Harry Bresslau

Harry Bresslau ( born March 22, 1848 in Dannenberg / Elbe, † October 27, 1926 in Heidelberg ) was a German historian and Diploma sufferers. Bresslau one of the foremost medievalists in Wilhelmine Empire.

Life

Harry (also: Heinrich) Bresslau (also: Bresslau ) studied at Göttingen and Berlin, first law, then history. During his studies he was an educator in Auerbach 's orphanage in Berlin. His principal teachers were Johann Gustav Droysen and Leopold von Ranke, whose assistant he became. In 1869 he received his doctorate in Göttingen in Ranke's pupil Georg Waitz of the Law Firm of Emperor Konrad II Immediately before his habilitation he became head teacher at Frankfurt philanthropist. After his habilitation (1872 ) Bresslau in 1877 associate professor at Berlin's Friedrich- Wilhelms-Universität. Although he was minded National Liberal and the Germans very connected, but an unbaptized Jew. Therefore, the way it was locked to a full professorship in Prussia.

When Heinrich von Treitschke in 1879 published his controversial writings against the Jews disagreed Bresslau, although he had no secure existence as an associate professor, decided his older and more senior colleagues and the public ( in: On the Jewish Question epistle to Heinrich von Treitschke, Berlin 1880. ). It had Bresslau still in 1878, a year before its anti-Semitic article in the Prussian yearbooks, worked with Treitschke in an election committee of the National Liberal Party.

Bresslau believed in the possibility of complete assimilation of German Jews by an unreserved commitment to the German National Idea. He was even one of the examples which he had led Treitschke as evidence that a Jewish assimilation was possible.

1890 followed Bresslau a call to Strasbourg in the kingdom country Alsace-Lorraine, where he was a full professor of history at the Kaiser- Wilhelm University until 1912. There, he developed a comprehensive teaching and research activities, and distinguished himself as a national liberal champion of Germanness. 1904/ 05 he was rector of the university. Shortly after the end of World War II, on 1 December 1918 reported the French Bresslau as a " militant Pan-German " ( pangermaniste militant ) from Strasbourg.

When in 1904 the Academic - Historical Society in Berlin, the Bresslau had belonged for 25 years, in a color- transmitting connection " Holsatia " transformed Bresslau and asked for more cooperation, this declined abruptly. The Holsatia had imposed an anti-passback for Jewish students. The singer Arion connection Strasbourg or after 1918 Old Strasbourg Freiburg im Sondershäuser Association, who also belonged to his sons, Bresslau member of honor.

Bresslau spent his last years first in Hamburg, then in Heidelberg. His son was the zoologist Ernst Bresslau. His daughter Helene was married to Albert Schweitzer since 1912. In Berlin -Steglitz a park next to the Treitschkestraße was named after him on 21 November 2008.

Work

Bresslau worked for Monumenta Historica Germaniae since 1877, since 1888 in the central management. For the Diplomata series of Monumenta he edited the records of Henry II (Part 1: 1900, Part 2: 1903) and Conrad II (1909). Bresslaus Handbook of diplomatics for Germany and Italy (2nd expanded edition Leipzig 1912) is a standard work until today unersetztes the medieval diplomatics. Occasion of the centenary anniversary of the Monumenta 1919 Bresslau wrote their history ( History of the Monumenta Historica Germaniae, Hannover 1921, Hannover reprint 1976), his last book. As a doctor father Bresslau supervised nearly 100 dissertations.

Under Bresslaus chair was founded in 1885 at the Federation of Jewish Communities, the Historical Commission for the History of the Jews in Germany. Modeled after the Monumenta Historica Germaniae and the Historical Commission of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences of the relevant source material should be sought and made ​​available for research. Bresslau prevented the election of the popular historian Heinrich Graetz, because he believed that a recognition of Graetz as a historian would exacerbate the relationship between Jews and Christians dangerous. Graetz had developed a kind of youth -centric view of history, which had been criticized in the Berlin Antisemitism Dispute in the strongest terms. Bresslau himself was a master in the positivist science. The Historical Commission was to 1892 published the journal for the history of the Jews in Germany.

Writings (selection )

• On the Jewish Question: Send letter to Prof. Dr. Heinrich von Treitschke. 2nd edition with an epilogue. Ferdinand Dümmlers Verlagsbuchh. , Harrwitz & Gossmann, Berlin 1880.
• The works Wipo. Edit Harry Bresslau, Hannover 1915.
• About the Constitution of the German Reich of Severinus of Monzambano ( Samuel von Pufendorf ). Germanized and introduced by H. Bresslau. R. Hobbing, Berlin 1922.
• History of the Monumenta historica Germaniae. On behalf of their central directorate, Hahnsche bookstore, Hannover 1921.