Harry Bresslau
Encyclopedia
Harry Bresslau was a German historian
and scholar of state papers and of historical and literary muniments (historical Diplomas).
(Elbe), Harry (also Heinrich) Bresslau studied in Göttingen
and Berlin
, first in Law, and then in History. During his studies he was a teacher in the Auerbach Orphanage in Berlin. His most important teachers were Johann Gustav Droysen
and Leopold von Ranke
, whose assistant he became. In 1869 he took a doctorate at Göttingen with Ranke's pupil Georg Waitz
, on the government of Emperor Konrad II. Immediately before his academic inauguration, he became Senior teacher at the Frankfurt
Philanthropin. After his inauguration (1872), in 1877 Bresslau obtained an extraordinary-professorship at Berlin University. He was certainly a convinced National Liberal, and very attached to German nationality, but was a Jew and unbaptized. Hence the path to a regular professorship in Prussia was barred to him.
in 1879 published his controversial writings against the Jews, Bresslau spoke openly and in a determined manner against his elder and senior professional colleagues, even though his position as extraordinary-professor had no permanent security. Nonetheless in 1878 Bresslau had worked together with Treitschke, a year before his anti-semitic contribution to the Prussian Annals, in an election-committee of the National-Liberal Party.
Bresslau believed in the possibility of the complete assimilation of German Jewry through an open affirmation of the ideal of German Nationhood. Thus he was one of the examples whom Treitschke brought forward as evidence for the proposal that an assimilation of the Jews might be possible.
in Alsace
, where he held a regular professorship of History in the University
until 1912. There he developed a thorough-going teaching and research programme and made himself a leading National-Liberal advocate for German identity. Shortly after the end of the First World War, on 1 December 1918, the French expelled Bresslau from Strasbourg as a 'militant pan-Germanist'.
When in 1904 the Academic-Historical Society in Berlin, to which Bresslau had belonged for 25 years, turned itself into an association ("Holsatia") wearing badges or liveries, and required other forms of co-operation from Bresslau, he bluntly refused. Holsatia had introduced a veto against admission for Jewish students.
Bresslau spent the final years of his life first in Hamburg
, then in Heidelberg
. His son was the zoologist Ernst Bresslau. His daughter Helene married Albert Schweitzer
in 1912.
, and from 1888 in its central planning. For the Diploma section of the Monumenta he edited the original charters of Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor
(Part 1: 1900, Part 2: 1903) and of Konrad II (1909). Bresslau's Handbuch der Urkundenlehre für Deutschland und Italien (Handbook of Charter and Diploma Studies for Germany and Italy), (2nd enlarged edition, Leipzig 1912) has even today not been superseded as the standard work on medieval Diplomas. For the Centenary of the Monumenta in 1919 Bresslau wrote the history of the project (Geschichte der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Hannover 1921, reprinted Hannover 1976), his last book. As research supervisor, Bresslau supervised over 100 doctoral dissertations.
, because he believed that the official recognition of Graetz as a historical writer would dangerously aggravate the relationship between Jews and Christians. Graetz had evolved a sort of Judaeo-centric view of history, which was most sharply criticized in the Berlin anti-semitism controversies. Bresslau himself was a leading exponent of Positivist science. The Historical Commission published until 1892 the Journal for the History of the Jews in Germany.
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
and scholar of state papers and of historical and literary muniments (historical Diplomas).
Training
Born in DannenbergDannenberg
- Places :* Dannenberg , a town in Germany* County of Dannenberg, a medieval fief founded by Henry the Lion- People :* Konrad Dannenberg, German-American engineer* Peter A Dannenberg, Russian general...
(Elbe), Harry (also Heinrich) Bresslau studied in Göttingen
Göttingen
Göttingen is a university town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Göttingen. The Leine river runs through the town. In 2006 the population was 129,686.-General information:...
and Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, first in Law, and then in History. During his studies he was a teacher in the Auerbach Orphanage in Berlin. His most important teachers were Johann Gustav Droysen
Johann Gustav Droysen
Johann Gustav Droysen was a German historian. His history of Alexander the Great was the first work representing a new school of German historical thought that idealized power held by so-called "great" men...
and Leopold von Ranke
Leopold von Ranke
Leopold von Ranke was a German historian, considered one of the founders of modern source-based history. Ranke set the standards for much of later historical writing, introducing such ideas as reliance on primary sources , an emphasis on narrative history and especially international politics .-...
, whose assistant he became. In 1869 he took a doctorate at Göttingen with Ranke's pupil Georg Waitz
Georg Waitz
Georg Waitz was a German historian and politician.He was born at Flensburg, in the duchy of Schleswig and educated at the Flensburg gymnasium and the universities of Kiel and Berlin...
, on the government of Emperor Konrad II. Immediately before his academic inauguration, he became Senior teacher at the Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
Philanthropin. After his inauguration (1872), in 1877 Bresslau obtained an extraordinary-professorship at Berlin University. He was certainly a convinced National Liberal, and very attached to German nationality, but was a Jew and unbaptized. Hence the path to a regular professorship in Prussia was barred to him.
Bresslau and Treitschke
When Heinrich von TreitschkeHeinrich von Treitschke
Heinrich Gotthard von Treitschke was a nationalist German historian and political writer during the time of the German Empire.-Early life and teaching career:...
in 1879 published his controversial writings against the Jews, Bresslau spoke openly and in a determined manner against his elder and senior professional colleagues, even though his position as extraordinary-professor had no permanent security. Nonetheless in 1878 Bresslau had worked together with Treitschke, a year before his anti-semitic contribution to the Prussian Annals, in an election-committee of the National-Liberal Party.
Bresslau believed in the possibility of the complete assimilation of German Jewry through an open affirmation of the ideal of German Nationhood. Thus he was one of the examples whom Treitschke brought forward as evidence for the proposal that an assimilation of the Jews might be possible.
Strasbourg
In 1890 Bresslau followed a calling to StrasbourgStrasbourg
Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...
in Alsace
Alsace
Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...
, where he held a regular professorship of History in the University
University of Strasbourg
The University of Strasbourg in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, is the largest university in France, with about 43,000 students and over 4,000 researchers....
until 1912. There he developed a thorough-going teaching and research programme and made himself a leading National-Liberal advocate for German identity. Shortly after the end of the First World War, on 1 December 1918, the French expelled Bresslau from Strasbourg as a 'militant pan-Germanist'.
When in 1904 the Academic-Historical Society in Berlin, to which Bresslau had belonged for 25 years, turned itself into an association ("Holsatia") wearing badges or liveries, and required other forms of co-operation from Bresslau, he bluntly refused. Holsatia had introduced a veto against admission for Jewish students.
Bresslau spent the final years of his life first in Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, then in Heidelberg
Heidelberg
-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...
. His son was the zoologist Ernst Bresslau. His daughter Helene married Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer OM was a German theologian, organist, philosopher, physician, and medical missionary. He was born in Kaysersberg in the province of Alsace-Lorraine, at that time part of the German Empire...
in 1912.
Monumenta Germaniae Historica
Bresslau was involved from 1877 in the Monumenta Germaniae HistoricaMonumenta Germaniae Historica
The Monumenta Germaniae Historica is a comprehensive series of carefully edited and published sources for the study of German history from the end of the Roman Empire to 1500.The society sponsoring the series was established by the Prussian reformer Heinrich Friedrich Karl Freiherr vom...
, and from 1888 in its central planning. For the Diploma section of the Monumenta he edited the original charters of Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor
Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor
Henry II , also referred to as Saint Henry, Obl.S.B., was the fifth and last Holy Roman Emperor of the Ottonian dynasty, from his coronation in Rome in 1014 until his death a decade later. He was crowned King of the Germans in 1002 and King of Italy in 1004...
(Part 1: 1900, Part 2: 1903) and of Konrad II (1909). Bresslau's Handbuch der Urkundenlehre für Deutschland und Italien (Handbook of Charter and Diploma Studies for Germany and Italy), (2nd enlarged edition, Leipzig 1912) has even today not been superseded as the standard work on medieval Diplomas. For the Centenary of the Monumenta in 1919 Bresslau wrote the history of the project (Geschichte der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Hannover 1921, reprinted Hannover 1976), his last book. As research supervisor, Bresslau supervised over 100 doctoral dissertations.
Historical Commission for the History of Jews in Germany
Under Bresslau's chairmanship in 1885, the Historical Commission for the History of the Jews in Germany was founded by the Union of German-Jewish Congregations. On the model of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica and the Historical Commission of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, the relevant source-material was sought out and usefully assembled for research. Bresslau obstructed the co-option of the popular historian Heinrich GraetzHeinrich Graetz
Heinrich Graetz was amongst the first historians to write a comprehensive history of the Jewish people from a Jewish perspective....
, because he believed that the official recognition of Graetz as a historical writer would dangerously aggravate the relationship between Jews and Christians. Graetz had evolved a sort of Judaeo-centric view of history, which was most sharply criticized in the Berlin anti-semitism controversies. Bresslau himself was a leading exponent of Positivist science. The Historical Commission published until 1892 the Journal for the History of the Jews in Germany.
Sources
- Harry Bresslau: 'Autobiographical statement', in Sigfrid Steinberg (Ed.), Die Geschichtswissenschaft der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen (Historical science of the present in autobiographical statements), Vol. 2, 1926, pp. 29–83.
- Paul Fridolin Kehr, 'Harry Bresslau' (Obituary). In Neues Archiv 47 (1927), p. 251–266.
- Hans Liebeschütz, Das Judentum im deutschen Geschichtsbild von Hegel bis Max Weber (Jewry in German historical writing from Hegel to Max Weber), (J.C.B.Mohr (Paul Siebeck), TübingenTübingenTübingen is a traditional university town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.-Geography:...
1967). - Peter Rück (Ed.), Erinnerung an Harry Bresslau zum 150. Geburtstag (A Memorial for Harry Bresslau for his 150th birthday). First issued at the day-conference on the 21 March 1998 in the Institute for Historical Auxiliary Sciences of the Philipps-University, MarburgMarburgMarburg is a city in the state of Hesse, Germany, on the River Lahn. It is the main town of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district and its population, as of March 2010, was 79,911.- Founding and early history :...
; reproduced in Erika Eisenlohr and Peter Worm (Eds.), 'Fachgebiet Historische Hilfswissenschaften' (Classification of historical auxiliary sciences), (Marburg 2000), pp. 245-283. ISBN 3-8185-0304-4 - Peter Rück, in collaboration with Erika Eisenlohr and Peter Worm (Eds.), Abraham Bresslau: Briefe aus Dannenberg 1835-1839. Mit einer Einleitung zur Familiengeschichte des Historikers Harry Bresslau (1848-1926) und zur Geschichte der Juden in Dannenberg.(Abraham Bresslau: Letters from Dannenberg 1835-1839, with an account of the family history of the historian Harry Bresslau (1848-1926) and of the history of the Jews in Dannenberg), (Marburg 2007).
- Peter Rück, in collaboration with Erika Eisenlohr and Peter Worm (Eds.), Harry Bresslau: Berliner Kolleghefte 1866-1869. Nachschriften zu Vorlesungen von Mommsen, Jaffé, Köpke, Ranke, Droysen. (Harry Bresslau: Berlin Lecture Notebooks 1866-1869. Transcripts of lectures of Mommsen, etc.), (Marburg 2007).
External links
- Literature of and about Harry Bresslau in the Catalogue of the German National LibraryGerman National LibraryThe German National Library is the central archival library and national bibliographic centre for the Federal Republic of Germany...
http://dispatch.opac.d-nb.de/DB=4.1/REL?PPN=116487380 - Bibliography of Bresslau, PDF (in German) http://bibliothek.bbaw.de/kataloge/literaturnachweise/bresslau/literatur.pdf
- Monumenta Germaniae Historica, home site (in German) http://www.dmgh.de/
- Handbuch der Urkundenlehre für Deutschland und Italien, Vols 1, 2 (Leipzig 1912 Edition). (Scan, PDF, 88 MB Download, in German) http://www.x0b.de/Bresslau,Harry,Handbuch_der_Urkundenlehre_Band_1.pdf
- Photographs http://www.mgh-bibliothek.de/mgh/galerie/bresslau.htm
- Short biography in German http://www.univie.ac.at/hypertextcreator/netzwerk/site/browse.php?arttyp=a&l1=3&l2=1099&l3=1102