Wolfgang Scheffler (historian)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wolfgang Scheffler (born July 22, 1929 in Leipzig , † November 18, 2008 in Berlin ) was a German political scientist and historian who has particularly distinguished himself with research on the Holocaust .

Life

Wolfgang Scheffler was born in Leipzig in 1929 to Protestant parents. Raised in the spirit of the values ​​of the Confessing Church , he and his family were at a distance from National Socialism . In 1950 he went to West Berlin to study at the Free University , where he graduated in 1956 with a dissertation on parliamentary diets.

His real theme was the persecution of the Jews in the Third Reich . In 1960 he published a brochure on the subject of the persecution of the Jews. This publication was repeatedly reissued in a supplemented form and also distributed in large numbers to schools and the public by several state centers for political education. In 1961, Scheffler was sent by the Foreign Office as a scientific observer to the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. From 1965 he appeared as a historical expert in Nazi trials . His best-known cases were the Treblinka proceedings before the Düsseldorf Regional Court, the trial against Albert Ganzenmüller , the State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Transport and Deputy Director General of the Deutsche Reichsbahn, and the trial against John Demjanjuk .

Since the 1970s, Scheffler has taught as a lecturer at the Otto Suhr Institute at the Free University of Berlin. In 1986 he became a professor at the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University of Berlin . Because of his scientific contributions and the support of various memorial projects (“ Topography of Terror ” and the “House of the Wannsee Conference ” memorial ), Scheffler was referred to variously as the “ Nestor of German Holocaust Research ”.

There was a heated public argument between Scheffler and relatives of survivors of the Riga ghetto , represented by the Jewish Survivors of Latvia in New York, at the end of the 1990s. A study on the fate of the Jews in Latvia, commissioned by Scheffler in 1992, was repeatedly delayed due to illness and organizational problems. Eventually the dispute ended in legal proceedings. The result was that Scheffler did not have to complete the study. In return, he repaid all advances received in full. In 2003 the meanwhile emeritus Scheffler and his colleague Diana Schulle published a two-volume documentary about the Jews deported to the Baltic States from Germany, Austria and the former Czechoslovakia under the title Book of Memory .

tomb

Wolfgang Scheffler was married to the Hamburg Chief Public Prosecutor Helge Grabitz, who was an investigator in Nazi trials and who died in 2003. Scheffler died in November 2008 at the age of 79 in Berlin. Scheffler is buried with his wife in the Zehlendorf cemetery.

Works (excerpt)

  • Persecution of Jews in the Third Reich , Colloquium Verlag, Berlin 1960.
  • Persecution of the Jews in the Third Reich . Completed and revised new edition, Colloquium Verlag, Berlin 1964 [last: Berlin 1990].
  • Heydrich, Reinhard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972,ISBN 3-428-00190-7, pp. 73 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Himmler, Heinrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972,ISBN 3-428-00190-7, pp. 172-175 ( digitized version).
  • with Helge Grabitz: Last traces. Warsaw Ghetto, Trawniki SS labor camp, harvest festival. Photos and documents about victims of the final delusion in the mirror of historical events , Ed. Hentrich, Berlin 1988.
  • with Helge Grabitz: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943: from the point of view of the perpetrators and victims in statements before German courts , Goldmann, Munich 1993.
  • Helge Grabitz, Hamburg judicial authority (ed.): Perpetrators and assistants of the ultimate solution delusion. Hamburg proceedings for violent Nazi crimes 1946–1996 , Results Verlag, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-87916-049-X (Senior Public Prosecutor Grabitz published four important historical judicial reports by Wolfgang Scheffler in the appendix p. 163–272).
  • with Diana Schulle : Book of Memory. The German, Austrian and Czechoslovak Jews deported to the Baltic States . Edited by the “Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge eV” and the “Riga Committee of German Cities” together with the “New Synagogue Berlin - Centrum Judaicum” foundation and the “House of the Wannsee Conference” memorial. 2 volumes, Saur, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-598-11618-7 ( see the review at HSK ).

literature

  • Helge Grabitz, Klaus Bästlein, Johannes Tuchel (eds.): The normality of crime. Balance sheet and perspectives of research on the national socialist violent crimes. Festschrift for Wolfgang Scheffler on his 65th birthday . Ed. Hentrich, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-89468-142-X (= German Past , 112) (A directory of Scheffler's writings: pp. 523-529).

estate

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Farewell: Wolfgang Scheffler (1929-2008), historian. In: The world . November 20, 2008, accessed June 16, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Klaus Bästlein: On the historiography of the genocide of the European Jews . In: Sebastian Lehmann; Uwe Danker; Robert Bohn (Ed.): Reichskommissariat Ostland. Crime scene and souvenir . Institute for Schleswig-Holstein Contemporary and Regional History of the University of Flensburg and the Military History Research Office , Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-77188-9 , p. 320 .
  3. ↑ Anti-Semitism researcher Wolfgang Scheffler has died. In: Berliner Zeitung . November 20, 2008, accessed June 16, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Dieter Pohl : Obituary Wolfgang Scheffler: veteran German research is dead. In: tageszeitung. November 21, 2008, accessed June 16, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Scheffler, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political scientist, historian and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH July 22, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH November 18, 2008
Place of death Berlin