Between Scholarship and Politics. Hans Delbrück - Selected correspondence (1868-1929)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Dominik Geppert
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2017 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 391654538

Hans Delbrück (1848-1929) was one of the most eminent scholars and public intellectuals of both the Kaiserreich and the Weimar Republic. A pugnacious historian who took part in all major public debates in Germany from the 1890s to the 1920s, he taught one of the Hohenzollern princes, edited the influential monthly Preussische Jahrbuecher, and served as a Member of Parliament for the Free Conservative Party. After the First World War, he acted as an expert witness in the war guilt discussion and initiated the Mittwochabendgesellschaft, one of the most distinguished debating clubs of Berlin society in the interwar period. Immensely productive both as a scholar and a publicist, he operated within the hot core of academia, politics and journalism (Ulrich Raulff) for more than three decades. Delbrück s writings thus serve as an important seismograph of public mood and intellectual atmosphere in an era of dramatic transition. His life and letters are of particularly great interest because he was involved in two completely different political systems in Germany as a commentator, scholar and political actor. The project aims at reconstructing Delbrück s life from his student days in Greifswald, Heidelberg and Bonn in the 1860s until his death in 1929. By offering a representative choice of sources documenting the most important topics of Delbrück s life and times to a wider audience, the project provides basic research for the history of science, political culture and society in Germany from the late 19th to the early 20th century.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants