“Great public attention can only cause a work of history, when for the first time on the subject of making a subject of potentially salient importance”, Ernst Nolte wrote, looking back at his brilliant first publication in 1963, “Fascism in his era “. The author, he added, “may have forgotten a few years later, after he has turned to be normal ‘research activities”.
Ernst Nolte has experienced both, the “well-publicized” and be forgotten at the end of his long life. not because the questions were settled, which he had raised, and not even because of the large force would therefore be forgotten, but because the author of damnatio memoriae fell prey that is unparalleled in the history of German science
forever probably his name will remain associated with an article title that had not even been formulated by himself: “past, that will not pass “this newspaper article in mid-1986 began what soon became known as the Historikerstreit its protagonists were not from the heart of the guild; neither Nolte was a studied historian – he developed only to his work, which he eventually.. Habilitation and chairs brought in – nor Jürgen Habermas, the social philosopher and more powerful stooges of the west German Federal Republic became the sociologists in the eighties
Compare and interpretation were his keywords
Nolte asked questions that were simply not opportune for the ruling Komment, but he fed them with an almost overwhelming exhaustion of past and even more intellectual history sources. When he in his fascism-book beside Nazism first comparative Italian fascism and French Action française considered to arrive at the representation of what he later in his no less important work “The European Civil War 1917-1945 “executed in turn, over 600 pages, he was there alone.
This had so far given it simply in the discipline. As an academic outsider, he was at the beginning, and certainly at the end of his career, could be comparatively most the call late for sociologists appointed Niklas Luhmann, in particular difference between public perception and action. As Nolte exceeded the limits of his discipline Luhmann always in philosophical intention
Compare -. Which is a key concept for understanding of Nolte’s history. The other is “interpreted”. Nolte compared constantly, he did not hesitate to employ hypothetical comparisons, he thought history but her not only of her facts, but also on their possibilities. This leads us to interpret. Nolte has never content to solely “What actually happened” to meet the Ranke postulate of, but asks for the meaning of history, the telos. The resented him just his opponents that but as Habermas transfigured example orientation towards the West the former West Germany to the goal of history
Studies at war, high school teachers -. And the first major book
Nolte has spent his professional life in postwar Germany, but rich his life data back in that period, which was his scientific interest. Born on 11 June 1923 in Witten, Nolte was lucky enough to be spared from the military service in Hitler’s army due to a slight disability. Instead, he studied philosophy, German and Greek and started immediately after the war twenty years of professional teaching experience at schools’ classics, interrupted by a Freiburg doctorate on Karl Marx. When he “Fascism in its epoch” suddenly came into the limelight of the science of history with the monumental book him his performance earned habilitation and 1965, a call to Marburg. Eight years later, Nolte a call to the Friedrich Meinecke Institute at the Free University of Berlin, where he taught until his retirement 1991st
The fascism defined Nolte as anti-Marxism
he already looked fierce criticism, he who had yet lifted the fascism research to a whole new level and about 1967 as a matter of course for the publisher of the reference work” had been theories about fascism appointed “. “Grasping means grasp the Differentiated in its context,” he wrote in the preface of his epoch book and this performed in the very first chapter – if his opponents only ever read! It is entitled ‘Fascism as an epoch character “and extends far out to Stalinism on the one hand and the liberal system on the other hand, embodied in President Roosevelt.
But recurs Nolte at the end of world War I returned to the successive events of the revolution in Russia and the attempted coups in Germany. Two of them – the communist uprising in Hamburg and Hitler’s “March on the Feldherrnhalle.” – Occurred in Nolte’s birth year
It is this simultaneity of opposites that determines Nolte’s thinking. The fascism he defined as “anti-Marxism”, as a movement with an “opposite and yet adjacent ideology”. In the violent events of the young Weimar Republic, he recognizes the feature of the “European Revolution”, “that two heterogeneous elements came together (…) and the new developed, which was their joint work”. Anti Modern and modern at once, so it characterizes repeatedly Nazism and its necessary failure: “So the regime embodied resistance to the modern world move towards self-determination of nations and individuals, who in his own way was also modern, but entirely in vain though “.
the” causal nexus “Nolte darkened his own work
he was concerned about the origin of National socialism from the Contemporary. “The Third Reich,” he wrote years before the historians’ dispute, “must especially in the context of the triggered by the Industrial Revolution upheavals, crises, fears, diagnoses and therapies in provided are (…); . It must be based on the Russian Revolution as its main precondition particular “From how Habermas the” apologetic tendencies in German historiography “derive misunderstands Nolte’s performance in that, what with Hegel that” would call exertion of “: comprehension beyond the mere horror beyond.
the consideration of a “causal nexus” however Nolte darkened his own work. “Did not the Gulag Archipelago ‘? Primary to Auschwitz,” it says in its historians dispute triggered newspaper articles from 1986, and unsuccessful yet: “Did not the class murder’ of the Bolsheviks the logical and factual prius of, genocide ‘of the Nazis? “Because, so it seemed the logical Nolte sat short of post hoc ergo propter hoc on, the” then, so why “. Since he did not teach as much evidence that “the extermination measures of the Bolsheviks” – “had made a deep impression on Hitler and other leading Nazis”
Nolte also wrote of – as he wrote in 1988 in the Tagesspiegel. Nazism as the radical evil
as I gain nothing if Nolte later repeatedly emphasized that the “final solution” to the “inner core” of Hitler have identified thoughts and he in its absoluteness joined the national consensus “therefore may and must Hitler Nazism today as radical evil.” much of what Nolte after 1987 published – rather in the Latin countries, where he found a receptive audience – has the character of clarification, defense and redemption. But not even take the want discipline and even public note
And certainly not been taken note of what Nolte had in 1963 stated:. “Because National Socialism the Jews not even the granted rights of a national minority, he made virtually the German minorities in Eastern Europe without protection. “This irrefutable link between Holocaust and expulsion at the time was a provocation that Nolte in some eyes even stamped a Marxist.
his books Me, and his questions anyway
“Why such a lot has been written about Nolte, is not clear,” the journalist Walter Laqueur remarked condescendingly in a yard long article on the historian. No sentence could be false. Ernst Nolte, even where it it were even promoted his ideas off, not only the Federal Republic and its certainties added powerful. he has also satisfied with detail research historians reminded that history is written in a quite ancient sense that it remains a constant challenge for the later, the same relation to it and have to interpret for themselves.
the only way to Nolte’s great books, headed “fascism in its epoch” and “The European civil war” and an impressive phalanx of other publications, to understand at all. To the understanding he was doing; not to the naked who and what, but the why of the story. A philosopher of history, he has been with a certain undertone, called; considering his life’s work there is a distinction. On Thursday morning, the historian Ernst Nolte in Berlin died after a brief illness, he was aged 93 years. His books will remain his questions anyway.
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