Wilfried Loth

Wilfried Loth (born August 29, 1948 in Wadern ) is a German historian and political scientist .

From 1966 to 1972, Wilfried Loth studied German, history, philosophy and education at Saarland University . In the summer semester of 1974 he received his doctorate there with a study inspired by Walter Lipgens on the theory and practice of the foreign policy of the French socialists between 1940 and 1950. From 1974 to 1984 he worked there as a research assistant and university assistant. Loth completed his habilitation in 1983 in Modern History on Catholics in the Empire. Political Catholicism in the crisis of Wilhelmine Germany . In 1984/85 he was Professor of Political Science at the Free University of Berlin. A professorship for political science at the University of Münster followed in 1985/86. Since 1986 he has been professor of modern history at the University of Essen . From 1993 to 1997, Loth was President of the Cultural Studies Institute at the Science Center North Rhine-Westphalia and has been President of the Franco-German Historians Committee since 2013. In recognition of his commitment to German-French understanding in historical research, the French government awarded him the Ordre des Palmes Académiques in 2015 . In addition, the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, awarded Loth an honorary doctorate in 2013 .

His academic focus is on the history of Catholicism and socialism , the history of the German Empire, the history of France in the 20th century as well as the history of the East-West conflict and European unification.

Loth is one of the best experts on the subject through numerous publications on the history of 20th century French history. In 1987 published an account of the history of France in the 20th century. In 2015 he published a biography on Charles de Gaulle . His aim with the biography is to "trace the big lines in the life of Charles de Gaulle, but also to mark the breaks and turns that have occurred in this life". Loth comes to the conclusion that, as a statesman, de Gaulle achieved his "greatest political successes [...] when he made compromises that went beyond his original ideas". Loth is one of the best experts on the Cold War . His position on the 1952 Stalin Note , which he attaches more seriousness than the majority of historians, is controversial. Loth has changed his title in 1998 to save the world. Détente policy in the Cold War 1950–1991 and presented in a revised form. In the work published in 2016, Loth deals in ten chronologically consecutive chapters with the four decades from the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Fonts

Monographs

• The division of the world. Cold War history 1941–1955. dtv, Munich 1980. (extended new edition 2000, ISBN 3-423-30756-0 )
• History of France in the 20th Century. 2nd Edition. Fischer, Frankfurt 1992, ISBN 3-596-10860-8 .
• Stalin's unloved child. Why Moscow didn't want the GDR. Rowohlt, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-87134-085-5 .
• The empire. Authority and Political Mobilization. dtv, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-423-04505-1 .
• The Soviet Union and the German Question. Studies on Soviet policy on Germany from Stalin to Khrushchev. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-525-36298-3 .
• Europe's unification. An unfinished story. Campus, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2014, ISBN 978-3-593-50077-5 .
• Charles de Gaulle (= Kohlhammer-Urban pocket books. Volume 660). Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2015, ISBN 978-3-17-021362-3 .
• The salvation of the world. Détente policy in the Cold War 1950–1991. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2016, ISBN 978-3-593-50616-6 .
• "Freedom and dignity of the people". Catholicism and Democracy in Germany. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2018, ISBN 978-3-593-50838-2 .
• Almost a revolution. May 68 in France. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2018, ISBN 978-3-593-50832-0 .

Editorships

• German Catholicism in transition to modernity (= denomination and society. Contributions to contemporary history. Volume 3). Kohlhammer, Stuttgart et al. 1991, ISBN 3-17-011729-7 .
• with Rolf Badstübner: Wilhelm Pieck. Notes on Germany policy 1945–1953. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-05-002198-5 .
• Walter Hallstein - the forgotten European? Europa-Union-Verlag, Bonn 1995, ISBN 3-7713-0499-7 .
• with Bernd-A. Rusinek : Transformation policy: Nazi elites in West German post-war society. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-593-35994-4 .
• The European project at the beginning of the 21st century. Leske + Budrich, Opladen 2001, ISBN 3-8100-2908-4 .
• Draft European Constitution. A historical record. Europa-Union-Verlag, Bonn 2002, ISBN 3-7713-0604-3 .
• European society. Basics and perspectives. Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-531-14758-7 .
• with Jost Dülffer : Dimensions of international history. Oldenbourg, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-71260-5 .
• with Étienne François : Trade unions, the world of work and working-class culture in France and Germany from 1890 to 1990 (= publication series of the Franco-German Historians' Committee. Volume 13). Steiner, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-515-11584-1 .

literature

• Michaela Bachem-Rehm, Claudia Hiepel, Henning Türk (eds.): European and international history in the 19th and 20th centuries. Festschrift for Wilfried Loth. Oldenbourg, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-486-71574-3 .
• Who is who? The German Who's Who. 51st edition. Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 2013, p. 702.

Web links

• Literature by and about Wilfried Loth in the catalog of the German National Library
• Site by Wilfried Loth at the University of Duisburg-Essen

Remarks

1. ^ Wilfried Loth: Charles de Gaulle. Stuttgart 2015, p. 9.
2. ^ Wilfried Loth: Charles de Gaulle. Stuttgart 2015, p. 307.
3. ^ Wilfried Loth: Helsinki, August 1, 1975. Relaxation and disarmament. Munich 1998.