Lothar Gall (born 3 December 1936 in Lötzen,

East Prussia East Prussia ; german: Ostpreißen, label= Low Prussian; pl, Prusy Wschodnie; lt, Rytų Prūsija was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 1 ...

, present day

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

) is a German historian known as "one of German liberalism's primary historians". He was professor of history at

Goethe University Frankfurt Goethe University (german: link=no, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) is a university located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It was founded in 1914 as a citizens' university, which means it was founded and funded by the wealt ...

from 1975 until his retirement in 2005. Gall's doctoral thesis examined the political thought of

Benjamin Constant Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque (; 25 October 1767 – 8 December 1830), or simply Benjamin Constant, was a Franco- Swiss political thinker, activist and writer on political theory and religion. A committed republican from 1795, he backed ...

, and its influence in

Vormärz ' (; English: ''pre-March'') was a period in the history of Germany preceding the 1848 March Revolution in the states of the German Confederation. The beginning of the period is less well-defined. Some place the starting point directly after th ...

Germany. His next book was a regional study of

liberalism Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality and equality before the law."political rationalism, hostility to autocracy, cultural distaste for ...

Baden Baden (; ) is a historical territory in South Germany, in earlier times on both sides of the Upper Rhine but since the Napoleonic Wars only East of the Rhine. History The margraves of Baden originated from the House of Zähringen. Baden i ...

between 1848 and 1871. This informed an influential 1975 article about the effects of the

1848 revolution The Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Springtime of the Peoples or the Springtime of Nations, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe starting in 1848. It remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in Europea ...

upon German liberalism:"Liberalismus and 'bürgerliche Gesellschaft': Zue Charakter und Entwicklung der liberalen Bewegung in Deutschland", ''Historische Zeitschrift'' 220 (1975), pp.324-56 Gall argued that the revolution transformed liberalism from a constitutional movement committed to a

classless society The term classless society refers to a society in which no one is born into a social class. Distinctions of wealth, income, education, culture, or social network might arise and would only be determined by individual experience and achievem ...

of burghers to an economically bourgeois ideology committed to free-market

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private pr ...

. His biography of

Otto von Bismarck Otto, Prince of Bismarck, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg (, ; 1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898), born Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, was a conservative German statesman and diplomat. From his origins in the upper class of ...

has been translated into English. His father is

Franz Gall Franz Josef Gall (; 9 March 175822 August 1828) was a German neuroanatomist, physiologist, and pioneer in the study of the localization of mental functions in the brain. Claimed as the founder of the pseudoscience of phrenology, Gall was an ear ...

, a General Lieutenant in the Wehrmacht, who was killed in Italy in December 1944.

Works

* ''Benjamin Constant; seine politische Ideenwelt und der deutsche Vormärz'', 1963. * ''Das Bismarck-Problem in der Geschichtsschreibung nach 1945'', 1971. * ''Bismarck'', 1980. Translated by J. A. Underwood as ''Bismarck, the white revolutionary'', 1986. * ''Europa auf dem Weg in die Moderne, 1850-1890'', 1984. * ''Bürgertum in Deutschland'', 1989. * (ed.) ''Stadt und Bürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert'', 1990. * (ed.) ''Vom alten zum neuen Bürgertum : die mitteleuropäische Stadt im Umbruch 1780-1820'', 1991. * (ed.) ''Neuerscheinungen zur Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts'', 1992. * (ed.) ''Stadt und Bürgertum im Übergang von der traditionalen zur modernen Gesellschaft'', 1993. * (ed. with Dieter Langewiesche) ''Liberalismus und Region : zur Geschichte des deutschen Liberalismus im 19. Jahrhundert'', 1995 * ''Die Deutsche Bank, 1870-1995'', 1995. * (ed.) ''Bürgertum und bürgerlich-liberale Bewegung in Mitteleuropa seit dem 18. Jahrhundert'', 1997 * ''Milestones - Setbacks - Sidetracks: The Path to Parliamentary Democracy in Germany, Historical Exhibition in the Deutscher Dom in Berlin'' (2003), exhibit catalog; heavily illustrated, 420pp * ''Wilhelm von Humboldt: Ein Preusse von Welt'', Propyläen (2011), 436 pp.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gall, Lothar 1936 births Living people 20th-century German historians People from Giżycko People from East Prussia German male non-fiction writers Knights Commander of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 21st-century German historians