Heinrich August Winkler

Heinrich August Winkler ( born December 19, 1938 in Königsberg ) is a German historian.

Life

Winkler left in 1944 with his mother's East Prussian homeland. He grew up in Southern Germany and placed on humanistic Humboldt -Gymnasium Ulm his Abitur. Following Winkler studied history, philosophy, Public Law and Political Science at the Universities of Münster, Heidelberg and Tübingen. In Tübingen, he received his doctorate in 1963 under Hans Roth rock with a thesis on the history of the German Progressive Party. Then Winkler was from 1964 to 1970 as a research assistant at the Free University of Berlin operates. After his habilitation in 1970 he was a professor at the Free University Berlin, but moved in 1972 to the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. Winkler 1991, he returned to Berlin and became professor of Modern History at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Since 1 April 2007 he is professor emeritus.

Winkler played the mid-1980s a significant role in the historical dispute. On the side of Rudolf Augstein and Jürgen Habermas, he took in a mainly consisting of letters to the editor in the newspaper debate party against the views of Ernst Nolte, Andreas Hillgruber and Michael Sturmer, accusing a trivialization of Nazi crimes to construct a unbroken German national consciousness.

In his two-volume work published in 2000 The long road to the west, Winkler continues with the question after a German exceptionalism and describes the way the nation-state and democracy in Germany. For this he was awarded in 2001 "The political book", the price of the Friedrich- Ebert -Stiftung and 2002 the Friedrich- SCHIEDEL Prize for Literature.

He was co-editor of the journal History and Society (1975-1999) and is co-editor of the Berlin edition of the speeches and letters of Willy Brandt. He was a member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of the Foundation Reich President Friedrich Ebert Memorial, Museum of Contemporary History of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Institute of Contemporary History and was a member of the Joint Commission for the Study of the recent history of German -Russian relations. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt Foundation, the Historical Commission Corresponding at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and, since May 2008 Member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Since 1962 he is a member of the SPD.

Positions

Winkler has long been a prominent advocate of the position that Turkey should not join the European Union. In November 2009, however, he qualified this view in an interview, referring only to the fulfillment of the Copenhagen criteria as a condition of membership.

Reception

Volker Ullrich wrote in 2011 in TIME:

" Winkler's monumental history of the West is a product of mature scholarship - sovereign in presentation, prudent in judgment, gripping in the formulations. No doubt: the work, when the third and final band is present, among the most important which has the transnational historiography produced since 1945 ".

Honors

  • 2002: Friedrich Schiedel Literature Prize
  • 2004: Capo Circeo Prize of the Association of Italian- German friendship
  • 2005: Cross of Merit 1st class of the Federal Republic of Germany

Writings (selection )

  • Prussian liberalism and German nation-state. Studies in the History of the German Progressive Party from 1861 to 1866. Mohr Siebeck Verlag, Tübingen 1964. (Dissertation)
  • Middle class, democracy and Nazism. The political development of crafts and small trade in the Weimar Republic. Kiepenheuer and Malevich, Cologne 1972, ISBN 3-462-00862-5. ( Habilitation thesis )
  • Workers and the labor movement in the Weimar Republic. 3 vols Dietz, Berlin / Bonn 1984 ff Vol 1: From the Revolution to stabilize. From 1918 to 1924. ISBN 3-801-20093-0.
  • Vol 2: The appearance of normality. From 1924 to 1930. ISBN 3-801-20094-9.
  • Vol 3: The road to disaster. From 1930 to 1933. ISBN 3-801-20095-7.
  • Vol 1: German history from the end of the Old Kingdom until the downfall of the Weimar Republic. ISBN 3-406-46001-1.
  • Vol 2: German story of the " Third Reich" to reunification. ISBN 3-406-46002- X.
  • Vol 1: From the beginnings in antiquity to the 20th century. 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-59235-5.
  • Vol 2: The time of the World Wars 1914-1945. 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-59236-2.
Hans Rothfels German Progress Party Historikerstreit Sonderweg Nation state Das politische Buch Friedrich Ebert Foundation Friedrich-Schiedel-Literaturpreis Kiepenheuer & Witsch Perlentaucher Berliner Zeitung Integrated Authority File
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