Uwe Danker

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File:Danker, Uwe2013.JPG
Uwe Danker in 2013

Uwe Danker (born January 14, 1956) is a German historian.

Biography

Uwe Danker was born in Westerland on Sylt. After graduating from high school, Danker began his teacher training at the Christian Albrechts University of Kiel (CAU) with a particular focus on the subjects of history and sociology. He completed this training in 1981 with the state examination for the higher teaching profession. Danker then deepened his studies in history and completed a history degree in 1986 with a dissertation on the subject of Robber Bands in the Old Kingdom. Danker's thesis was evaluated summa cum laude and awarded a prize by the university.

Danker was then hired by the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH) as a research assistant in 1986. From there, he moved to the position of press spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group in Schleswig-Holstein in June 1988. The previous press spokesman, who had been involved in the Barschel affair, had shortly before taken up a position as an advisor in the state chancellery of Minister-president Engholm.

Danker held the position of press spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group until January 1994, when he applied for a professorship at the Institute for History and its Didactics at the Flensburg University of Education (BU-Flensburg), which was in the process of being transformed from a teacher training college (PH) into a university. At that time, one did not need to be habilitated for this position. The professorship was linked to one of the three directorships at the Institute for Schleswig-Holstein Contemporary and Regional History (IZRG), which was newly founded by the state of Schleswig-Holstein in 1992 and was based in Schleswig. The IZRG had been established by the SPD state government after non-university circles had campaigned to deal with the long-neglected regional history of National Socialism in Schleswig-Holstein. In addition to individual politicians and scholars, these circles included the Working Group for the Economic and Social History of Schleswig-Holstein, the "Working Group for the Study of National Socialism in Schleswig-Holstein" ("AKENS") and the "Advisory Council for History", which was close to the SPD and to which Uwe Danker belonged. Danker, as a historian and SPD politician, had been very committed to the founding of this institute and had ultimately been successful with the other initiatives. The board of trustees of the new institute included these three associations and specialist scholars as well as a full professor from Kiel University, representatives of the Society for Schleswig-Holstein History and other academic institutions. The Institute's Board of Trustees unanimously approved the appointment of Danker to the position.

Danker eventually got the job through the Ministry of Culture, although the fact that "Uwe Danker was an SPD member and functionary gave the opposition parties ammunition" against the candidate.[1] Danker's contract gave him the C3 professorship as a probationary position for 5 years.

At the beginning of 1998, the University of Flensburg proposed to extend Danker's expiring contract as of January 1999. The Ministry of Culture, however, ordered that the position be advertised. When it became clear during the appointment process that the chair holder, Uwe Danker, would not even be among the proposed scholars due to disputes among the historians at the University of Flensburg, the Ministry cancelled the tendering process and announced that "Danker's performance would be evaluated separately". After that, a decision would be made about his continued employment "as agreed in his employment contract." In this situation, the "Board of Trustees of the IZRG again came out clearly in favor of Danker." The evaluation was positive, and shortly thereafter Danker was appointed a civil servant for life. This procedure was contradicted in several press releases. Jörn Eckert, a law professor at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel, among others, criticized the procedure as non-transparent and politically influenced.[2]

After Danker's contract was extended, the IZRG made a successful new start with Uwe Danker and Robert Bohn. In 2002, the Institute was able to celebrate its 10th birthday in the presence of numerous guests, holding a conference on National Socialism in the regions.[3] The Schleswiger Nachrichten reported on November 9, 2002, that the Institute had since "gained wide recognition."

When Danker gave a lecture in Kiel's town hall in December 2011 on the topic of Kiel as a city of revolution — starting point for the first German democracy, the reporter of the Kieler Nachrichten dubbed him "one of the most respected historians in the country."[4]

Danker lives with his family in Kronshagen near Kiel. On June 15, 2022, Danker was given a farewell retirement ceremony by his university. On this occasion, Danker was surprised with a Festschrift from his colleagues.

Research

Danker writes mainly about the history of Schleswig-Holstein, the National Socialist Period and its pre- and posthistory. In this section, only a few of Danker's important works are mentioned. Since 1985, Danker has been a member of the board of the SPD-affiliated Society for Politics and Education Schleswig-Holstein, under whose aegis the regional history yearbook Demokratische Geschichte is published. Danker has been co-editor of this yearbook since 1985. The yearbook deals with the history of Schleswig-Holstein from the Middle Ages to the recent past. The history of National Socialism plays a major role in this.

Starting in 1997, Danker played a key role in a multi-year project involving the newspapers of the Schleswig-Holsteinische Zeitungsverlag, NDR radio and NDR television, and the IZRG. For example, he supported the 2001 NDR documentary: Der Führer ging - die Nazis blieben - Nachkriegskarrieren in Norddeutschland ("The Führer left - the Nazis stayed - Postwar careers in northern Germany"), through his extensive expert advice on the subject.

He is also heavily involved in the Jahrhundertstory project. The aim of this project was to encourage citizens, especially schoolchildren, to research regional history and regional stories in Schleswig-Holstein. The starting point was a total of 40 newspaper articles by Danker on special pages of the newspapers, in which he wrote about specific selective events and occurrences in the 20th century in a wide variety of topics. The richly illustrated articles were accompanied by information about sources on the respective topic, so that the students were able to do research on the subject in their own region. The publishing house provided a homepage in which the respective student projects could first present their findings online. At the same time, NDR radio and television picked up on individual topics. The project involved 200 project groups from many schools in Schleswig-Holstein. There were several hundred readers who participated in the project. Danker's articles and the students' response were recorded in a three-volume book that was published from 1998 to 2000. Topics of the first volume included, for example, "The Turn of the Century," "The First World War," "The First State Election in 1947," the "Disputes over the Brokdorf Nuclear Power Plant," and the "Snow Catastrophe" of the winter of 1978/79 The accompanying book was published in 3 volumes from 1998 to 2000 and was called The Story of the Century.

In 2007, Danker published the book Schleswig-Holstein and National Socialism with Astrid Schwabe. The book was distributed to schools by the Ministry of Culture, where it is used to teach history about the period. In a review on the history portal H-Soz-Kult, historian Frank Bajohr praised the book as, among other things, an "exemplary overall presentation of National Socialism in a region."

In 2012, Danker published a study on the NSDAP Gauleiter, Oberpräsident of the Province of Schleswig-Holstein, and Reichskommissar in the occupied eastern territories in the Baltic States and Belarus during the war against the Soviet Union in World War II, Hinrich Lohse in the book of a conference on the Reichskommissariat Ostland, co-edited by Danker, Robert Bohn, and Sebastian Lehmann-Himmel. In 2017, Danker published, together with Lehmann-Himmel, the book accompanying the empirical study commissioned by the Schleswig-Holstein state parliament in 2014 and completed in 2016 under the title Landespolitik mit Vergangenheit (State Politics with a Past) on the National Socialist exposure of political leadership personnel in the early years of the state of Schleswig-Holstein.[5]

Works

  • Räuberbanden im Alten Reich um 1700 – ein Beitrag zur Geschichte von Herrschaft und Kriminalität in der frühen Neuzeit (1988)
  • Die Geschichte der Räuber und Gauner (2001)
  • Am Anfang standen Arbeitergroschen. 140 Jahre Medienunternehmen der SPD (2003)
  • Schleswig-Holstein und der Nationalsozialismus (2005; with Astrid Schwabe)
  • Geschichte erleben. Blicke auf Schleswig-Holstein 1850 bis heute (2008; with Arne Bewersdorff and Astrid Schwabe)
  • Filme erzählen Geschichte. Schleswig-Holstein im 20. Jahrhundert (2010; with Astrid Schwabe)
  • Volksgemeinschaft und Lebensraum – die Neulandhalle als historischer Lernort (2014)
  • Landespolitik mit Vergangenheit. Geschichtswissenschaftliche Aufarbeitung der personellen und strukturellen Kontinuität in der schleswig-holsteinischen Legislative und Exekutive nach 1945 (2017; with Sebastian Lehmann-Himmel)
  • Geschichte im Internet (2017; with Astrid Schwabe)

Selected publications

  • "„Vorkämpfer des Deutschtums“ oder„entarteter Künstler“? Nachdenken über Emil Nolde in der NS-Zeit". In: Jahrbuch Demokratische Geschichte, Vol. XIV (2001), pp. 149–88.
  • "Parlamentarische Kontinuitätsstudien zur NS-Zeit. Methodische Potenziale und Grenzen am Beispiel des Falls Schleswig-Holstein". In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Vol. LXV, No. 1 (2017), pp. 75–101.

As editor

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  • 50 Jahre nach den Judenpogromen (1989; with Andreas Rink)
  • Geschichtsumschlungen. Sozial- und kulturgeschichtliches Lesebuch. Schleswig-Holstein 1848–1948 (1996; with Gerhard Paul and Peter Wulf)
  • Der Hesterberg – 125 Jahre Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie und Heilpädagogik in Schleswig (1997)
  • "Standgericht der inneren Front" – Das Sondergericht Altona/Kiel 1932–1945 (1998; with Robert Bohn)
  • Die Jahrhundertstory (1999; with Stephan Richter; 3 volumes)
  • Ausländereinsatz in der Nordmark. Zwangsarbeitende in Schleswig-Holstein 1939–1945 (2001)
  • Zwangsarbeitende im Kreis Nordfriesland 1939–1945 (2004)
  • Die NS-Strafjustiz und ihre Nachwirkungen (2003; with Heribert Ostendorf)
  • Reimer Hansen – Aus einem Jahrtausend historischer Nachbarschaft. Studien zur Geschichte Schleswigs, Holsteins und Dithmarschens (2005)
  • Reichskommissariat Ostland. Tatort und Erinnerungsobjekt (2012; with Sebastian Lehmann and Robert Bohn)
  • Strukturwandel in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts (2014; with Thorsten Harbeke and Sebastian Lehmann)
  • Schleswig-Holstein 1800 bis heute. Eine historische Landeskunde (2014; with Utz Schliesky)
  • Die NS-Volksgemeinschaft — zeitgenössische Verheißung, analytisches Konzept und ein Schlüssel zum historischen Lernen? (2017; with Astrid Schwabe)
  • Jochen Steffen: Ein politisches Leben (2018; with Jens-Peter Steffen)
  • Geteilte Verstrickung: Elitenkontinuitäten in Schleswig-Holstein (2021; 2 volumes)

Notes

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External links

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  1. ↑ Omland, Frank (1999). "Akens-Vorstand – Der Streit am und über das IZRG". In: Informationen zur Schleswig-Holsteinischen Zeitgeschichte, No. 36 (1999), pp. 71–72.
  2. ↑ Eckert, Jörn (1999). "Berufungsszenen in Deutschlands Norden. "Keine Alternative zu transparentem Verfahren"." In: Hochschulpolitik aktuell, No. 1 (1999), pp. 30–31.
  3. ↑ Ruck, Michael; Karl Heinrich Pohl (2003). Regionen im Nationalsozialismus. Bielefeld: IZRG Schriftenreihe.
  4. ↑ Küppers, Jürgen (14. Dezember 2011). "Der Revolutionsstadt fehlt die Revolutionsstimmung," Kieler Nachrichten.
  5. ↑ Stüben, Heike (27. April 2016). "Verdrängt statt aufgearbeitet. Noch brauner als ohnehin vermutet: In Schleswig-Holstein hatten mehr Nachkriegspolitiker eine NS-Vergangenheit als in anderen Ländern. Das fanden Historiker im Auftrag des Landtags nun heraus. Und für die Regierungen fiel ihr Fazit noch drastischer aus," Kieler Nachrichten.
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