Fritz Kern
Fritz Kern was a German medievalist historian who became involved in politics. He held teaching chairs on History at Frankfurt University between 1914 and 1922, and at Bonn University between 1922 and 1946.
Life
Provenance
Max Friedrich Ludwig Hermann Kern - always identified in sources simply as Fritz Kern - was born into an upper middle-class Catholic family in Stuttgart. Both his parents came from legal-administrative "establishment" families, and were members of what would have been considered Württemberg's "minor aristocracy". Hermann von Kern, his father, was a senior government administrator who later became a "Staatsrat" for the Kingdom of Württemberg. His mother, born Marie von Hufnagel, was a daughter of Georg Ludwig von Hufnagel, a lawyer who towards the end of his career served as senate president in Stuttgart. Fritz Kern had a sister who was four years younger than he was and a brother who was eleven years his junior.Formal education
Following two years in a pre-school, Fritz Kern was still only eight years old when he was enrolled at Stuttgart's prestigious Karls-Gymnasium, a "humanist" secondary school with a strong focus on Greek and Roman culture in its curriculum. He continued to attend this school for ten years. Kern was a scholarly pupil, winning many prizes including one, in 1902 for a speech he delivered as part of the celebrations for of the emperor's birthday, on the intriguing subject "Frederick the Great as Crown Prince". After passing his school final exams, during 1902/03 he spent two terms at the University of Lausanne studying Jurisprudence, out of respect for his family's traditions. Lausanne was chosen both on account of its climate and the perceived purity of the lakeside air, thought likely to reduce his tendency to Bronchitis and in order that he might perfect his French. However, in 1903 he decided he wished to become not a lawyer but an historian. His father agreed to this change of direction only with the greatest reluctance. There followed six terms as a history student, of which the first two were spent studying at Tübingen where he was taught by Georg von Below, who became a life-long friend. Von Below had a reputation as a fierce defender of prevailing traditions of political and constitutional historiography: he was more than happy to share with students his own fascination with the precision of the legalistic presentational style habitually involved with constitutional history. In 1904 Kern moved to the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. Here he passed through the school of Karl Zeumer, a noted specialist in legal history. Another tutor at Berlin by whom he was particularly strongly influenced was Dietrich Schäfer, an old fashioned German nationalist whose lectures on medieval history positively glowed with enthusiasm as he related the deeds and exploits of the more heroic among the German emperors of the medieval period. Schäfer was an unapologetic advocate of the "Greater Germany" solution to the problem of what to do about Austria. On 15 August 1906, still aged only 22, Kern received his doctorate at Berlin for a piece of work entitled "Dorsualkonzept und Imbreviatur. Zur Geschichte der Notariatsurkunde in Italie". His dissertation earned him a "magna cum laude" certification from the assessors and a "valde laudabilis" commendation from his own supervisor. It was published towards the end of that same year as a book. His doctoral research concerned the history of deeds issued by notaries in Italy: it was supervised by Michael Tangl.Academic progression
Over the next two and a half years Kern made a number of lengthy "archive study trips", visiting France and England in 1908 and, possibly most importantly, Italy during the first part of 1909. Between 1906 and 1908, working under the auspices of Karl Zeumer he was employed as a research assistant for the long-running Monumenta Germaniae Historica project, on which scholars were by this time working on the third volume. Kern's old tutor, Karl Zeumer, had taken responsibility for the period covered by the reign of Charles IV - roughly the third quarter of the fourteenth century. Zeumer was in failing health and losing his sight. Kern provided extensive practical help in terms of collating, transcribing and publishing primary source document. During his foreign visits over this period he was able to work both on the Monumenta Germaniae Historica and on his own complementary researches which concerned the evolution of state institutions and political developments more generally in Medieval France.His marriage towards the end of 1909 prompted the realisation that he could not afford to lead a life of total independence. Fritz Kern received his habilitation on 10 November 1909, this time from the University of Kiel. The qualification opened up the path to a life-long university career, and he now accepted an academic post at Kiel as a "Privatdozent". The post involved no class teaching duties, and he was for the most part able to determine his own academic timetabling. There were also important developments in his personal life at this time. He earned his habilitation with a piece of work on the early centuries of French expansionist policy up until 1308. The dissertation was published in book form in 1910. Although it highlights its author's formidable skills as a meticulous researcher and interpreter of sources, the book also repeatedly discloses elements of the underlying Franco-German antagonism which were features of the intensified Franco–German rivalry that followed the Franco-Prussian War, but which post-1945 appear as distractions in a work focused on developments in the Medieval period. It is fair to add that during the id-1920s, apparently influenced by the foreign policy approach of Gustav Stresemann, Kern came round to a more mainstream view of the evolution of the France during the medieval period, seeing the issues in the context of European political evolution more broadly. With regard to the twentieth century, however, his fevered preoccupation with Franco–German enmity would endure. In 1913, despite his relative youth, Fritz Kern was offered and accepted an extraordinary professorship at Kiel.
Government service
In July 1914 he accepted the offer of a full professorship in Medieval and Modern History at the newly launched University of Frankfurt. At 30, he was the youngest of the university's professors. Weeks later, war broke out. For Fritz Kern it became an over-riding duty to seek out men of political influence and make himself available for "political" work: between 1914 and 1918 he undertook government work, at times in place of and at times in parallel with, his university responsibilities. Under-secretary of State Zimmermann persuaded the university authorities that Kern's first term at the new university should be replaced by a "holiday" whereby his linguistic abilities and familiarity with "abroad" might be used in the service of the imperial state. His initially assignment on behalf of the Foreign Ministry involved travelling to Rome where he worked on influencing the press. There were also briefer missions on behalf of the German Foreign Ministry to Bucharest and Constantinople. Kern was also able to engage in networking during his time working for the foreign ministry, becoming acquainted with Foreign Minister von Bülow, who later turned out to be a valuable political ally.After working for some weeks as a simultaneous interpreter among the prisoners of war being held at the processing facility at Döberitz, in August 1915 he took charge of setting up and then running an "archive" for the "Nachrichten-Offizier-Berlin". Although described in some sources as an archive, the department he headed up also specialised in various other document related activities, involving coded messaging, helping to brief German intelligence operatives sent to work abroad and producing false identity papers for them. Between 1916 and 1918 he was in effect commuting on a slightly irregular basis between Berlin and the family home at Kronberg, at the end of the local railway line into Frankfurt, ten miles away. Given the stress and pressures of combining family duties with two demanding parallel careers in different parts of the country, his health - never robust - deteriorated: during several months directly following the war he largely absented himself from the public sphere, and was seriously ill during the winter of 1918/1919.
During the war and directly after it Kern became an increasingly vocal and fervent advocate of an intensely nationalist-conservative position, grappling passionately with the "war guilt" question. Notably, he teamed up with Grand admiral von Tirpitz during 1918/19 to compose an autobiographical memoir on behalf of the latter. The access afforded to the private papers and insights of a "larger than life" figure who had known the emperor well, served in the imperial navy - mostly in the upper ranks - for more than half a century, and combined his naval service with ministerial office for nearly two decades, was an invaluable resource for Kern as an historian and as a constant participant on the fringes of politics. On a personal level the two remained firm friends until von Tirpitz died, in 1930. The Tirpitz memoire was viewed by critics as explosive because of the way, they thought, it carefully sought to put the role of the German military in an "appropriate" light. The book also highlighted the importance of sustaining Germany as a bulwark on behalf of western Europe against "Bolshevism". Despite his support for conservatism, Kern was careful to steer clear of the extremist right. Nevertheless, at least during the immediate post-war period, Kern was no admirer of the new republican order, and viewed the emergence of democratic institutions and practices during 1918/1919 with deep misgivings.
After the war
December 1919 marked a reinvigorated return to political engagement as Fritz Kern became the producer of Die Grenzboten, a weekly literary and political magazine steeped in the still potent National liberalism that had emerged during the nineteenth century. His own contributions dealt with characteristic passion about the tragic denouement of the war, returning frequently to material included in the Tirpitz memoire. Over the next few years he engaged in politics through his parallel career as a journalist and commentator. Meanwhile, in 1922 he moved down-river, from Frankfurt to the University of Bonn, where Friedrich von Bezold, by now aged 73, had retired the previous year. Kern succeeded to the Bonn History professorship. His wife and children remained in the family home just outside Frankfurt for more than a year, but in July 1923 a suitable newly constructed "professor house" became available for rent in the Baumschulwäldchen quarter of the town and they joined him in Bonn.The period was one of domestic and international crisis, with the value of money collapsing and French forces still occupying the Rhineland as the government in Paris sought to exploit problems over reparations as justification for the permanent annexation of this coal-rich part of Germany, or at least the permanent conversion of it into a quasi-autonomous "buffer state" under French influence. Towards the end of 1923 Kern was involved in obtaining weapons from the army for the students "defending themselves against Rhineland separatists" who had launched an anti-government insurrection in Aegidienberg and the surrounding countryside. The background to the incident is one of desperate economic austerity coupled with considerable political complexity and disagreement over finding a way ahead: Kern's interest was presumably fuelled by the fact that the so-called Siebengebirge insurrection took place a short distance upriver from Bonn where he was now working.
During the middle and later 1920s various events took place which went some way towards "normalising" Germany's relations with the rest of Europe. These included the conclusion, in 1922, of the Treaty of Rapallo with Russia and the various Locarno Treaties of 1925, along with the Dawes Plan of 1925 and the Young Plan of 1929 which dealt with the war reparations issue. Through this period, and even more clearly during the early 1930s, Fritz Kern's own attitudes to the international situation also evolved. He became increasingly committed to cultural exchange and mutual understanding between nations and peoples, and to the need for pan-European reconciliation. As the Great Depression's economic crisis was followed by destructive levels of unemployment, political polarisation and parliamentary deadlock, during the run-up to 1933, Fritz Kern in his journalism and teaching became preoccupied with preventing a National Socialist government from coming to power in Germany. Any retreat from his traditionalist ultra-conservatism remained at best ambivalent, however. During the early months of the Hitler government the security services were principally concerned with targeting communists. Kern was clearly no communist. Nevertheless, he had for many years been warning Germans against Hitler, and as the nature of the regime became ever clearer he was clearly, as a known opponent of the National Socialists in some danger. Between 1933 and 1944 Fritz Kern remained in Germany, choosing a form of "Inner emigration" which, especially before 1939, seems to have involved staying in Bonn and focusing on his university responsibilities.