Willy Hoppe

This article deals with the historian Willy Hoppe; on the billiard player, see Willie Hoppe .

Willy Hoppe (born February 13, 1884 in Berlin ; † September 26, 1960 there ) was a German historian and the founder of the Brandenburg state history at Berlin University.

Life

After graduating from the Askanisches Gymnasium in 1902, Hoppe studied history at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin . In the same year he became active in the Berlin and Göttingen Wingolf . His teacher and role model was Dietrich Schäfer . The topic of his dissertation in 1908 was " Archbishop Wichmann of Magdeburg " . As an assistant and librarian at the historical seminar, he developed the Zinna Monastery . A contribution to the history of the East German colonial country and the Cistercian order (1914). At the time of publication, he had already been appointed librarian for the Saxon State Conference in Dresden. He later returned to Berlin as a librarian at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, whose library he turned into one of the largest and most valuable collections of economics in almost two decades .

From 1922 he was a board member of the Märkisches Historisches Verein. In 1925 he was appointed to the board of the Association for Brandenburg Church History; In 1930 he took over the chairmanship of the Association for the History of Brandenburg . In 1933 he became chairman of the general association of German history and antiquity associations and in 1940 an honorary member of the Niederlausitz society for history and antiquity .

According to his student Herbert Ludat, in the 1920s he formed the picture of the position, significance and task of the state's history in the context of science, while adopting new methods, especially with regard to the neighboring disciplines. For him, national history could not be satisfied with the written sources , but based on the geological-geographical conditions and the archaeological signs of prehistoric times, it had all the phenomena of human activity in the landscape, from linguistics, settlement studies, building and Art history , economic, social and legal history as well as folklore are to be included in their considerations. Thereby he established the national history as a new discipline . He was a proponent of the culture carrier theory .

In 1924 he qualified as a lecturer in regional history and historical geography . In 1929 he was appointed professor at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin; In 1935 he received a chair . In 1937 he became rector there (until 1942). He then became chairman of the Historical Commission for Brandenburg , which he founded, and the "State Office of the Reich Capital Berlin for History, Local Research and Folklore". He worked closely with Johannes Schultze and Ernst Kaeber .

At the end of 1931 he joined the NSDAP . Hoppe owed his career jump after 1933 to his early and unconditional commitment to National Socialism . The steep rise of Hoppe after 1933 was followed by the deep fall after 1945. Klaus Neitmann , director of the Brandenburg State Main Archives, tried in his essay from 2005 to find “a differentiated and balanced judgment” about him, and believes that Hoppe and his political commitment to be able to separate scientific work sufficiently from one another.

In the Soviet occupation zone , his writings Die Führerpersonlichkeit in der Deutschen Geschichte ( Junker and Dünnhaupt , Berlin 1934) and Basics of German History in the Middle Ages ( Spaeth & Linde , Berlin 1939) as well as a publication for a commemoration of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin were published In the published publication Fichte on his 175th birthday (Preussische Druckerei- und Verlags-Aktiengesellschaft, Berlin 1937), he added a preface to the list of literature to be sorted out.

In 1958 he was appointed to the newly founded Historical Commission in Berlin , two years before his death.

Works (selection)

• Archbishop Wichmann of Magdeburg. Dissertation, Magdeburg 1908.
• Zinna Monastery. A contribution to the history of the East German colonial country and the Cistercian order. Munich and Leipzig 1914.
• Alsace-Lorraine - country and people. Berlin [1918].
• State history of the Mark Brandenburg in its basic features up to the formation of the Province of Brandenburg. Berlin 1924.
• Karl Friedrich Klöden, man and the Brandenburg historian. Berlin 1926.
• The Hanseatic League and the East. Bremen [1927].
• with Willy Spatz: The story of those von Waldow. Berlin 1927.
• Lenzen. From a thousand years of a Brandenburg city; 929-1929. Lenzen 1929.
• Local history and state. Berlin 1933.
• The leader in German history. Berlin 1934.
• Fichte on his 175th birthday. Berlin 1937.
• Becoming a German people through historical change. In: Yearbook University of Politics. 1938, pp. 184-197.
• The German commissions and associations for history and antiquity. Berlin 1940.
• Biesenthal. On the Ascanian seizure of Barnim . In: Yearbook for Brandenburg State History. Volume 2, 1951, pp. 26-29.
• The Neumark. A piece of East German history. Würzburg / Main [1957].
• The lawless society in Berlin. Berlin 1959.
• The Mark Brandenburg, Wettin and Magdeburg. Selected essays. Edited by Herbert Ludat, Cologne 1965.

literature

• Eberhard Faden: Willy Hoppe 1884–1960. In: Yearbook for Brandenburg State History. Volume 11, Berlin 1960, pp. 158-170.
• Michael Grüttner : Biographical Lexicon on National Socialist Science Policy (= Studies on Science and University History. Volume 6). Synchron, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-935025-68-8 , p. 79.
• Christoph Jahr: Rector without guidance? Willy Hoppe and science policy at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin during the Nazi era . In: Marc Schalenberg / Peter Th. Walther (eds.): “... always stay in research.” Rüdiger vom Bruch on his 60th birthday , Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2004, pp. 179–198.
• Ernst Kaeber : Willy Hoppe as a Brandenburg historian. In: Yearbook for Brandenburg State History. Volume 5, 1954, pp. 7–12 (with catalog raisonné; volume 6, p. 65 contains additions to the catalog raisonné).
• Herbert Ludat : The teachers: Willy Hoppe. In: Slavs and Germans in the Middle Ages. Selected essays on questions of their political, social and cultural relationships. Cologne 1982, pp. 386-392.
• Herbert Ludat: Willy Hoppe †. In: Yearbook for the history of Central and Eastern Germany . Volume 9/10, 1961, pp. 694-698.
• Klaus Neitmann : Willy Hoppe, the Brandenburg state historical research and the general association of German history and antiquity associations in the Nazi era. In: sheets for German national history . Volume 141/142, 2005/06, pp. 19-60.

Web links

• Literature by and about Willy Hoppe in the catalog of the German National Library
• Rectors of the Humboldt University Berlin since 1810

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Philistine directory of the Göttinger Wingolf , Göttingen 1911, p. 2.
2. ^ List of literature to be segregated in the Soviet zone of occupation.
3. ^ List of literature to be segregated in the Soviet zone of occupation.