Erich Keyser

Erich Keyser ( born October 12, 1893 in Gdansk, † February 21, 1968 in Marburg an der Lahn ) was a German historian.

Life

The focus of Keyser's interest, namely the history of Danzig and the Vistula country was already in the presented in Halle / Saale 1918 dissertation " The bourgeois estate of the right of Gdansk in the 14th century." From 1920 he worked in the Danzig State Archives. 1927, the leadership of the " National State Museum of Gdansk story" he was entrusted with, which in 1939 expanded to the " Gaumuseum for West Prussian history." From 1931 he taught at the Technical University of Gdansk as a professor of medieval history, historical auxiliary sciences and German History. Since the Weimar Republic, but especially in the era of National socialism, he was engaged as Volkstumspolitiker been known up to the present, he is the author of monographs on the German town history, the first -. " Danzig history " - 1921 was published and as " German Cities Book " continues to the present day.

1923 Keyser was one of the founders of the Historical Commission for East and West Prussian history and national research. His 1926 of edited volume of essays, " The battle for the Vistula " shows him in the Ostforschung in his self-understanding as a political historian who for campaigned in the ethnic struggle after the First World War, to revise the Treaty of Versailles with the specified in that boundary line to the east. In his " Population History of Germany" from 1938 ( third edition 1943) he confessed himself explicitly to " a decidedly populist set conception of history ." 1933 (either 1 May or 1 June ) was Keyser joined the Nazi party.

After the Second World War Keyser's writings Danzig were past ( NSDAP., Gau Danzig-West Prussia, Danzig 1940), History of the German Vistula country ( Hirzel, Leipzig 1940) and population history of Germany ( Hirzel, Leipzig 1943) in the Soviet zone of occupation on the list of proscribed literature set. In the German Democratic Republic was followed on this list nor Prussia Country ( Kafemann, Gdansk 1929) and the work of the Germans on the Vistula River ( Danziger Publishing Society, Gdansk 1940).

Keyser taught in the postwar period in Marburg and led from 1950 to 1965, the Historical Commission for East and West Prussian State Research. Also in 1950, he participated in the founding of the Herder Research Council and the JG Herder Institute, which he directed until 1959. In 1952 he was co-editor of the Journal of East-Central Europe research.

Michael Burleigh sees in 1952 given by Keyser justification for to be operated by the Herder Institute " new German Ostforschung " the old nationalist chauvinism in line with new European Community vocabulary shine through when Keyser about the Eastern Europeans for 700 years mediated Christianity, whose cultural increase their political order and economic development write. 1954 Keyser had issued to one in Berlin by Karl Pagel, contributed published in English book "The German East " and is expressed as follows:

"The most striking achievement of the Germans what the productive reform of the land. The Germans were the first to convert Prussia into, habitat 'and to wrest the harvest from its soil to nourish a Constantly Increasing population. For long after the arrival oh the Germans and the Prussians Pomerani earned a meager existence, superficially scratching at the soil with the primitive swing plow or fishing and hunting ... all towns and most of the villages were built by the Germans. "

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