Hans Mommsen

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Hans Mommsen (November 5, 1930-) is a left-wing German historian and twin brother of Wolfgang Mommsen. He was born in Marburg, the son of the historian Wilhelm Mommsen. He studied German, history and philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, the University of Tübingen and the University of Marburg. Mommsen served as professor at Tübingen (1960-1961), Heidelberg (1963-1968) and at the University of Bochum (1968-). He married Margaretha Reindel in 1966. He has been a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany since 1960.

Mommsen is a leading expert on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. He is a functionalist in regard to the origins of the Holocaust question, 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 Hitler. In Mommsen's view, Hitler was an anti-semite, but lacked a real idea of what he wanted to do with the Jews. Furthermore, for Mommsen, Hitler played little or no real role in the development of the Holocaust. Instead, this was caused primarily by the German bureaucracy who, as the result of bureaucratic turf wars, started to compete with one another by engaging in ever more radical anti-semitic measures between 1933 and 1941.

Mommsen is best known for arguing that Hitler was a "weak dictator" who rather than acting decisively, reacted to various social pressures. Mommsen is opposed to the notion of seeing Nazi Germany as a totalitarian state. In his view, the Nazis were far too disorganized ever to be a totalitarian dictatorship. The reason why the Nazis stayed in power was that the average German either supported them or was indifferent to the regime.

In this regard, it is important to note that Mommsen was the first historian in the early 1960s to accept the conclusions of the journalist Fritz Tobias who argued in a 1961 book The Reichstag Fire that the Reichstag Fire of 1933 was not started by the Nazis, and that Marinus van der Lubbe had acted alone. Until the publication of Tobias's book, it was generally accepted both in West Germany and abroad that the fire was instigated by the Nazis as part of a plot to abolish democracy. The Nazi Machtergreifung (Seizure of Power) had been generally represented as part of a well-planned, totalitarian assault on democracy with the German people as hapless bystanders. The significance of the conclusion that the Nazis did not set fire to the Reichstag is that it suggests that the Machtergreifung was more of a series of ad hoc responses to events rather the result of some master plan of the part of Adolf Hitler, and thus the German people were not mere bystanders to their fate.

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 locked into endless power struggles with one another. In Mommsen's view, it was these power struggles that provided the dynamism that drove the German state into a spiral of increasingly radical measures, leading to what Mommsen has often called the "realization of the unthinkable." More recently, he has revised his "weak dictator" thesis to some extent, conceding that Hitler possessed more power than he, Mommsen, had originally credited him with. But Mommsen still argues that Hitler played little role in the day-to-day administration of Nazi Germany.

Mommsen has 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.
Along the same lines, these same historians have 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.

In the Historikerstreit debate, Mommsen argued that the Holocaust was a uniquely evil event which should not be compared with the other horrors of the 20th century. Mommsen has written highly regarded books and essays on the fall of the Weimar Republic, blaming the downfall of the Republic on German conservatives. Like his brother Wolfgang, Mommsen is 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.

Another area of interest for Mommsen is dissent, opposition, and resistance in the Third Reich. Mommsen has drawn unfavorable comparisons between what he sees as conservative opposition and Social Democratic and Communist resistance to the Nazis. Mommsen is also an expert on social history and often writes about working-class life in the Weimar and Nazi eras.

A major figure in his home country, Mommsen often takes 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.

Work

Die Sozialdemokratie und die Nationalitätenfrage im habsburgischen Vielvölkerstaat, 1963.
"Der Reichstagsbrand und seine politischen Folgen" pages 351-413 from Vierteljahreshefte fur Zeitgeschichte, Volume 12, 1964.
Beamtentum im Dritten Reich: Mit ausgewählten Quellen zur nationalsozialistischen Beamtenpolitik, 1966.
Industrielles System und politische Entwicklung in der Weimarer Republik, co-edited with Dietmar Petzina and Bernd Weisbrod, 1974.
Sozialdemokratie zwische Klassenbewegung ud Volkspartei, edited by Hans Mommsen, 1974.
Arbeiterbewegung und Industrieller Wandel: Studien zu Gewerkschaftlichen Organisationsproblemen im Reich und an der Ruhr, edited by Hans Mommsen, 1978.
Klassenkampf oder Mitbestimmung: zum Problem der Kontrolle wirtschaftlicher Macht in der Weimarer Republik, 1978.
Arbeiterbewegung und Nationale Frage: Ausgewählte Aufsätze, 1979.
Glück Auf, Kameraden! Die Bergarbeiter und ihre Organisationen in Deutschland, co-edited with Ulrich Borsdorf, 1979.
Vom Elend der Handarbeit: Proleme historisher Unterschichtenforschung, co-edited with Winfried Schulze, 1981.
Politik und Gesellschaft im alten und neuen Österreich: Festschrift für Rodolf Neck zum 60. Geburtstag, co-edited with Isabella Acker and Walter Hummelbergrer, 1981.
Auf der Suche nach historischer Normalität: Beiträge zum Geschichtsbildstreit in der Bunderepublik, 1987.
Herrschaftsalltag im Dritten Reich: Studien und Texte, co-edited with Susanne Willems, 1988.
Die verspielte Freiheit: der Weg der Republik von Weimar in den Untergang, 1918 bis 1933, 1989.
Der Nationalsozialismus und die deutsche Gesellschaft, 1991 translated by Philip O'Connor into English as From Weimar to Auschwitz , Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press.
Der Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur Ideologie und Herrschaft, co-edited with Wolfgang Benz and Hans Buchleim, 1993.
Ungleiche Nachbarn: demokratische und Nationale Emanzipation bei Deutsche, Tschechen und Slowaken (1815-1914) co-edited with Jiřǐ Kořalka, 1993.
"Adolf Hitler und der 9. November 1923" from Der 9. November: Fünf Essays zur deutschen Geschichte, 1994.
Widerstand und politische Kultur in Deutschland und Österreich, 1994.

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: Rowoht, 1991.
Von der Aufgabe der Freihiet: politische Antwortung und Bürgerliche Gesellschaft im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert: Festschrift für Hans Mommsesn zum. 5. November 1995 (The Task of Freedom: Political Responsibility and Civil Society in the 19th and 20th centuries) edited by Christain Jansen, Lutz Niethammer, and Bernd Wiesbrod, Berlin: Akademie, 1995.
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.

External links

The Genesis of the Holocaust: An Assessment of the Functionalist School of Historiography, Jacqueline Bird
[Portrait of Hans Mommsen]
[An Interview with Professor Hans Mommsen]

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