Volume 299, Issue 2 -

The article discusses the scientific activities of Otto Brunner (1898–1982) in January 1945, on the eve of the final breakdown of the „Third Reich“. Professor of Medieval History in Vienna and – after World War II – in Hamburg, Brunner deeply influenced following generations of historians. In June 1944, at the request of the „Dienststelle Rosenberg“, the „Parteikanzlei“ under the direction of Martin Bormann conceded Brunner the „u.k.“ status („unabkömmlich“ / reserved occupation). In mid-January, Brunner participated in a conference of medievalists in Braunau, which took place in the house of Hitler’s birth. Only a few days later, he was presumably the last speaker in a series of lectures in Berlin, which was entitled „Weltgeschichtliche Bewährungsstunden“ (Hours of Probation in World History) and had been initiated by the „Auslandswissenschaftliches Institut“ (Institute of Foreign Countries Studies) of the University of Berlin in winter semester 1944/45. Brunner, coming directly from Vienna on January 21st, gave a lecture on one of the most famous battles of German history, the so called „Lechfeldschlacht“ near Augsburg, where glorious emperor Otto „the Great“ and his troops had fought victoriously against Hungarian warriors. The article analyses the motives of Brunner’s Berlin visit in the face of the setting of the „battle of Berlin“ and explains Brunners’s reasoning over the Lechfeld battle. Brunner’s never published lecture is contextualised by dealing with three other lectures, which had taken place in the course of „Weltgeschichtliche Bewährungsstunden“ and which had been given also by most prominent German historians, e. g. Helmut Berve (about the Battle of Thermopylae).

Ludwig Camerarius, born in Nuremberg, was employed in the government of the Palatinate from 1598 to 1626, whereafter he worked as the Swedish ambassador in Den Haag. Until today, the only biography of this humanist and politician was written in 1955 by Friedrich Hermann Schubert. Despite some peculiarities in general form, style and judgment, the book is valuable even today due to the large amount of material used. Therefore, Anton Schindling was right to re-edit it, extended by another important article of Schubert on the same topic as well as further informations on the life and the work of the author. Camerarius was responsible for state matters during a time in which important decisions in the Palatinate politics were to be made. Without being a follower of the strict Reformed Church, he nevertheless based his decisions and actions first and foremost on arguments of religion and confession. He did not understand the necessity of pragmatic decisions in diplomatic affairs. Instead of considering the actual possible options, he concentrated on principles. For him, the election of the Bohemian King was the opportunity to weaken the Catholic-Habsburg party in the Holy Roman Empire as well as in Europe. In the public opinion, he therefore appeared – together with Abraham Scultetus – as the main culprit for the failure of the „Winterkönigtum“. Whether these accusations were true, cannot be determined with certainty today. In his position as the leader of the Palatinate exile government, Camerarius tried – incessantly, but nevertheless unsuccessfully – to forge alliances between Protestant countries against the Catholic party. His influence as the Swedish ambassador was not very strong because he neglected the economic factor which grew more and more important to his employer. After his retirement, he remained an astute observer of the political development and focused on private studies – such as his family records and the compilation of autographs. In 1646, for instance, he edited letters of Hubert Languet to Joachim Camerarius, the friend of Melanchthon, and to his son with the same name – Ludwig’s father.

World War I led to a profound re-assessment of technological and scientific knowledge, and turned its transfer across national borders into a problem of security politics. The following article discusses this change by addressing the intense debates on economic espionage during the Weimar Republic, and advocates a combination of the research fields of the history of knowledge societies and security history. After 1918 I.G. Farben was confronted with a wave of espionage cases that seemed to endanger the competitiveness of the corporation on the world market. At the same time governmental security agencies interpreted economic espionage as a continuation of war by other means and as affirmation of the despised post-war order of the Treaty of Versailles. The debate was stimulated in 1920/21 by accusations of the Bayer Corporation against its American competitor Du Pont of clandestinely obtaining German know-how. The case prompted I.G. Farben to lobby for stricter laws against economic espionage using the concept of “economic high treason” to liken the betrayal of trade secrets to a foreign country to the disclosure of military secrets. While these plans for a new law failed, I.G. Farben succeeded in establishing a counterintelligence and detection bureau that worked so closely with governmental agencies that it in fact assumed the role of a branch of the police, thus establishing a novel kind of security public-private partnership.