Wolfgang Jonas (historian)

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Ernst Wolfgang Jonas (born April 23, 1926 in Berlin ; † 2010 ) was a German economic historian . Jürgen Kuczynski's pupil significantly influenced the historiography of the history of the productive forces in the GDR . He also coined the thesis of the “core process” of the industrial revolution .

Life

From 1949 Jonas studied economic history at the Humboldt University in East Berlin . He graduated with a degree businesspeople, and received his doctorate in December 1955. Jürgen Kuczynski and Elisabeth Giersiepen Dr. rer. oec. with the writing war crime group Mansfeld AG on the situation of the miners in the Mansfeld copper mining from 1920 to 1932. He then became head of work in the economic history department at the Institute for History of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin.

In April 1962 , Jonas completed his habilitation on the history of the Association of German Engineers with Jürgen Kuczynski and Kurt Braunreuther . From 1964 to 1970 he worked as editor-in-chief of the yearbook for economic history . From 1965 he was deputy director and from 1969 director of the Institute for Economic History of the German Academy of Sciences. In 1968 he received a professorship there. In August 1977 he resigned from his post due to illness. Jonas had been a corresponding member of the GDR Academy of Sciences since 1972 and a full member since 1974 .

plant

Jonas was one of the protagonists of the economic and technological history of the GDR and is considered to be Jürgen Kuczynski's “favorite” student. At the suggestion of Kuczynski, who wanted to strengthen the company's history , he examined the working conditions in the Mansfeld copper mine, which had to be contrasted with the working conditions in the GDR. However, the reports from Mansfeld's mates that Jonas had collected did not correspond to the ideological ideas of the SED . The tape was pulled back in after printing.

Jonas was significantly involved in the development of the history of technology in the GDR. In 1957, he was one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the working group for the history of productive forces . Jonas subordinated the history of technology to the "history of the productive forces". He not only criticized the bourgeois history of technology because it did not provide social institutions with any criteria for making decisions, but also turned against an independent history of technology, as advocated by the Soviet historian Semyon Viktorovich Schukhardin , because this raises the question of a regularity in the development of the Inhibit productive forces. In an essay published in 1978, he seems to have at least partially revised his attitude towards the history of technology.

A research project on the history of the productive forces in the 19th century, which Jonas planned to a large extent in the 1970s and was based on several volumes , for which 14 complexes with numerous research topics from 1800 to 1870 were planned under his direction, was able to take its original form cannot be realized. After Jonas' illness, Karl Lärmer took over the leadership of the working group .

Jonas developed the thesis of the “core process” of the industrial revolution , which he located in the transition from the dominance of manual work to the predominance of machine work. In doing so, he conveyed criticism of Marx's thesis, according to which the industrial revolution originated from machine tools. Jonas also changed his understanding of the connection between industrial development and capitalism insofar as he pointed out to Kuczynski in 1975 that technical revolutions did not always have to result in a revolution of the productive forces.

As co-author and editor of a history of productive forces ( Die Produktiv Forces in der Geschichte , Vol. 1, 1969), Jonas belonged to the GDR authors or was part of the collective of authors who gave the GDR's Marxist technology historiography sovereignty over the West German technical historiography. In fact, in 1972, passages of his book, which was written together with Valentine Linsbauer and Helga Marx, were plagiarized by the Bochum technology historian Albrecht Timm in his introduction to the history of technology .

Fonts

  • War criminal group Mansfeld AG . Diss., Humboldt-Univ. 1955. ( DNB 480549192 )
  • The life of the Mansfeld workers 1924 to 1945. Tribüne publishing house, Berlin 1957.
  • Experience reports from the Mansfeld buddies. 1st edition. Grandstand, Berlin 1957.
  • To discuss the role of natural and technical sciences in production. In: Yearbook for Economic History. No. 1 1960, pp. 165-169.
  • On the current importance of Friedrich Engels' work on the situation of workers. In: Economics. 9, No. 4 1961, pp. 502-510.
  • with Johannes Rekus: The power of community. 15 years Chamber of Commerce Technology. Chamber d. Technology, Berlin 1961.
  • On problems in the history of the productive forces. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1964.
  • On the problem of ideology and productive forces at the time of the industrial revolution. In: Yearbook for Economic History. No. 2/3 1964, pp. 91-108.
  • with Chung-Ping Yen u. Jürgen Kuczynski: The situation of workers in Shanghai's cotton industry. Especially in the English factories. Akad.-Verl, Berlin 1964.
  • Some aspects of the transformation of human productive power in the industrial revolution of capitalism. A contribution to the discussion. In: Yearbook for Economic History. No. 3 1969, pp. 121-125.
  • with Valentine Linsbauer and Helga Marx: The productive forces in history. Volume 1. From the beginnings in the primitive community to the beginning of the industrial revolution . Dietz, Berlin 1969.

literature

  • Lothar Mertens : Lexicon of the GDR historians. Biographies and bibliographies on the historians from the German Democratic Republic. Saur, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-598-11673-X .
  • Wolfhard Weber , Lutz Engelskirchen: Dispute over the history of technology in Germany, 1945–1975. Waxmann, Münster / New York, NY a. a. 2000, ISBN 978-3-89325-992-2 (= Cottbus studies on the history of technology, work and the environment , volume 15).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Werner Röhr: settlement. The end of the history of the GDR. Edition Organon, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-931034-16-0 , p. 1084.
  2. ↑ a b Wolfhard Weber and Lutz Engelskirchen: Dispute about the history of technology in Germany, 1945–1975. Waxmann, Münster, New York 2000, ISBN 978-3-89325-992-2 , p. 170.
  3. ^ Wolfhard Weber and Lutz Engelskirchen: Dispute about the history of technology in Germany, 1945-1975. Waxmann, Münster, New York 2000, pp. 195f.
  4. ^ Wolfhard Weber and Lutz Engelskirchen: Dispute about the history of technology in Germany, 1945-1975. Waxmann, Münster, New York 2000, p. 314.
  5. ^ Wolfhard Weber and Lutz Engelskirchen: Dispute about the history of technology in Germany, 1945-1975. Waxmann, Münster, New York 2000, p. 312f.
  6. ^ Wolfhard Weber and Lutz Engelskirchen: Dispute about the history of technology in Germany, 1945-1975. Waxmann, Münster, New York 2000, p. 322.
  7. ^ Rolf J. Gleitsmann, Rolf U. Kunze and Günther Oetzel: History of technology. An introduction. UTB, Konstanz 2008, ISBN 978-3-8252-3126-2 , p. 158.
  8. ^ Albrecht Timm : Introduction to the history of technology . De Gruyter, Berlin, New York, NY 1972, ISBN 978-3-11-004212-2 .
  9. ^ Ulrich Wengenroth: Book Review. Controversy over the history of technology in Germany, 1945–1975 . In: Technology and Culture 43, No. 3 (2002), pp. 651-653, here p. 651.
personal data
SURNAME Jonas, Wolfgang
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jonas, Ernst Wolfgang; Jonas, Wolfgang Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German economic historian
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 2010