Horst Bartel


Horst Bartel was a German historian and university professor. He was involved in most of the core historiography projects undertaken in the German Democratic Republic. His work on the nineteenth-century German Labour movement places him firmly in the mainstream tradition of Marxist–Leninist historical interpretation.

Life

Horst Bartel was born in Cottbus. His father worked in street construction. By the time Bartel left school, in 1942, war had broken out. He started a teacher training course at Orlau in Upper Silesia, but he left the course in 1944 without completing it. In the meantime, in 1943 he joined the Hitler Youth organisation, and during the same year was conscripted for National Labour Service. As Germany's eastern frontier moved west to the accompaniment of industrial scale ethnic cleansing, he appears to have moved west; in 1945 he was captured by the Americans who held him as a prisoner of war between May and September 1945, initially at Heilbronn and subsequently at Linz.
Between September 1945 and 1946 Bartel worked as a messenger at a hospital in Cottbus. In April 1946 he was one of many thousands in what had by now become Germany's Soviet occupation zone to join the newly formed Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED / Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands) which a few years later would become the ruling party for a new standalone "East German" state. Later the same year he embarked on an accelerated on-the-job teacher-training course. The course included work as a teacher at a primary school at Peitz, a small town a short distance to the north of Cottbus. In Bartel's case, however, teaching was quickly superseded, still in 1946, by a period of university level study at Berlin's Humboldt University, focusing on history, German studies and pedagogy. His student studies continued until 1949.

Selected publications

Monographs and essays

Friedrich Engels' Kampf für die Schaffung einer marxistischen Arbeiterpartei in Deutschland. ''Engels-Konferenz Berlin 1955. 1st edition Dietz, Berlin 1956.Die richtungsweisende Hilfe von Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels für die Zeitung "Der Sozialdemokrat" im Kampf um die revolutionäre Einheit der Partei in der Periode des Sozialistengesetzes. Marx und Engels im Kampf um ein revolutionäres deutsches Parteiorgan. Zu einigen Problemen der Hilfe von Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels für den Kampf des "Sozialdemokrat" gegen das Sozialistengesetz. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1961
  • in the "Autorenkollektiv": August Bebel. Eine Biographie. 1st edition Dietz, Berlin 1963.August Bebel - ein Leben für den Kampf um den Sozialismus. In: Einheit. Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1963, p. 105 ff.Die Durchsetzung des Marxismus in der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung im letzten Drittel des 19. Jahrhunderts. Probleme der zweiten Hauptperiode der Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung. In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft. Vol. 14, Berlin 1966, pp. 1334–1371 Der interne Juni-Entwurf zum Erfurter Programm. In: International review of social history. Produced by Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis. Vol. 12, Amsterdam 1967, P. 292-302 Arbeiterbewegung und Reichsgründung. Akademie-Verl, Berlin 1971.Karl Kautsky. Sein Anteil an der Entstehung und Propagierung des Erfurter Programms. In: Gustav Seeber: Gestalten der Bismarckzeit. Vol. 1. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1978, p. 426-453.
  • with Wolfgang Schröder and : Das Sozialistengesetz 1878 - 1890. Illustrierte Geschichte des Kampfes der Arbeiterklasse gegen das Ausnahmegesetz. Dietz, Berlin 1980.
  • with Dieter Fricke and Peter Bachmann: Wörterbuch der Geschichte.'' Dietz, Berlin 1983.

As editor / compiler

Deutsche Geschichte in Daten.. Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1967.Sachwörterbuch der Geschichte Deutschlands und der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung. 2 volumes. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1969–1970.Geschichte. ''Lehrbuch der Oberschule. 1969 edition. Volk und Wissen, Berlin 1969.Marxismus und deutsche Arbeiterbewegung. Studien zur sozialistischen Bewegung im letzten Drittel des 19. Jahrhunderts. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970.Arbeiterbewegung und Reichsgründung. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1971.
  • with Ernst Engelberg: Die großpreußisch-militaristische Reichsgründung 1871. Voraussetzungen und Folgen''. 2 volumes, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1971.

Evaluation

Horst Bartel was one of an initially small minority of committed communists in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany at the end of the war who not only worked together on constructing historical seminars and institutes, but together transformed the context of historical study so that it might comply with the precepts of the East German ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED / Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands).
, a prolific historian who was also noted as an uncompromising critic of the German Democratic Republic and its one party dictatorship, contended that Bartel, along with like-minded colleagues such as Walter Bartel, Karl Bittel, Rudolf Lindau and Albert Schreiner, lacked necessary academic competence, and that even within party corridors were widely viewed as simple propagandists.

Awards and honours