Historical Commissions
Historical Commissions
1. Brief description
‘Historical Commission (HK)’ is the term used to describe an association comprising mainly academics, dedicated to researching and communicating the history of, in most cases, a specific region, often a Federal State. Furthermore, there are HCs affiliated with various institutions (e.g. political parties, broadcasting organisations) as well as HCs with specific remits (e.g. the HC of the Börsenverein, the HC for the Study of Pietism). There are separate HCs for the former Prussian eastern provinces and for areas settled by Germans in Eastern Europe. These are to be distinguished from the specialist commissions of the Johann Gottfried Herder Research Council.
2. Organisation, responsibilities and activities
The seven regional associations for the historic Prussian eastern provinces and areas settled by Germans in Eastern Europe are now registered and organised as registered associations. Together with the Johann Gottfried Herder Research Council and other institutions, they are members of the Herder Institute ’s sponsoring association ( Herder-Institut e.V.) and receive funding from the federal and state governments via the Herder Institute ’s budget. The admission of new members, who must always have recognised expertise in their field, generally takes place by co-optation. Participation in the association’s activities or the exercise of voting rights may depend on the type of membership (‘Full’, ‘Corresponding’ and ‘External’ members). The HKs usually report on their activities annually in annual reports published in their own publications.
Their traditional tasks include: source cataloguing (publication of regesta and document collections, editions in general), the compilation of reference works (e.g. biographical encyclopaedias, ‘biographical sketches’) and the implementation of long-term scholarly projects in particular (e.g. bibliographies, historical atlases). The HK publish their own book series, organise conferences and are active in the field of supporting early-career academics. Examples of HK projects include the Baltic Bibliography, the Silesian Documentary Register, the Transylvanian Documentary Register, the ‘Polono-Germanica’ book series, the publications of the Commission for the History of Germans in Poland e.V., the Historical Atlas of Pomerania, the German Legation Reports from Prague and the Handbook of the History of East and West Prussia.
3. History
Modelled on historical societies in other regions (e.g. the Historical Society of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences, founded in 1858), in 1910/1911 in Stettin/Szczecin at the suggestion of the Chief President of the then Prussian Province of Pomerania; This was followed by the Historical Society for Silesia (founded in 1921 in Breslau/Wrocław), established in the wake of the Upper Silesian Uprisings, and the Historical Society for East and West Prussian Regional Research (founded in 1923 in Königsberg/Kaliningrad). After the Second World War, under the auspices of the Johann Gottfried Herder Research Council in Marburg (Lahn), new commissions were established – some of which built on the work of predecessor institutions – whilst others were re-established: the Historical and Regional Studies Commission for Pomerania (1951), the Historical and Regional Studies Commission for Posen and the German Community in Poland (1950, renamed in 1997 as the Commission for the History of Germans in Poland e.V.), the Baltic Historical Commission (1951), the Historical Commission for the Sudeten Lands (1954, renamed in 2000 as the Historical Commission for the Bohemian Lands) and the South-East German Historical Commission (1957, renamed in 2007 as the Commission for the History and Culture of Germans in South-East Europe).[1]
The Commission for German and Eastern European Folklore, which operates within the German Society for Folklore, also has a historical focus; it was formed in 1949 as the Commission for the Folklore of Displaced Persons (renamed in 1962 as the Commission for East German Folklore, and renamed again in 1994). In contrast to the commissions mentioned above, it adopts a supra-regional approach and today focuses on inter-ethnic aspects of everyday culture.
The remit of the HK, which continued to focus on local history and regional research even after the Second World War, did not change significantly. However, their work was now characterised by the particular circumstances arising from the geographical distance between the researchers and their regions of study, restricted access to archives and libraries, and the political confrontation during the Cold War and the division of Europe. In the Federal Republic of Germany, the HK were the most important initiatives in regional studies research concerning regions now all situated outside Germany, for which there were otherwise few specialised academic bodies and which were also given insufficient attention at universities and other academic research institutions. Numerous academic projects, and in particular academic theses, were initiated by individuals who were active in the HK.
Owing to their regional focus, some HKs had already begun to establish academic contacts with researchers in their regions of interest as early as the 1960s, particularly through personal relationships. This pioneering role gave rise to numerous close relationships and co-operations as a result of the impetus for modernisation and internationalisation stemming from the political ‘Wende’ after 1989/1990. Conferences, publications and research projects were increasingly carried out jointly. More recently, the HKs have each established regional-historical, bilateral or multilateral networks of academics and institutions. Following a reorientation of their programmes, which in some cases was accompanied by name changes (see above), the HKs are now committed to the methods and themes of modern East Central European studies, with a focus on the history of relations. In their current self-conception, they see themselves as international forums and points of contact which accumulate specific specialist knowledge and regional expertise on the region in question and make this available to an interested public. The book series published by the HK, as well as other book and online publications, remain of outstanding importance for the respective regional studies.
4. Controversies and areas for further research
The history and activities of the three older HKs during the Nazi era were long overlooked[2] and have, to this day, only been partially researched. Similarly, questions regarding institutional and personnel continuities or discontinuities with the HKs founded (or re-established) after the Second World War have not yet been clarified in all cases. A critical re-examination of their past, from the perspective of institutional history and initiated by the HK themselves – albeit belatedly – has begun in recent times; for some HK, this process is still pending.
Whilst it is necessary to differentiate in each individual case and to take into account the fact that the ‘people’s history’ paradigm what was not a German phenomenon but was widespread throughout Eastern Central and South-Eastern Europe, affinities between the chairs and members of the HK and the National Socialist worldview – and, in some cases, their support for National Socialist policies – are often evident. In the case of the HK for Pomerania, for example – according to its own account – one can speak of a ‘shift towards a National Socialist commission’[3] in the 1930s. Furthermore, articles in the ‘History of Silesia. Vol. 1: From Prehistory to the Year 1526’ are, in methodological and ideological terms, closely aligned with ethnocentric, ‘völkisch’ Ostforschung and Nazi ideology.[4] Hermann Aubin, Chairman of the Historical Commission for Silesia from 1934 to 1950 and later President of the Johann-Gottfried Herder Research Council, was a leading scholar of Eastern European studies during the Nazi era and continued to shape the discipline of history even after 1945 through paradigms centred on ‘volk’ culture.[5] Whilst an academic biography of Aubin is available, the debate concerning Fritz Valjavec (1909–1960), the founder of the South-East German Regional Committee and described as a ‘protagonist of National Socialist policy towards South-Eastern Europe’,[6] is not yet concluded.[7]
It is known that the first two chairmen of the Sudetenland Historical Commission, Rudolf Schreiber (1907–1954) and Kurt Oberdorffer (1900–1980), were previously members of the NSDAP and active in Nazi organisations.[8] Furthermore, this Historical Commission was founded in the mould of the older Historical Commission of the German Academy of Sciences in Prague (founded in 1891) and the Commission for History at the Sudeten German Institute for Regional and Ethnic Research (founded in 1940) in Reichenberg/Liberec. The representatives of these predecessor institutions had long hesitated to abandon their former association’s identity in favour of the new organisation.[9] Such questions regarding involvement – particularly that of the founding generation of the HK in the second half of the 20th century within the National Socialist system – and institutional continuities have not yet been sufficiently researched.
Bibliography
- Stefan Albrecht, Jiří Malíř, Ralph Melville (eds.): ‘Sudeten German Historiography’ 1918–1960. On the Background and Founding of the Historical Commission of the Sudeten Lands. Munich 2008 (Publications of the Collegium Carolinum 114).
- Matthias Beer, Gerhard Seewann (eds.): South-Eastern European Studies in the Shadow of the Third Reich. Institutions, Content, Individuals. Munich 2004 (South-Eastern European Studies 119).
- Nils Jörn, Haik Porada (eds.): The Historical Commission for Pomerania 1911–2011. Review and Outlook (Publications of the Historical Commission for Pomerania; Series V: Research on Pomeranian History, Vol. 47). Cologne, Weimar 2018.
- Wolfgang Kessler, Markus Krzoska (eds.): Between Region and Nation. 125 Years of Research into the History of Germans in Poland. Osnabrück 2013 (Polono-Germanica 7).
-
Eduard Mühle: For the People and the German East. The Historian Hermann Aubin and German Research on the East. Düsseldorf 2005 (Publications of the Federal Archives 65), including the chapter ‘The Historical Commission for Silesia: “Leader” of Silesian Regional Research’, pp. 269–313.
Notes
[1] Owing to its narrower regional focus and different organisational structure, the ‘Historical Commission for the District of Neustadt/OS’ – an association of people interested in the history, folklore and culture of Upper Silesia, particularly the former district of Neustadt/OS – is not a historical commission in the sense outlined here.
[2] See, for example, Ludwig Petry, Herbert Schlenger: ‘Fifty Years of the Historical Commission for Silesia’. In: Yearbook of the Silesian Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Breslau XVII (1972), pp. 385–416, here pp. 389–394: The chapter ‘The Commission on the Eve of and During the Second World War’ makes no use of the term ‘National Socialism’.
[3] Martin Schoebel: 100 Years of the Historical Commission for Pomerania. In: Nils Joern, Haik Porada (eds.): The Historical Commission for Pomerania 1911–2011. Review and Outlook (Publications of the Historical Commission for Pomerania; Series V: Research on Pomeranian History, Vol. 47). Cologne, Weimar 2018, pp. 16–24, here p. 28.
[4] Cf. Matthias Weber: On German historiography concerning Silesia since 1945. In: Jerzy Kłoczowski, Witold Matwiejczyk, Eduard Mühle (eds.): Doświadczenia przeszłości. Niemcy w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej w historiografii po 1945 / Erfahrungen der Vergangenheit. Germans and East-Central Europe in Historiography after 1945. Lublin, Marburg 2000 (Conferences on East-Central European Research 9), pp. 133–146, here pp. 137ff.
[5] Hans-Erich Volkmann: Hermann Aubin. In: Ingo Haar, Michael Fahlbusch (eds.): Handbook of Ethnic Studies. Individuals, Institutions, Research Programs, Foundations. Munich 2008, pp. 58–62.
[6] Norbert Spannenberger: From an Early-Career ‘Ethnic German’ Researcher to a Leading Figure in Nazi Policy on South-Eastern Europe. Fritz Valjavec as Reflected in his Correspondence 1934–1939. In: Beer, Seewann (eds.): South-East European Studies, pp. 215–235.
[7] Klaus Popa: Fritz Valjavec. In: Haar, Fahlbusch (eds.): Handbook (note 5), pp. 697–700.
[8] Stephan Dolezel: On the Beginnings of the Historical Commission of the Sudeten Lands. In: Albrecht, Malíř, Melville (eds.): ‘Sudeten German Historiography’, pp. 1–9; K. Erik Franzen, Helena Peřinová: Biographical Sketches of the Members of the Historical Commission of the Sudeten Lands in its Founding Year, 1954. In: Albrecht, Malíř, Melville (eds.): ‘Sudeten German Historiography’, pp. 219–276, here pp. 250 and 262.
[9] Dolezel: On the Beginnings (note 8), p. 2.
Citation
Matthias Weber: Historical Commissions. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2014. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32691 (as at 21 February 2022).
Terms of use for this article
Copyright © University of Oldenburg and the Federal Institute for the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe (BKGE), all rights reserved. This work was produced as part of the project ‘Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe’ and may be reproduced and published provided the rights holders’ consent has been obtained. Please contact:
If you have any specialist comments or additions to the text, please contact the editorial team, citing relevant literature and source references.