Wilfried Loth
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Wilfried Loth (born 29 August 1948) is a German historian and political scientist.


Life

Wilfried Loth was born 29 August 1948 in
Wadern Wadern is a municipality in the federal state Saarland, which is situated in the southwest of Germany. It is part of the district Merzig-Wadern. Wadern consists of 13 urban districts with approximately 16.000 inhabitants. With 143 inhabitants per ...
. From 1966 to 1972, he studied
German studies German studies is the field of humanities that researches, documents and disseminates German language and literature in both its historic and present forms. Academic departments of German studies often include classes on German culture, German hi ...
,
History History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...
,
Philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
and
Education Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
at
Saarland University Saarland University (german: Universität des Saarlandes, ) is a public research university located in Saarbrücken, the capital of the German state of Saarland. It was founded in 1948 in Homburg in co-operation with France and is organized in si ...
. He obtained his doctorate in 1974. From 1974 to 1984 he worked there as an assistant lecturer and in 1983 he obtained his ''
habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...
'' in
Modern history The term modern period or modern era (sometimes also called modern history or modern times) is the period of history that succeeds the Middle Ages (which ended approximately 1500 AD). This terminology is a historical periodization that is applie ...
with a dissertation on ''Catholics in the German Empire: Political Catholicism in the Crisis of Wilhelminian Germany''. From 1984 to 1985 he was Professor of Political Science at the
Free University of Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in political science and t ...
, then Professor of Political Science at the
University of Münster The University of Münster (german: Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, WWU) is a public university, public research university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. With more than 43,000 students and over ...
from 1985 to 1986. From 1986 to 2014 he was Professor of Modern History at the
University of Essen The University of Duisburg-Essen (german: link=no, Universität Duisburg-Essen) is a public research university in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. In the 2019 ''Times Higher Education World University Rankings'', the university was awarded ...
. From 1993 to 1997, Loth was President of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (''Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut'') in Essen at the North Rhine-Westphalia Academic Centre. From 2012 to 2014 he was President of the Franco-German Committee of Historians. In 2013 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the
Babeș-Bolyai University The Babeș-Bolyai University ( ro, Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai , hu, Babeș-Bolyai Tudományegyetem, commonly known as UBB) is a public research university located in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. UBB has a long academic tradition, started by Universitas ...
in the Roumanian town of
Cluj-Napoca ; hu, kincses város) , official_name=Cluj-Napoca , native_name= , image_skyline= , subdivision_type1 = Counties of Romania, County , subdivision_name1 = Cluj County , subdivision_type2 = Subdivisions of Romania, Status , subdivision_name2 ...
. His major academic interests include: the history of
Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
and of
Socialism Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...
, the history of the German Empire, the history of France in the twentieth century, the history of the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
, and the history of European integration. One of his controversial positions is that on the
Stalin Note The Stalin Note, also known as the March Note, was a document delivered to the representatives of the Western Allies (the United Kingdom, French Fourth Republic, France, and the United States) from the Soviet Union in separated Germany including ...
of 1952, which he regarded as more serious than the majority of historians.


Works

His works include: * * * * * ''Die Teilung der Welt. Geschichte des Kalten Krieges 1941–1955'', new revised edition, dtv, Munich 2000, . (standard work, first published 1980) * ''Geschichte Frankreichs im 20. Jahrhundert.'' Fischer, Frankfurt 1995, * ''Stalins ungeliebtes Kind. Warum Moskau die DDR nicht wollte'', Rowohlt, Berlin 1994 * ''Das Kaiserreich. Obrigkeitsstaat und politische Mobilisierung'', dtv, Munich 1996, * ''Die Sowjetunion und die deutsche Frage. Studien zur sowjetischen Deutschlandpolitik von Stalin bis Chruschtschow'', Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, Chapters in: * ''Deutscher Katholizismus im Umbruch zur Moderne'', Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1991, . * ''Wilhelm Pieck. Aufzeichnungen zur Deutschlandpolitik 1945–1953'', Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1994 (with Rolf Badstübner) * ''Verwandlungspolitik: NS-Eliten in der westdeutschen Nachkriegsgesellschaft'', Frankfurt am Main 1998, . (with Bernd-A. Rusinek) * ''Das europäische Projekt zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts'', Leske + Budrich, Opladen 2001, . * ''Entwürfe einer europäischen Verfassung. Eine historische Bilanz'', Europa-Union-Verlag, Bonn 2002, . * ''Europäische Gesellschaft. Grundlagen und Perspektiven'', Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2005, . * together with Jost Dülffer: ''Dimensionen internationaler Geschichte'', Oldenbourg, Munich 2012, . * ''States and the Changing Equations of Power,'' in Global Interdependence: The World After 1945, Akira Iriye, ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).


References


External links


Reviews of works

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Loth, Wilfried 1948 births 20th-century German historians German political scientists Academic staff of the University of Duisburg-Essen Academic staff of the University of Münster Academic staff of the Free University of Berlin Living people German male non-fiction writers 21st-century German historians