Fritz Schachermeyr

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Fritz Schachermeyr[1] (10 January 1895 – 26 December 1987) was an Austrian historian, professor at the University of Vienna from 1952 until retirement. Schachermeyr was described as "one of the most high-profile National Socialists among historians."

Biography

Fritz Schachermeyr was born at Urfahr, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1914, he entered the University of Graz, where he studied Classics under Adolf Bauer, in Berlin under Eduard Meyer and in Vienna, under Adolf Wilhelm. His studies were interrupted from the end of 1915 by war service in Transylvania, Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, where he developed an interest in the ancient Orient. Schachermeyr completed his studies in 1920 in Innsbruck under Carl Lehmann-Haupt with a dissertation on the relations between Egypt and the Near East. Between 1919 and 1929, he initially worked in the teaching profession at an Innsbruck girls' high school. He habilitated on Etruscan early history at the University of Innsbruck in 1928. In 1931, Schachermeyr was appointed professor of ancient history at the University of Jena, initially as extraordinarius, and later that same year as "personal" full professor. An appointment to the chair of Lehmann-Haupt in Innsbruck failed in 1932, presumably for financial reasons, since the previous full professorship had been converted into an associate professorship. In the application to succeed Wilhelm in Vienna, Josef Keil was preferred in 1934, probably also because of Schachermeyr's political activities.

Schachermeyr initially remained in Jena and was Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy there from October 1934 to March 1936. Since taking over the professorship in Jena, he began to be politically active for the NSDAP and, according to his own statements, was a co-founder of the "National Socialist Combat Ring of German Austrians in the Reich", of which he became Gauleiter of Thuringia in 1933. He tried to support the National Socialist movement scientifically and in terms of cultural politics through lectures and publications. In 1933, he published an article on "the Nordic leader personality" in the Völkischer Beobachter, the party organ of the NSDAP. He even sent an offprint of this essay to Wilhelm Frick, the Reich Minister of the Interior responsible for university affairs. In an enclosed letter, he described his current work project to write an "attempt to lay the foundation of the National Socialist worldview from the spirit of history".

Also in 1933, Schachermeyr wrote in a smaller essay to determine the "Tasks of Ancient History in the Framework of Nordic World History." In numerous publications of the following years, he disseminated National Socialist ideas, going further than most of his colleagues.[2] Colleagues were also ambivalent about his work, even those who were themselves close to him politically. For example, the Leipzig historian Helmut Berve wrote to Walter-Herwig Schuchhardt in Freiburg in 1943: "For as welcome as it is that Schachermeyr is almost the only one among ancient historians to have taken up ancient racial history with zeal, his method seems to me to be so unreliable, his formulations and his presentation so imprecise." During his time in Graz, Schachermeyr cooperated with both the SS's Ahnenerbe (ancestral heritage) and the competing "Dienststelle Rosenberg" (Rosenberg Office).

In 1936, he went to the University of Heidelberg as a full professor, succeeding Eugen Täubler, who had already been expelled in 1933 for racial reasons. On June 28, 1937, he applied for membership in the NSDAP and was admitted retroactively to May 1. In 1941, he moved to the University of Graz. Between 1945 and 1952, Schachermeyr was compulsorily retired because of his National Socialist worldview — from 1946 Erich Swoboda represented ancient history in Graz — but he was appointed in 1952 as Keil's successor to the chair of Greek history, antiquity and epigraphy at the University of Vienna. He became emeritus professor in 1963, but held the chair until 1970.

After World War II, Schachermeyr tried to make this period of his life as forgettable as possible, and did not address it in his memoirs: in them, he jumps from his inaugural lecture in Jena, which had Alexander the Great as its subject, directly to his biography of Alexander, which he wrote after 1945.[3] Following Oswald Spengler, Schachermeyr later argued that culture, not race, was the factor that distinguished people. His early works on Greece and the ancient Orient, however, had emphasized the supposedly superior "Nordic race" and, at the same time, and stated that the Phoenicians in particular had "parasitic tendencies" due to a "Semitic-Armenoid racial component".

Schachermeyr researched mainly in the field of Greek antiquity. He made major contributions especially to the early Greek period (e.g. Minoan and Mycenaean culture) and often also dealt with the Ancient Near Eastern neighbors of the Greeks. Thus he dealt not only with Greek culture, but also with Hittites, Etruscans, and even with Linear Pottery culture. He bequeathed his collection of pottery sherds of various, mainly Mediterranean and Near Eastern provenance, one of the most important educational collections of its kind, which the researcher had gathered on many trips since his student days, to the Mycenaean Commission. His extensive biography of Alexander, published in 1973 in a revised and expanded version, is still considered an important contribution to Alexander research today, although Schachermeyr viewed the "Titan" Alexander quite negatively.

Schachermeyr was a full member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences since 1957 and a corresponding member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He was awarded honorary doctorates by the universities of Athens (1961) and Vienna (1984). Schachermeyr received the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art, the Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria, the Medal of Honor of the Federal Capital Vienna in Gold and the Medal for Services in the Field of Science of his hometown Linz. In 1963, he was awarded the Wilhelm Hartel Prize.

Fritz Schachermeyr died in Eisenstadt.

Works

  • Etruskische Frühgeschichte, Berlin, Leipzig 1929
  • Zur Rasse und Kultur im minoischen Kreta, Carl Winter, Heidelberg 1939
  • Lebensgesetzlichkeit in der Geschichte. Versuch einer Einführung in das geschichtsbiologische Denken, Klostermann, Frankfurt/M. 1940
  • Indogermanen und Orient. Ihre kulturelle und machpolitische Auseinandersetzung im Altertum, Stuttgart 1944
  • Alexander, der Grosse. Ingenium und Macht, Pustet, Graz–Salzburg–Wien 1949
  • Alexander der Grosse. Das Problem seiner Persönlichkeit und seines Wirkens, Wien 1973
  • Griechische Geschichte. Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der geistesgeschichtlichen und kulturmorphologischen Zusammenhänge, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1960
  • Perikles, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart–Berlin–Köln–Mainz 1969
  • Geistesgeschichte der Perikleischen Zeit, Stuttgart–Berlin–Köln–Mainz 1971
  • Die Tragik der Voll-Endung. Stirb und Werde in der Vergangenheit. Europa im Würgegriff der Gegenwart, Koska, Wien–Berlin 1981
  • Ein Leben zwischen Wissenschaft und Kunst, edd. Gerhard Dobesch, Hilde Schachermeyr, Wien, Köln, Graz 1984

Decorations and awards

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Sometimes Schachermeyer.
  2. ↑ For example, Schachermeyr, assuming that historical greatness was fundamentally linked to belonging to the "Nordic race," declared figures such as Peisistratos or Hannibal to be "Aryans" by implication.
  3. ↑ In 2012, Gunnar Brands described Schachermeyr's autobiographical writing Ein Leben zwischen Wissenschaft und Kunst ("A Life Between Science and Art"), published in 1984, as a perfidious autobiographical masquerade.

References

  • Martina Pesditschek, Die Karriere des Althistorikers Fritz Schachermayr im Dritten Reich und in der Zweiten Republik in: „Mensch · Wissenschaft · Magie“, Mitteilungen der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Wissenschaftsgeschichte 25 (2005), 41-72.
  • Ursula Minder, Werner Sauer, 'Akademischer Rassismus in Graz - Materialien zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Grazer Universität' in: NS-Wissenschaft als Vernichtungsinstrument : Rassenhygiene, Zwangssterilisation, Menschenversuche und NS-Euthanasie in der Steiermark, Wolfgang Freidl, Werner Sauer (eds.), Vienna, Facultas (2004), pp. 113 – 138.
  • Hans-Christian Harten, Uwe Neirich, Matthias Schwerendt, Rassenhygiene als Erziehungsideologie des dritten Reichs: Bio-bibliographisches Handbuch, Akademie Verlag (2006), ISBN 3-05-004094-7, ISBN 978-3-05-004094-3, p. 77.

External links

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