Günther Franz

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Günther Siegfried Franz

Doctoral studentsHermann Löffler, Paul Mylius

Günther Franz (13 May 1902 – 22 July 1992) was a German historian who specialized predominantly in agricultural history and the history of the German Peasants' War. Together with economists Wilhelm Abel and Friedrich Lütge, Franz helped shape the development and study of German agricultural history and agricultural economics in the postwar period.[1]

Life

Early years

Franz's father, Gottlob Franz (1855 - 1903), had been the director of a

Wilhelm Schüssler in his chair at the University of Rostock. Franz's subsequent career was substantially augmented by the influence of his brother-in-law, the legal historian and SS-Sturmbannführer Karl August Eckhardt [de], who, from 1934 onward, was a principal advisor to the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and Culture (German: Reichswissenschaftsministeriums).[5]

In the spring of 1935, Franz succeeded

regional studies society, called the Institut für Fränkisch-Pfälzische Landes- und Volksforschung, which still exists today, as the Institut für Fränkisch-Pfälzische Geschichte und Landeskunde.[8] In 1936, Franz succeeded Alexander Cartellieri as chair of Medieval History at the University of Jena where he was instrumental in the founding of another regional history society, the Anstalt für geschichtliche Landeskunde.[9] Jena was also where Franz first made the acquaintance of fellow historian Erich Maschke, with whom he would form a lifelong friendship, and together they began to publish the series "Arbeiten zur Landes- und Volksforschung."[10] At the height of the Nazi-era, from 1941 to 1945, Franz taught at the Reichsuniversität Straßburg, specializing in "the history of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War" and in particular "the study of the German national body.[4]

Relationship with the Nazi regime

As an avowed Nazi, Franz was a member of the

Opposition Research Department) supervised a number of dissertations and postdoctoral theses by SD members, thus implementing the overall SS strategy of infiltrating and reforming university historical scholarship.[5]

In many of his works during the Nazi era, Franz provided an ideological basis for the German

Jewish Question in particular, which were published in SS and RSHA publication series, including the SS-Leitheft.[16]

The postwar period

After the war, Franz went into hiding in Hesse for several years. It was not until the end of 1948 that he initiated his

agricultural history
. He served as rector there from 1963 to 1967.

In 1952, Franz co-founded, and from 1973-1975 co-edited, the Biographische Wörterbuch zur Deutschen Geschichte which was still being released in new editions as of 1995, and was used as a source by the complilers of the Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie.[20]

Family

Franz married Annelies Eckhardt, the sister of

theologian and historian, who from 1982 to 2007 served as the head librarian and head archivist of the Municipal Archives in Trier.[21]

Scholarly impact

Franz is considered a pioneer of social history; above all, he gave important momentum to research into the history of the Reformation.[22] Franz's account Der Deutsche Bauernkrieg (The German Peasant War), published in 1933, was still considered the standard work of research on that subject in West Germany forty years later.[23] The work appeared in a 12th edition in 1984. According to Christopher Clark, Franz's work Der Dreißigjährige Krieg und das deutsche Volk remains the "standard work on mortality rates." Accusations of exaggeration in the intervening period by Sigfrid Henry Steinberg and Hans-Ulrich Wehler, for example, have been invalidated by new studies, according to Clark.[24] Indeed, even more recent accounts commend Der Dreißigjährige Krieg und das deutsche Volk as groundbreaking.[25]

Publications

As author

As editor

References

Citations

  1. ^ Demade 2007, p. 176.
  2. ^ a b Müller 2004, p. 289.
  3. ^ Müller 2004, p. 292.
  4. ^ a b c d e Klee 2005, p. 161.
  5. ^ a b Seidelmann 2019, p. 171.
  6. ^ Reichert 2009, p. 281.
  7. ^ Franz 1979, p. 3.
  8. ^ Wolgast 1992, p. 132.
  9. ^ Gottwald 2005, p. 164.
  10. ^ Gottwald 2005, p. 166.
  11. ^ Heuss 2009, p. 266 n. 7.
  12. ^ Franz 1935, p. 321.
  13. ^ a b Seidelmann 2019, p. 174.
  14. ^ Franz 1937, p. 162.
  15. ^ Behringer 1999, p. 122.
  16. ^ Leendertz 2009, p. 27.
  17. ^ Franz 1982, p. 27.
  18. ^ Pinwinkler 2017, p. 182.
  19. ^ Müller 2004, p. 319.
  20. ^ Winkle 1992, p. 259.
  21. ^ a b Strute 1974, p. 503.
  22. ^ Gottwald 2005, p. 163.
  23. ^ Der Bauernkrieg 1975, p. 164.
  24. ^ Clark 2006, p. 791.
  25. ^ Burkhardt 1992, p. 263.

Sources