Fernand Braudel

Fernand Braudel ( born August 24, 1902 in Luméville -en- Ornois, today Gondrecourt -le- Château, Meuse, † November 28, 1985 in Cluses, Haute- Savoie) was a French historian of the Annales school.

Life and work

Within the École des Annales, Braudel belonged to the second generation, where he starting in the 1950s, partly through its direct student ratio of the founding fathers Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre and on the other by his own extensive work, the determining character of this phase of the Annales school been.

From 1924 taught Braudel as a teacher at various schools in what was then French Algeria ruled, first in Constantine and later in Algiers. In 1932 he returned to Europe and was from 1932 to 1935 at the Lycée Pasteur and at the Lycée Henri IV in Paris working. Then took him a teacher exchange to São Paulo in Brazil. On the boat trip back to Europe, he learned later his habilitation thesis supervisor, Lucien Febvre, know. From 1937 he moved to the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris. There he stood in exchange with his teacher Lucien Febvre and began to work on his later major work. Work on it was overshadowed by the impending war with Hitler's Germany, Braudel was in 1938 drafted for military service. While the Western campaign he ran until 1945 in German prisoner of war, which he spent at the citadel at Mainz and Luebeck. In the officers' camp XII B Mainz and the Oflag XC Lübeck Braudel was rector of the University of stock and had access to libraries.

Braudel authored largely in captivity major work, which he published in 1949 as a post-doctoral thesis, is The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II Braudel This creates a universal history of the Mediterranean at the time of Philip II of Spain. The monumental work of originally over 1200 pages is divided into three parts. Each of these parts corresponding to a particular time level, means of which Braudel examined each different approach to the past. While the first part deals with the history of man in the landscape in its relation to a geographical milieu, Braudel comes in the second part of the history of larger structures such as states, societies, cultures and so on. The third part is based on the traditional historiography with its emphasis on political and military events, which Braudel himself again and again into perspective the importance of individual human actions.

A significant student Braudel is the social scientist Immanuel Wallerstein.

Time levels

Overall, Braudel distinguishes three levels of time. The lowest layer is formed by a slow-moving story in which changes are barely perceptible, a histoire quasi immobile, which Braudel also called géohistoire. This is the time of natural phenomena, to return to the all the movements in a circuit to its starting point. This is the story of the valleys and mountains, islands, and coasts, the climate, the land and sea routes. The overlying layer is that which later became particularly associated with the concept of the longue durée. It is the time of running in slow rhythms history, the larger social, cultural, economic and political structures, which may include a period of a century or two. Quite on the surface is ultimately the story of the events that événementielle histoire. History can be according to Braudel not understand, if only this last level is considered, rather the human events as mere ripples on the surface of the stream of history appear without touching the deeper reason.

His main interest is thus not the event history, but it is based on the almost immobile time of natural phenomena. So he focuses on timeless phenomena and describes some that usually mountain dwellers are more conservative than the inhabitants of the plains or the Adriatic Sea has always been a cultural divide. For these slow timings Braudel characterizes the concept of longue durée. This name was taken up by other Annales historians, but without so always the same as my Braudel.

But the most important work of Fernand Braudel 's trilogy civilization matérielle, Economie et Capitalisme, XVe - XVIIIe siècle. Braudel examined in these volumes (1: Structures du quotidien - 2: Les jeux de l' échange - 3: Les temps du monde ) the development and classification of economic systems: Local economy of exchange and smaller markets, the market economy as a compensation system under normal conditions of competition, capitalism and world economy as anti economy. Economic systems can only function optimally when these three economic levels can work. This classification of economic levels can be a starting point for optimal regional and structural policies today.

Works (selection)

  • La Méditerranée et le monde à l' epoque de Philippe Mediteraneen II Paris 1949 ( habilitation thesis 1947). German as:. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 3-518-58056-6 ( 3 volumes).
  • German as: The long duration. In: Writings on History Vol 1: society and time structures. 1992, pp. 49-87.
  • German recently as: the world of the Mediterranean. On the history and geography of cultural forms of life. Fischer TB, Frankfurt 2006, ISBN 978-3-596-16853-8.
  • German as: social history of the 15th - 18th Century. Kindler, Munich 1985-1986 (3 volumes: Volume 1:. . Everyday life 1985 Volume 2: Trade 1986 Volume 3: .. Departure to the world economy in 1986.. ).
  • German as: the dynamics of capitalism. 2nd edition. Klett- Cotta, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-608-93093-0.
  • German than in France. Klett- Cotta, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-608-94644-4 (3 volumes: Volume 1: Space and History, Volume 2:. ., The people and the things Volume 3: ., The things and the people ).
  • German last as: Model Italy from 1450 to 1650. Wagenbach, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-8031-2457-3.

Autobiographical

  • Personal Testimony. In: Journal of Modern History 44, 1972, No. 5, pp. 448-467.
  • How I became a historian. In: writings on history. Volume 2: People and age, Klett- Cotta, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-608-93159-7.
331821
de