Hans Mommsen

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Hans Mommsen
Weimar Germany
Died5 November 2015(2015-11-05) (aged 85)
Tutzing, Germany
NationalityGerman
OccupationHistorian
Known forStudies in German social history

Hans Mommsen (5 November 1930

Third Reich, and especially for arguing that Adolf Hitler was a weak dictator. Descended from Nobel Prize-winning historian Theodor Mommsen, he was a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany
.

Life and career

Mommsen was born in

University of Bochum (since 1968).[2] He married Margaretha Reindel in 1966.[2] He was a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany from 1960 until his death. He died on 5 November 2015, his 85th birthday.[3]

Early work

Much of Mommsen's early work concerned the history of the German working class, both as an object of study itself and as a factor in the larger German society.[2] Mommsen's 1979 book, Arbeiterbewegung und nationale Frage (The Labour Movement and the National Question), a collection of his essays written in the 1960s–70s was the conclusion of his studies in German working class history.[2]

Functionalism and the "weak dictator" thesis

Mommsen was a leading expert on

functionalist in regard to the origins of the Holocaust, seeing the Final Solution as a result of the "cumulative radicalization" of the German state as opposed to a long-term plan on the part of Adolf Hitler.[2]

Mommsen is best known for arguing that Hitler was a "weak dictator" who rather than acting decisively, reacted to various social pressures. Mommsen believed that Nazi Germany was not a

totalitarian state.[2] Together with his friend Martin Broszat, Mommsen developed the structuralist interpretation of the Third Reich, that saw the Nazi state as a chaotic collection of rival bureaucracies engaged in endless power struggles.[2]

In regards to the

debate about foreign policy, Mommsen argued that German foreign policy did not follow a "programme" during the Nazi era, but was instead "expansion without object" as the foreign policy of the Reich driven by powerful internal forces sought expansion in all directions.[4]

Mommsen faced criticism in the following areas:

  • Intentionalist historians such as Andreas Hillgruber, Eberhard Jäckel, Klaus Hildebrand and Karl Dietrich Bracher have criticized Mommsen for underestimating the importance of Hitler and Nazi ideology. The Swiss historian Walter Hofer accused Mommsen of "not seeing because he does not want to see" what Hofer saw as the obvious connection between what Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf and his later actions.[5]
  • Along the same lines, these historians criticized Mommsen for focusing too much on initiatives coming from below in the ranks of the German bureaucracy and not enough on initiatives coming from above in the leadership in Berlin.
  • Mommsen's friend Yehuda Bauer has criticized Mommsen for stressing too much the similarities in values between the traditional German state bureaucracy and the Nazi Party's bureaucracy while paying insufficient attention to the differences.

The Historikerstreit

In the

American raid on Libya in April 1986 made it imperative for the Americans and the West German government to promote a more nationalistic version of German history, and that was what was behind the Historikerstreit.[7]

Other historical work

Mommsen wrote highly regarded books and essays on the fall of the Weimar Republic, blaming the downfall of the Republic on German conservatives.[2] Like his brother Wolfgang, Mommsen was a champion of the Sonderweg (Special Path) interpretation of German history that sees the ways German society, culture, and politics developed in the 19th century as having made the emergence of Nazi Germany in the 20th century virtually inevitable.[citation needed]

Another area of interest for Mommsen was dissent, opposition, and resistance in the

Nazis. Mommsen was an expert on social history and often wrote about working-class life in the Weimar and Nazi eras.[2]

Starting in the 1960s, Mommsen was one of a younger generation of West German historians who provide a more critical assessment of Widerstand within German elites, and came to decry the "monumentalization" typical of German historical writing about Widerstand in the 1950s.[8] In two articles published in 1966, Mommsen proved as false the claim often advanced in the 1950s that the ideas behind "men of July 20" were the inspiration for the 1949 Basic Law of the Federal Republic.[9]

The "Goldhagen Controversy"

During the "Goldhagen Controversy" of 1996, Mommsen emerged as one of Daniel Goldhagen's leading opponents, and often debated Goldhagen on German TV.[10] Mommsen's friend, the British historian Sir Ian Kershaw, wrote he thought that Mommsen had "destroyed" Goldhagen during their debates over Goldhagen's book Hitler's Willing Executioners.[10]

Later work

A major figure in Germany, Mommsen often took stands on the great issues of the day, believing that the responsibility for ensuring the mistakes of the past are never repeated rests upon an engaged and historically-conscious citizenry.[2] Mommsen saw it as the duty of the historian to constantly critique contemporary society.[2]

Work

See also

  • List of Adolf Hitler books

Notes

  1. ISBN 978-1-884964-33-6
    .
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Menke, Martin, "Mommsen, Hans", pages 826–827 from The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, edited by Kelly Boyd, Volume 2, London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishing, 1999, page 826
  3. ^ "Hans Mommsen, historian - obituary". 13 November 2015 – via www.telegraph.co.uk.
  4. ^ Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship London : Arnold 2000 page 138
  5. ^ Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship London : Arnold 2000 page 98
  6. ^ Mommsen, Hans, "The New Historical Consciousness", pages 114–124 from Forever In The Shadow of Hitler? edited by Ernst Piper, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, 1993, pages 121–122
  7. ^ Mommsen, Hans, "The Search for the 'Lost History'", pages 101–113 from Forever In The Shadow of Hitler? edited by Ernst Piper, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, 1993, pages 110–111
  8. ^ Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London: Arnold Press, 2000 pages 187–188
  9. ^ Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London: Arnold Press, 2000 page 188
  10. ^ a b Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems & Perspectives of Interpretation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000 page 254

References

  • Bauer, Yehuda, Rethinking the Holocaust, New Haven Conn.; London: Yale University Press, 2001.
  • "Einleitung" (Introduction) in Der Nationalsozialismus und die deutsche Geselleschaft: Ausgewählte Aufsätze (National Socialism and German Society: Selected Essays) edited by Lutz Niethammer and Bernd Wiesbrod, Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1991.
  • Von der Aufgabe der Freiheit: politische Antwortung und bürgerliche Gesellschaft im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert: Festschrift für Hans Mommsen zum. 5. November 1995 (The Task of Freedom: Political Responsibility and Civil Society in the 19th and 20th centuries) edited by Christian Jansen, Lutz Niethammer, and Bernd Wiesbrod, Berlin: Akademie, 1995.
  • Kautz, Fred, The German Historians: Hitler's Willing Executioners and Daniel Goldhagen, Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2003,
    ISBN 1-55164-213-1
    .
  • Kershaw, Ian, The Nazi Dictatorship : problems and perspectives of interpretation London: Arnold; New York: Copublished in the USA by Oxford University Press, 2000.
  • Menke, Martin, "Mommsen, Hans", pages 826-827 from The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, edited by Kelly Boyd, Volume 2, London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishing, 1999.
  • Marrus, Michael, The Holocaust in History, Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1987.
  • Hans Schneider, Neues vom Reichstagsbrand – Eine Dokumentation. Ein Versäumnis der deutschen Geschichtsschreibung. Mit einem Geleitwort von
    ISBN 3-8305-0915-4
    .

External links

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