Richard Fester

Richard Fester (20 September 1860 – 5 January 1945) was a German historian.

Life Richard Fester was born in Frankfurt where his father, Dr. Anselm Fester, worked as a lawyer-notary. Richard attended secondary school in the city until 1881 and then volunteered for a year of military service. His habilitation qualification followed, from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, on 18 November 1893. In 1925, Fester drew widespread attention to himself in the context of the Munich "Stab in the back" trial by accusing the Social Democratic movement of treason.

Régime change early in 1933 triggered the launch in Germany of a twelve-year Nazi dictatorship. After 1935 Fester emerged from retirement to work at the antisemitic National Institute for the History of the New Germany ("Reichsinstitut für Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands"), serving on the institute's "Committee of Experts". Here he issued various antisemitic speeches and essays, such as one describing Judaism as a "Ferment of National Decomposition" (Ferment der nationalen Dekomposition, 1940) and as a "Destructive element of the Nation" (Zersetzungselement der Völker, 1941).

Weeding The Second World War ended a few months after Fester's death. From May 1945, a large part of what had been Germany was administered as the Soviet occupation zone, giving way in October 1949 to the German Democratic Republic a separate German state. Within this area the authorities compiled a list of literature to be weeded out. Several of Fester's published writings from the Nazi period were included on the list, including those identified above. In 1947, his work "Friedrich Wilhelm I., Friedrich der Große und die Anfänge deutscher Staatsgesinnung" covering Prussian expansion in the eighteenth century was added to the list, joined in 1953 by his analysis of international developments between 1914 and 1919.