Arnold Otto Erich Brandenburg (31 July 1868 in

Stralsund Stralsund (; Swedish: ''Strålsund''), officially the Hanseatic City of Stralsund (German: ''Hansestadt Stralsund''), is the fifth-largest city in the northeastern German federal state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania after Rostock, Schwerin, Neub ...

– 22 January 1946 in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...

) was a

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...

. His main work ''Die Reichsgründung'' ("The Founding of the Reich", 2 vols. plus 1 vol. with documents) covers the origins of the modern German national movement and the founding of the

Second Empire Second Empire may refer to: * Second British Empire, used by some historians to describe the British Empire after 1783 * Second Bulgarian Empire (1185–1396) * Second French Empire (1852–1870) ** Second Empire architecture, an architectural styl ...

by Bismarck. The German historian

Hans Herzfeld Hans may refer to: __NOTOC__ People * Hans (name), a masculine given name * Hans Raj Hans, Indian singer and politician ** Navraj Hans, Indian singer, actor, entrepreneur, cricket player and performer, son of Hans Raj Hans ** Yuvraj Hans, Punjabi ...

calls it "critical and reliable in its judgment" ("solide und kritisch zuverlässig im Urteil") and Herbert Helbig in

Neue Deutsche Biographie ''Neue Deutsche Biographie'' (''NDB''; literally ''New German Biography'') is a biographical reference work. It is the successor to the ''Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie'' (ADB, Universal German Biography). The 26 volumes published thus far cover ...

"objective, deliberate and not without a critical attitude towards the problems of Bismarck's Empire" ("sachlich, kühl und nicht ohne kritische Einstellung zu der inneren Problematik des Bismarckreiches").Herbert Helbig: Brandenburg, Erich. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB). Vol 2. Berlin 1955, p. 517. In 1933 Brandenburg signed the ''

Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High-Schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic State Bekenntnis der Professoren an den Universitäten und Hochschulen zu Adolf Hitler und dem nationalsozialistischen Staat officially translated into English as the Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High-Schools to Ad ...

''.

Literary works (selection)

* ''Die deutsche Revolution 1848'', 1912
online
* ''Die Reichsgründung'', 2 vols., 1916/1923 (online
volume 1volume 2
* ''Die materialistische Geschichtsauffasung'', 1920 * ''Von Bismarck zum Weltkriege'', 1924 ** ''From Bismarck to the World War: A History of German Foreign Policy 1870-1914'' (1933)
online in English

Notes

References

* 20th-century German historians 1868 births 1946 deaths German male non-fiction writers {{germany-historian-stub