Meinecke, Friedrich.

Die Idee der Staatsräson in der neueren Geschichte.

Erste Ausgabe. München / Berlin, Druck und Verlag von R. Oldenbourg, 1924. 15 cm x 22 cm. 542 Seiten. Original Hardcover. Sehr schoene Ausgabe in der originalen Verlagsleinen-Bindung. Sehr gut erhaltenes, ehemaliges Bibliotheksexemplar in welchem die alten Besitzvermerke mit dezenten Schildchen fachmaennisch unkenntlich gemacht wurden. Sehr gut erhalten. Innen ganz sauber, ohne Eintragungen.

Enthaelt u.a. folgende Kapitel: Die ersten Gegner des Machiavellismus in Frankreich: Gentillet und Bodin / Botero und Boccalini / Campanella / Die Verbreitung von der Lehre der Staatsräson in Italien und Deutschland / Gabriel Naude / Das Zeitalter des reifen Absolutismus / Pufendorf / Grotius, Hobbes und Spinoza / Machiavellismus, Idealismus und Historismus im neueren Deutschland: Hegel, Fichte, Ranke, Treitschke etc.

Friedrich Meinecke (October 20, 1862 – February 6, 1954) was a German historian, with national liberal and anti-semitic views, who supported the Nazi invasion of Poland. After World War II, as a representative of an older tradition, he criticized the Nazi regime, but continued to express anti-semitic prejudice. In 1948, he helped to found the Free University of Berlin in West Berlin, and remained an important figure to the end of his life.
Meinecke was best known for his work on 18th- and 19th-century German intellectual and cultural history. The book that made his reputation was his 1908 work Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat (Cosmopolitanism and the National State), which traced the development of national feelings in the 19th century. Starting with Die Idee der Staatsräson (1924), much of his work concerns the conflict between Kratos (power) and Ethos (morality) and how to achieve a balance between them.

One of his students was Heinrich Brüning, the future Chancellor. Under the Weimar Republic, Meinecke was a Vernunftsrepublikaner (republican by reason), someone who supported the republic as the least bad alternative. In 1918 he had been one of the founders of the German Democratic Party.
Under the Third Reich, Meinecke had some sympathy for the regime, especially in regard to its early anti-semitic laws. After 1935, Meinecke fell into a state of semi-disgrace, and was removed as editor of the Historische Zeitschrift. Though Meinecke remained in public a supporter of the regime, he privately became increasingly bothered by what he regarded as the violence and crudeness of the Nazis. Nevertheless, he openly described himself as “antisemitic”, and while he was willing to have Jewish friends and colleagues, the Nazi persecution of Jews never bothered him much. After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, he praised it on a letter to Siegfred August Kaehler: “You will also have been delighted by this splendid campaign”.
One of Meinecke’s best-known books, Die Deutsche Katastrophe (The German Catastrophe) of 1946, sees the historian attempting to reconcile his lifelong belief in authoritarian state power with the disastrous events of 1933-45. His explanation for the success of National Socialism points to the legacy of Prussian militarism in Germany, the effects of rapid industrialisation and the weaknesses of the middle classes, but Meinecke also asserts that Hitlerism benefited from a series of unfortunate accidents, which had no connection with the earlier developments in German history. Meinecke interpreted National Socialism as an “alien force occupying Germany”, and he also expressed prejudice against Jews. Meinecke claimed that Jews were responsible for antisemitism and blamed them for the fall of liberalism. The German catastrophe represented two classic themes of antisemitism: resentment based on Jewish economic activities and their alleged “character”. In 1948, Meinecke helped to found the Free University of Berlin.
British historian E. H. Carr cites him as an example of a historian whose views are heavily influenced by the Zeitgeist: liberal during the German Empire, discouraged during the interwar period and deeply pessimistic after World War II. (Wikipedia)

• Keywords: Conservatism · Political History · Political Ideas · Political Philosophy
• Language: Deutsch
• Inventory Number: 200116AB

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