Wilhelm Alff

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Wilhelm Alff (born May 15, 1918 in Essen , † September 25, 1992 in Bremen ) was a German historian and historian of philosophy, collector and author of occasional poems.

Life

From 1937 to 1939 Alff studied theology and philosophy in Bonn . After serving in the war in France, he began studying Romance languages, history and philosophy at the University of Mainz . In the winter semester of 1947/48 he went to the Romance Institute at the University of Leipzig as an assistant , but returned to West Germany in 1948 and began working on his dissertation on the historiography of the French historian Jules Michelet .

From 1951 to 1953 he published the historical-political journal Enlightenment . The authors of this magazine, which provided a forum for socially critical intellectuals in the early 1950s, included Theodor W. Adorno , Heinrich Böll , Martin Buber , Albert Einstein , Willy Huhn , Leo Kofler , Maurice Halbwachs , Jakob Moneta and Martin Walser . Since 1956 Alff has been writing historical-political and educational contributions for the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne, and during this time he began to write reviews, essays on contemporary history and historical-critical commentaries for the features section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung .

After completing his dissertation at the University of Cologne in 1961, Alff published two central texts of the European Enlightenment philosophy, Condorcet's draft of a historical account of the progress of the human mind and Cesare Beccaria's treatise on crime and punishment in new translations and with historical-critical introductions. Due to his interests in the history of Italy, Alff worked at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich from 1962 to 1968 .

From 1969 to 1974 he taught at the Braunschweig University of Education and the Technical University of Braunschweig , in 1974 he was appointed to the University of Bremen , where he taught until his retirement in 1983.

Alff primarily dealt with the term fascism and the problem of continuity in German history, making an emphatic plea for European comparative perspectives and for a "Europeanization of German historiography".

Works

  • Condorcet and history made conscious . Introduction to: Condorcet. Draft of a historical representation of the progress of the human mind, Frankfurt / M. 1963 (2nd edition 1976).
  • Considerations. Fourteen essays, Heidelberg 1964.
  • Michelet's ideas. Geneva 1966.
  • Beccaria's life and thought. Introduction to: Beccaria, Treatise on Crimes and Punishments, Frankfurt / M. 1966 (2nd edition 1988).
  • Karl Kraus and Contemporary History (1927–1934). in: Karl Kraus: The Third Walpurgis Night. Munich 1967.
  • The term fascism and other essays on contemporary history. edition suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 1971, ISBN 3-518-00456-5 .
  • Materials on the continuity problem in German history. edition suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 1976.
  • Occasional poems in chronological order (1944–1989). Bremen 1989.
As editor

Magazine:

  • Enlightenment. Volume 1 (1951/52), Book I – VIII, Volume 2 (1952/53), Book I – VI.

Series of publications:

  • Studies on the continuity problem in German history. 4 volumes. Frankfurt / M.- New York 1984–1986.

Autobiographical writings:

  • In memory of German Jews. A memory from the years 1935–1940. in: Essen contributions. Volume 103, 1989/90, pp. 151-157.
  • Prüm . A myth in reality. Childhood memories 1925–1931. in: The Prümer Landbote. Journal of the History Society of Prümer Land, 1990, pp. 5-59.

Secondary literature

  • Ulrich Wyrwa : Wilhelm Alff (1918–1992). Historian in the Age of Extremes. in: Abhandlungen der Braunschweigische Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft 63. (2011), pp. 209–215.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ In volume 1, of the 2nd year (1952/3), an essay by Halbwachs on the concept of collective memory appeared for the first time in German.
  2. ↑ Some of these essays are 1964 under the title Reflections. Fourteen essays published by Lambert Schneider Verlag in Heidelberg.
  3. ↑ Partly published in its two volumes in edition suhrkamp ; see bibliography.
  4. ↑ Published by Droz in Geneva in 1966 under the title Michelets Ideen .
  5. ^ Condorcet. Draft of a historical representation of the progress of the human mind, edited by W. Alff, German transmission in collaboration with Hermann Schweppenhäuser , Frankfurt / M. 1963; it also includes the introductory essay: W. Alff, Condorcet and history that has become conscious, pp. 5–25. (2nd edition 1976); Cesare Beccaria, On Crime and Punishment. Translated and edited from the 1766 edition. v. W. Alff, Frankfurt / M. 1966, therein also: Introduction to Beccaria's life and thinking, pp. 7-40, (2nd edition 1988).
  6. ↑ His contributions to the Associazione Nazionalista Italiana of 1910, Italy's entry into the First World War, and about the refugees of the Spanish Republic as political persecuted by the German occupying power in France (1940–1944) go back to this time, which are described in his volume The term Fascism appeared in the edition suhrkamp.
  7. ↑ On the term fascism, especially the first essay in the volume of the same name in edition suhrkamp. He first discussed the continuity problem in Das Argument. Journal of Philosophy and Social Sciences. No. 70, 1972, pp. 117-124. Reprinted in its second volume of edition suhrkamp.
  8. ↑ W. Alff: The term fascism. Introduction, pp. 9-13.
personal data
SURNAME Alff, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian
DATE OF BIRTH May 15, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH eat
DATE OF DEATH September 25, 1992
Place of death Bremen