Hans Hirsch

Hans Hirsch (27 December 1878 – 20 August 1940) was an Austrian academic who worked between 1903 and 1914 on the vast "Monumenta Germaniae Historica" sources project, and subsequently became a full-time professional historian. He accepted an ordinary (full) professorship in history at the German University (as it became known after 1918) in Prague as the war ended, transferring in 1926 to the University of Vienna. The focus of his research and teaching was on medieval history. In parallel he built for himself a reputation as a specialist on the (recently "discovered" - or, at least, reclassified by the media) "Sudeten Germans", which marked him out as a more than averagely politicised historian. His application for party membership was still outstanding at the time of his death, however.

Life Provenance and early years Johann "Hans" Hirsch An obituary published in 1942 refers to his having lost his father early, Still at Vienna, he received his doctorate, apparently in 1903, in return for a study on the eleventh century foundation records of the Hirsau Reformist Monasteries. The work was supervised by Engelbert Mühlbacher. His first year was spent in Berlin, where he completed the Names Register for a Carolingian volume. In 1904 he was able to return to Vienna, where he was based for the next ten years, albeit with frequent study visits to work on monastic (and other) archives in situ. The Habilitation degree opened up the way to a life-long career in the universities sector, and from 1908 Hirsch combined his job for the "Monumenta Germaniae Historica" with work as a "Privatdozent" (loosely, "tutor") for medieval history and Historical Studies Support Topics, attached to Vienna University. Hirsch accepted an extraordinary professorship in history at the university.

At Prague he emerged as a keen backer of his student Josef Pfitzner, an opinionated young man whose nationalist convictions would later overflow into National Socialism. The two shared a number of underlying assumptions on Germanness and related subjects, on which they would continue to correspond till at least 1939.

In 1922 Hirsch received the offer of a professorship at Berlin, filling the vacancy created by the sudden death the previous year of his fellow Austrian, Michael Tangl. He turned it down, however. (According to one set of estimates the proportion of Prague citizens giving German as their first language had declined from 33% to just under 9% between 1857 and 1900.) It was during this period that Hirsch established his credentials as a "Volkstumsforscher" (loosely, "folklore researcher") and a specialist on the so-called "Sudeten Germans". In 1921 his professorship in history was redefined as a professorship in medieval history and historical studies support topics. He also took his turn in terms of administrative responsibilities, serving during 1923/24 as the dean for the entire Philosophy Faculty. In 1929 he added to his portfolio of responsibilities, taking over from Oswald Redlich as head of the "Österreichische Institut für Geschichtsforschung" ("Austrian Institute for History Research" - as it was known at that time). He would remain in the post till his death in 1940. During those eleven years the job, which placed him at the interface between historical scholarship and post-democratic politics, became increasingly challenging. He served a term during 1936/37 as Philosophy Faculty Dean, following through in 1939 with a year as University pro-rector. Between 1928 and 1935 he was a member of the "Zentraldirecktion" (loosely, "central directorate" ) of "Monumenta Germaniae Historica" and head of its "Vienna Diplomata" department, for which he had worked before the First World War. He continued to be engaged with the project during a process of growing politicisation - in respect of which he was not always quiescent - till shortly before his death in 1940.

Following his return to Vienna, Hirsch also continued to work on his own research. His approach remained scrupulously grounded in source documentation, never straying very far from it. The first project after 1926 involved teaming up with his professorial predecessor, Emil von Ottenthal. Together they worked on a volume of "The records of Emperor Lothar III and Empress Richenza" which was published in 1927. Re-printed editions were produced in 1957 and 2011. After this he returned to similar work on the "Diplomata" (original source documents) of Lothar's "anti-king", Konrad III.

In the context of his appointment as university pro-rector in 1939, Hirsch applied for party membership. Austria had been integrated into a newly enlarged German state in March 1938, and under the Hitler government it would have been unthinkable senior members of the university not to be party members. However, in August 1940, when he died, Hirsch's application for party membership still had not been processed.

Works In his lectures and other teaching activities, Hirsch was a consistent exponent of the "Greater Germany" solution. The argument had shifted as the numerical preponderance and political dominance of German speakers had diminished in response to major population shifts in much of the Austrian empire during the closing decades of the nineteenth century, followed by the collapse of the empire in 1918. In this context it was easy for Hirsch to view the 1938 annexation of residual Austria into Germany in positive terms. The difficulty that arose for many life-long "Greater Germany" advocates in Catholic Austria was that integration into Austria meant subordination to Berlin, in a traditionally Protestant version of Germany which since 1933 had been governed according to the precepts of Adolf Hitler. In a response to a question on a university questionnaire, in 1938 Hirsch described himself as a "sponsoring member of the SS" (ein "Förderndes Mitglied der SS"). This meant supporting the government-backed SS paramilitaries by paying a membership subscription, but avoiding active participation in their activities, on grounds of age, infirmity or other cause(s). Although his reference to this membership is frequently cited, there is little indication that Hirsch ever discussed his relationship with Nazi paramilitarism, so it becomes hard to know whether the answer on the questionnaire was anything more than an attempt to preserve and/or advance his career at the university. The initial euphoria which greeted the German invasion in 1938 quickly gave way to disillusionment for Hirsch. He discovered that he had little in common with National Socialism, and he was deeply sceptical over the launch of another major European war. The way in which he had robustly backed a Jewish student in January 1938 when antisemitic members of the university faculty had attempted to block the man's Habilitation degree indicated that he had no sympathy for Hitlerite race hatred. Wilfried Krallert, Gerhart B. Ladner, Hans Sturmberger, Hermann Wiesflecker and Paul Zinsmaier. He was particularly supportive of Otto Brunner, whose precocious abilities he spotted early on, and to whom he became something of a mentor.

Hans Hirsch produced a number of the books over the years. Eighty years after his death, some are of more significance than others. Nevertheless, his documents-based approach and his avoidance of too much conscious interpretation gives his scholarship a lasting usefulness untrammelled any excess of unfashionable theorizing. Of particular interest is "Die Klosterimmunität seit dem Investiturstreit, Untersuchungen zur Verfassungsgeschichte des deutschen Reiches und der deutschen Kirche" ("The Monastic Community since the Investiture Struggles: Investigations on the Constitutional History of German statehood and the German Church"), first published in 1913, and re-issued on a number of occasions subsequently. Similarly important was "Die hohe Gerichtsbarkeit im deutschen Mittelalter" (loosely, "High Jurisdiction in the German Middle Ages"), first published in 1922 and re-issued in an expanded version in 1958, incorporating a substantial epilogue from Theodor Mayer. Both these books are written with an astonishing mastery of sources and with a sureness of touch in the application of the modalities and tools of document research, in respect of which Hirsch was something of a pioneer. During the middle 1930s he was also a member of the so-called Spann Circle, created by admirers of the populist-universalist philosopher-sociologist Othmar Spann. In 1935 Hirsch contributed articles to the movement's monthly journal Ständisches Leben. In 1936 Hans Hirsch was elected to a corresponding membership of the Berlin-based Prussian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. In 1938 he received an honorary doctorate from the (German) University of Prague.