Max Braubach

Max Braubach (10 April 1899 – 21 June 1975) was a German historian. Braubach taught as a full professor of history at the University of Bonn from 1928 to 1967. He published important studies on the history of the Rhenish territories in the 17th and 18th centuries and of Bonn University. His main work is considered to be the five-volume biography of Prince Eugene.

Biography

Max Braubach was born at Metz into a bourgeois family from Cologne. He grew up in Strasbourg as the youngest of five children. His father rose to the top of the Prussian civil service hierarchy and became a mining captain. In Strasbourg, he graduated from the Imperial Lyceum in 1916. Braubach wanted to become an officer. First, however, he studied law for a semester in 1916/17. He took part in World War I (1917–1918) as an ensign in the Strasbourg Hussar Regiment. His last rank was leutnant and he fought on the Western Front.

After the war, Braubach first studied history and national economics in the summer semester of 1919 in Heidelberg and since the winter semester of 1919/20 in Bonn. He interrupted his studies in Heidelberg for a one-semester study visit at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. There he became a member of the Catholic student fraternity Rheno-Bavaria in the KV. His academic teacher in Bonn was Aloys Schulte.

In October 1922, at the age of 23, he received his doctorate under Schulte with a thesis on the significance of subsidies for foreign policy in the War of the Spanish Succession. In 1924 he completed his habilitation in Bonn with a biography of Maximilian Francis, the last Elector of Cologne. On April 1, 1928, at the age of 29, Braubach received the Concordat Chair in Bonn as successor to his teacher Schulte. He held this chair until his retirement on March 31, 1967. He thus held one of the most important chairs in Germany.

Braubach voted for the Center Party until 1933. From 1936 to 1967 he chaired the Historical Society for the Lower Rhine. He participated in the Second World War from the beginning. From the beginning of 1940 he was a captain and later a major. Braubach was assigned to the staff of the military commander in France General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel — involved in the 20 July plot —, in the rank of major from 1942 to 1944. While there, he met Colonel Hans Speidel and others. In October 1945, Braubach was released from American captivity.

After World War II, Braubach was considered politically unencumbered. He had only been a member of the National Socialist People's Welfare organization and the Reich Air Protection League. As a conservative, he maintained a "clear distance" from "politically compromised historians and journalists of the extreme right" such as Günther Franz, Herbert Grabert and Kurt Ziesel. Braubach played an important role in the reconstruction of the University of Bonn in the post-war period. In 1946 he was elected vice dean and denazification commissioner. Braubach became elected vice dean in 1946/47, dean in 1947/48, and rector of the University of Bonn in 1959/60. From 1953 he was a member of the Commission for the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties in Bonn and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich.

From 1957 he was chairman of the Association for the Study of Modern History, which sought to study history from the 16th to the 20th centuries. Braubach was a member of the advisory board of the German Historical Institute in Paris and remained so until 1969. He dealt with events in recent history in his seminars at an unusually early date. In the summer semester of 1946, Braubach organized a course on the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944. As early as 1950, he was supervising a doctoral thesis in contemporary history. His research report Der Weg zum 20. Juli 1944 (The Road to July 20, 1944), published in 1953, was the "best critical review of the available material" at the time.

As an academic instructor, Braubach supervised five habilitations and 140 doctorates. His students included Andreas Biederbick, Eugen Ewig, Manfred Funke, Eduard Hegel, Herbert Hermesdorf, Hans Horn, Josef Jansen, Georg Kliesing, Herbert Lepper, Horst Günther Linke, Walter Loch, Günther von Lojewski, Friedrich J. Lucas, Wolfram Köhler, Norbert Matern, Klaus Müller, Konrad Repgen, Horst Romeyk, Dieter Schuster, Stephan Skalweit, Karl Stommel, and Hermann Weber. His student Repgen succeeded Braubach as chair in Bonn in 1967.

Braubach produced three dozen books, more than 200 essays and probably up to 1000 reviews during the decades of his work. His research focused on European history of the late 17th and 18th centuries, the history of the Rhineland in the same period, contemporary history until 1945, and the history of the University of Bonn. On his 70th birthday, 32 treatises were published collected under the title Diplomacy and Intellectual Life in the 17th and 18th Centuries. His main work is the five-volume biography of Prince Eugene, published from 1963 to 1965. Braubach presented a complete account of Rhenish history from 1648 to 1815. He was one of the authors for the Gebhardt, the respected handbook for the history teacher and student. In the 1931 edition, he was the author for the period from 1740 to 1815. In the post-war editions, he covered the period from 1648 to 1815.

Braubach was awarded numerous scientific honors and memberships for his research. Braubach was elected to the advisory board of the Görres Society as early as 1930. He was a full member of the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (1951), an honorary member of the Institute for Austrian Historic Research (1958), a corresponding member of the Philosophical-Historical Class of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (1964), and a member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts (1970). Braubach also became Commander of the Order of Academic Palms (1961). Honorary doctorates were awarded to him by the universities of Clermont-Ferrand (1958) and Vienna (1965). In 1964, a Festgabe was dedicated to Braubach. Braubach was also awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany with star in 1969 and the Grand Decoration of Honor in Silver with star in 1971. Braubach had been a full member of the Historical Commission for Westphalia since October 19, 1951.

Braubach died in 1975 at the age of 76 in a Bonn clinic. Braubach had already lost his wife on July 6, 1957. He was buried on June 26, 1975, at the Poppelsdorf Cemetery in Bonn. Already on October 28, 1975, the Beethoven House Association had honored him in a ceremony with an obituary by Paul Egon Hübinger. On April 27, 1976, a memorial service was held by the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Bonn. A centenary celebration was held by the History Department of the University of Bonn and the Historical Society for the Lower Rhine on April 10, 1999.

Works

• Max Franz von Österreich letzter Kurfürst von Köln und Fürstbischof von Münster. Versuch einer Biographie auf Grund ungedruckter Quellen (1925)
• "Die österreichische Diplomatie am Hofe des Kurfürsten Clemens August von Köln 1740–1756," Annalen des historischen Vereins für den Niederrhein […], No. 111/112 (1927–1928), pp. 1–80, 1–70.
• Die erste Bonner Universität und ihre Professoren. Ein Beitrag zur rheinischen Geistesgeschichte im Zeitalter der Aufklärung (1947)
• Kurköln. Gestalten und Ereignisse aus zwei Jahrhunderten rheinischer Geschichte (1949)
• Versailles und Wien von Ludwig XIV. bis Kaunitz. Die Vorstadien der diplomatischen Revolution im 18. Jahrhundert (1952)
• Die Lebenschronik des Freiherrn Franz Wilhelm von Spiegel zum Diesenberg. Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Aufklärung in Rheinland-Westfalen (1952)
• Prinz Eugen von Savoyen. Eine Biographie (1963–1965)
  • Vol. 1: Aufstieg (1963)
  • Vol. 2: Der Feldherr (1964)
  • Vol. 3: Zum Gipfel des Ruhms (1964)
  • Vol. 4: Der Staatsmann (1965)
  • Vol. 5: Mensch und Schicksal (1965)
• Diplomatie und geistiges Leben im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. Gesammelte Abhandlungen (1969)
• Wilhelm von Fürstenberg (1629–1704) und die französische Politik im Zeitalter Ludwigs XIV (1972)

Bibliography

• Becker, Thomas P. (1999). "Bibliographie Max Braubach (1923–1974)," Annalen des Historischen Vereins für den Niederrhein, insbesondere das Alte Erzbistum Köln, Vol. CCII, pp. 75–93.

References

• Annalen des Historischen Vereins für den Niederrhein, insbesondere das Alte Erzbistum Köln 202 (1999)
  • (Therein: Konrad Repgen, "Max Braubach. Leben und Werk," pp. 9–41; Christoph Kampmann, "Eine Biographie „alten Stils“? Prinz Eugen und seine Zeit in der historischen Forschung seit 1965," pp. 43–62; Rudolf Morsey, "Max Braubach und die Zeitgeschichte," pp. 63–74; Thomas P. Becker, "Bibliographie Max Braubach (1923–1974)," pp. 75–93; Idem, "Doktoranden von Max Braubach 1930–1973," pp. 95–104.)
• Eduard Hegel: Max Braubach † In: Annalen des Historischen Vereins für den Niederrhein, insbesondere das Alte Erzbistum Köln, Bd. 178 (1976), S. 303–306.
• Ursula Lewald, "Max Braubach 1899–1975," Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter 40 (1976), pp. VII–XII.
• Johannes Spörl, "Max Braubach 1899–1975," Historisches Jahrbuch 95 (1975), pp. 170–87.
• Konrad Repgen, "In Memoriam Max Braubach," Historische Zeitschrift 224 (1977), pp. 82–91.
• Konrad Repgen, Stephan Skalweit, eds., Spiegel der Geschichte. Festgabe für Max Braubach zum 10. April 1964. Münster: Aschendorff (1964)
• Konrad Repgen, "Max Braubach. Person und Werk". In: Ulrich Pfeil, ed., Das Deutsche Historische Institut Paris und seine Gründungsväter. Ein personengeschichtlicher Ansatz. München: Oldenbourg, pp. 104–17.
• Joachim Scholtyseck, "Vom Spanischen Erbfolgekrieg zum Widerstand gegen Hitler. Der Universalgelehrte Max Braubach (1899–1975)". In: 150 Jahre Historisches Seminar. Profile der Bonner Geschichtswissenschaft. Erträge einer Ringvorlesung. Siegburg: Franz Schmitt, pp. 179–93.

External links

• Works by Max Braubach at German National Library
• Works by Max Braubach at German Digital Library