and Society in the Early Modern Age (AMG), the Military History Research Office and the Chair for Military History / Cultural History of Violence at the University of Potsdam .

Award winners

First, second and third prizes are awarded, sometimes several times. In the past, promotional prizes and printing subsidies were also issued, e.g. B. to Peter Lieb , Walter Blasi and Verena Moritz . Among the main award winners today are well-known German, Austrian and Swiss military historians such as Matthias Rogg ( Military History Museum of the Bundeswehr ), Christian Hartmann ( Institute for Contemporary History ), Mario Christian Ortner ( Museum of Military History in Vienna) and Sönke Neitzel ( London School of Economics and Political Science ). The later right-wing extremist Olaf Rose , who was originally funded by the Clausewitz Society for his work at what is now the Helmut Schmidt University / University of the Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg, casts a shadow . The following is a list of the previous main award winners from 1992 to 2012:

• 1992: Dieter Storz (1st prize), Christian Lankes (2nd prize), Christian Hartmann (3rd prize)
• 1994: Olaf Rose , Ralf Pröve (2nd prize), Karl-Klaus Weber
• 1996: Axel F. Gablik (1st prize), Michael Sikora (2nd prize), Sönke Neitzel and Gerhard Quaas (3rd prize)
• 1998: Lutz Budraß (1st prize), Oliver Gnad, Lothar Walmrath
• 2000: Matthias Rogg (1st prize), Frank Becker and Martin Rink (2nd prize), Carola Vogel and Michael Busch (3rd prize)
• 2002: Rainer Leng (1st prize), Markus Pöhlmann and Brigitte Biwald (2nd prize), Christian Th. Müller (3rd prize)
• 2004: Uwe Tresp (1st prize), Elmar Heinz (2nd prize), Klaus-Jürgen Bremm and Klaus Jochen Arnold (3rd prize)
• 2006: Jörn Leonhard (1st prize), Stefan Kroll (2nd prize), Werner Benecke and Frank Pauli (3rd prize)
• 2008: Oliver Stein (1st prize), Eckard Michels and Christian Ortner (2nd prize), Philipp Münch (3rd prize)
• 2010: Tanja Bührer (1st prize), Rüdiger Bergien and Christian Kehre (2nd prize), Martin Clauss and Wencke Meteling (3rd prize)
• 2012: Christoph Nübel (1st prize), Jens Westemeier (2nd prize), Florian Seiller and Jürgen Kilian (3rd prize)
• 2017: Flavio Eichmann (1st prize), Carmen Winkel (for her dissertation Im Netz des Königs. Networks and Patronage in the Prussian Army 1713–1786 ) and Takuma W. Melber (2nd prize), Peter Keller and Jonas Friedrich (3rd prize) . Prize) Melber received the prize for his dissertation in Mainz (Between Collaboration and Resistance. The Japanese Occupation in Malaya and Singapore (1942–1945)) and Flavio Eichmann for his dissertation, War and Revolution in the Caribbean. The Lesser Antilles, 1789–1815 .
• 2019: Thorsten Loch , Christian Packheiser (1st prize), Sven Petersen (2nd prize), Alina Enzensberger (3rd prize) He was awarded for Loch's habilitation thesis (Deutsche Generale 1945 to 1990. Profession - Karriere --Herkunft) to the Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg, the dissertation of Packheiser (home leave - soldiers between front, family and Nazi regime) at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, the dissertation of Petersen (The culture of siege. Everyday life, violence and entanglement in War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748)) at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and the dissertation of Alina Enzensberger (German military hospitals on the home front: organization, experience and imagination of a transitional area in the First World War, 1914–1918) at the Humboldt University Berlin.

Criticism of naming and renaming

In November 2012, the ARD magazine Kontraste researched that Werner Hahlweg, according to the military historian and journalist Detlef Bald , was heavily "integrated and involved in the Third Reich, in National Socialism". The head of the German Resistance Memorial Center , Johannes Tuchel , stated in the same program: “I think that we do not necessarily have to regard opportunism and joining a totalitarian party as exemplary behavior in 2012. Against this background, I would recommend that the Werner Hahlweg Prize is no longer awarded today. ”Thereupon the Federal Office for Defense Technology and Procurement ordered an investigation of the Vita Hahlweg and considered no longer awarding the prize under this name. The Federal Ministry of Defense (BMVg) promised a “thorough review” with the aim of ensuring “that the impression of a traditional line to associations of the former Wehrmacht or Waffen-SS cannot arise in the future.” The historian Sönke Neitzel , the also a member of the scientific advisory board of the Advancement Prize for Military History, declared in December 2016 that the Federal Ministry of Defense had decided not to award the Werner Hahlweg Prize any more because of Hahlweg's entry into the SS in June 1933 and the NSDAP in September 1936 .

It was then renamed the Advancement Award for Military History and Military Technology History .

See also

• Wilhelm Deist Prize for Military History

Web links

• Werner Hahlweg Prize for Military History and Defense Sciences 2014 . Message from the Military History Portal. ed. v. Military History Working Group, October 8, 2012.
• Interview with Sönke Neitzel on the renaming of the Werner Hahlweg Prize to "Sponsorship Prize for Military History and History of Military Technology" . Message from the Military History Portal. Edited by Military History Working Group, December 5, 2016.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Werner Hahlweg Prize for Military History and Defense Sciences 2014 . Message from the Military History Portal. Edited by Military History Working Group, October 8, 2012 (accessed December 1, 2012).
2. ↑ Rolf Wirtgen : Awarding of the Werner Hahlweg Prize 2004 for Military History and Defense Sciences ( Memento from May 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), in: Zeitschrift für Heereskunde , January / March 2005.
3. ↑ New Perspectives on Organized Violence. Junior Colloquium on Military History . MGFA, Potsdam, June 19-21, 2012.
4. ↑ Takuma Melber: Military History for Young Scientists , in: AHF -Information, No. 140 of July 13, 2010.
5. ↑ Werner Hahlweg Prize. In: Wehrtechnik 24 (1992)?, P. 24.
6. ↑ Zeitschrift für Heereskunde 60 (1996)?, S.?.
7. ^ Karl-Klaus Weber: Johan van Valckenburgh , Böhlau, 1995, p. Vii.
8. ↑ Small messages . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , March 9, 1996.
9. ↑ Axel F. Gablik: Strategic Planning in the Federal Republic of Germany 1955-1967 , Nomos, 1996, p. 4
10. ↑ Michael Sikora: Discipline and Desertion , Duncker & Humblot, 1996, p. 4.
11. ↑ Sönke Neitzel: Blood and Iron. Germany and the First World War . Pendo Verlag, p. 2.
12. ↑ Gerhard Quaas : The craft of the Landsknechte , Biblio, 1997, p. Iv.
13. ↑ Hahlweg Prize . In: Communications from the Federal Archives 6 (1998) 2/3, p. 71.
14. ↑ Gudrun Tribukait: Young historians from BWB awarded . In: Rhein- Zeitung , September 25, 1998.
15. ↑ For works on military history . In: Rhein-Zeitung , October 7, 2000.
16. ↑ Zeitschrift für Heereskunde 67 (2003)?, P. 314.
17. ^ Hahlweg Prize for Scientists . In: Rhein-Zeitung , November 12, 2004.
18. ^ Ninth award of the Werner Hahlweg Prize for Military History and Defense Sciences ( Memento from February 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) on deutsche-heereskunde.de, accessed on September 5, 2013
19. ↑ Takuma Melber: Conference Report Colloquium on Military History for Young Scientists. 17th-19th May 2010, Mainz . in: H-Soz-u-Kult , July 20, 2010.
20. ^ Rolf Wirtgen : 11th award of the Werner Hahlweg Prize . In: Zeitschrift für Heereskunde , 2012, No. 446 (October / December), pp. 208–210.
21. ↑ Current. November 30, 2016. Retrieved November 5, 2017 . 
22. ↑ Young Swiss scientist receives 1st award for military history and history of military technology. In: baainbw.de. July 13, 2017. Retrieved November 22, 2017 . 
23. ↑ Christoph Nübel: Award for military history and history of military technology awarded. Military History Portal, December 5, 2019, accessed December 21, 2019 . 
24. ↑ ^{a b} Caroline Walter and Gregor Witt (editors): Unselige tradition maintenance in the Bundeswehr ( Memento from February 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) , in: Contrasts , November 29, 2012 (accessed on November 30, 2012).
25. ↑ Interview with Prof. Dr. Sönke Neitzel on the renaming of the Werner-Hahlweg-Preis in “Advancement Award for Military History and Military Technology History” . Message from the Military History Portal. ed. v. Military History Working Group, December 5, 2016, accessed on December 29, 2016.