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Michael Stürmer (born September 29, 1938) is a right-wing German historian arguably best known for his role in the ''Historikerstreit'' of the 1980s, for his geographical interpretation of German history and for an admiring 2008 biography of the Russian politician Vladimir Putin. ==Life and work== Born in Kassel, Germany, Stürmer received his education in history, philosophy and languages at the University of Marburg, at the Free University of Berlin and at the London School of Economics. From 1973 to 2003 he held a professorship at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg and at various times has served as a guest lecturer at the Sorbonne, Harvard University, and the Institute for Advanced Study. Also, he is on the advisory board of OMFIF where he regularly participates in various meetings regarding the financial and monetary system. In the 1980s Stürmer worked as an advisor and speech-writer to the West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Stürmer works as chief correspondent for the newspaper ''Die Welt'', published by the Axel Springer AG publishing group. Stürmer specializes in the history of the Second Reich of 1871-1918. He began his career on the political left in the 1960s, but during the course of the 1970s, he moved to the right.〔Muller, page 35.〕 The turning point in Stürmer's politics occurred in 1974 when the Social Democratic Party of Germany ''Land'' government of Hesse attempted to abolish history as subject in the Hesse educational system and to replace it with "social studies".〔 Stürmer played a major role in campaigning for the defeat of SPD government in the 1974 elections.〔 Starting in the early 1980s Stürmer became a well-known figure in the Federal Republic, with frequent contributions to the ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung'' newspaper, his editorship of a series of popular book series entitled "The Germans and their Nation" and holding a series of lectures for the general public.〔Muller, page 36.〕 Stürmer argues that "the future is won by those who coin concepts and interpret the past".〔 In a series of his essays published in book form in 1986 as ''Dissonanzen des Fortschritts'' (''Dissonances of Progress''), Stürmer claimed that democracy in West Germany cannot be taken for granted; that though Germany does have a democratic past, the present system of the Federal Republic developed in response to past totalitarian experiences of both left and right; that geography has played a key role in limiting the options of German governments; and that given the Cold War, the ideas of neutrality for the Federal Republic or reunification with East Germany were not realistic.〔Muller, page 37.〕 Stürmer is arguably best known for his advocacy of a geographical interpretation of German history. In a geographical variant of the ''Sonderweg'' theory, Stürmer has argued that what he regards as Germany's precarious geographical situation in Central Europe has played the deciding role in the course of German history, and that coping with this has left successive German rulers no other choice but to engage in authoritarian government.〔 Evans 1989, page 104 〕〔 Burleigh & Wippermann, page 19. 〕 In Stürmer's opinion, the "belligerence" of the ''Reich'' came about through a complex interplay of Germany's location in the "middle of Europe" surrounded by enemies and of "democratic" forces in the domestic sphere.〔 Stürmer has asserted that Germany - confronted with dangers from a revanchist France and an aggressive Russia, and as the "country in the middle" - could not afford the luxury of democracy.〔 Stürmer regards Imperial Germany as more democratic and less "Bonapartist" than historians such as Hans-Ulrich Wehler have claimed, and that these democratic tendencies came to the fore during the Revolution of 1918-1919.〔 In Stürmer's view, it was too much democracy rather than too little that led to the end of the ''Kaiserreich'' as the "restless ''Reich''" collapsed because of its internal contradictions under the pressures of World War I.〔 In the mid-1980s Stürmer sat on a committee - together with Thomas Nipperdey and Klaus Hildebrand - in charge of vetting the publications issued by the Research Office of the West German Ministry of Defense.〔Evans 1989, page 44. 〕 The committee attracted some controversy when it refused to publish a hostile biography of Gustav Noske.〔 During the late 1980s, Stürmer played a prominent role in the ''Historikerstreit''. Left-wing historians criticized him for an essay he wrote entitled "Land Without History" published in the ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung'' on April 25, 1986, in which Stürmer claimed that Germans lacked a history to be proud of, and called for a positive evaluation of German history as a way of building national pride.〔 Stürmer, Michael "History In a Land Without History", pages 16-17 from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1993 pages 16-17. 〕 Stürmer argued that Germans were suffering from a "loss of orientation" caused by the lack of a positive view of their history〔Stürmer, Michael "History In a Land Without History" pages 16-17 from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1993 page 16〕 In Stürmer's view, the fall of the Weimar Republic was caused by "loss of orientation" caused by the secularization of a previously religious country.〔Stürmer 1993, page 16〕 Stürmer argued that West Germany had an important role in the world to play, could not play that role because the lack of a past to be proud of was " seriously damaging the political culture of the country" and wrote that it was "morally legitimate and politically necessary" for Germans to have a positive view of their history〔Stürmer, Michael "History In a Land Without History" pages 16-17 from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1993 page 17〕 In Stürmer's view, what was needed was a campaign by the government, the media and historians to create a "positive view" of German history. In Stürmer's opinion, the Third Reich was a major block towards a positive view of the German past, and what was needed was a focus on the broad sweep of German history as opposed to the 12 years of Nazi Germany as a way of creating a national identity that all Germans could take pride in.〔Kershaw, page 239.〕 Stürmer wrote the "loss of orientation" caused by the absence of a German national identity led to a "search for identity".〔Evans 1989, page 21.〕 In Stürmer's opinion, this search was crucial because of West Germany was "now once more a focal point in the global civil war waged against democracy by the Soviet Union".〔 Because of the "loss of orientation", Stürmer argued that West Germans were not standing up well to the "campaign of fear and hate carried into the Federal Republic from the East and welcomed within like a drug".〔 Stürmer claimed that Konrad Adenauer's policy in the 1950s of not prosecuting those responsible for crimes against humanity and war crimes during the Third Reich was a wise one and that it was a huge mistake to begin prosecutions in the 1970s as it destroyed any prospect of positive feelings about the German past.〔 Writing in 1986, Stürmer complained that recent opinion polls showed 80% of Americans were proud of being American, that 50% of the British were proud of being British, and 20% of West Germans were proud of being German, and argued until national pride could be restored, West Germany could not play an effective part in the Cold War.〔 At the 1986 Römerberg Colloquia (a gathering of intellectuals held annually in Frankfurt), Stürmer argued that Germans had a destructive "obsession with their guilt", which he complained led to a lack of a positive sense of German national identity.〔Evans 1989, page 103.〕 Likewise, Stürmer argued that the legacy of 1960s radicalism was an over-emphasis on the Nazi period in German history.〔 Stürmer called for ''Sinnstiftung'', to give German history a meaning that would allow for a positive national identity.〔 At the colloquia, Stürmer stated: "We cannot live by making our past...into a permanent source of endless guilt feelings".〔Evans 1989, pages 103-104.〕 At the same gathering, Stürmer spoke of "the deadly idiocies of the victors of 1918", which led to a loss of a German national identity, and led to the collapse of the Weimar Republic as Germans confronted with the crises of modernity without a positive national identity, opted for the Nazi solution.〔 At the same time, Stürmer complained that the Allies had the same mistake after 1945 as they had in 1918, laying a burden of guilt on Germans that prevented Germans from having positive feelings about their past.〔 Stürmer complained that "as Stalin's men sat in judgment in Nuremberg" proved that what he regards as the self-destructive German obsession with Nazi guilt was the work of outsiders serving their own aims.〔 During the same session, Stürmer attacked those historians who argued that Germany started World War I in 1914, and instead blamed France and Russia for the First World War.〔 Moreover, Stürmer argued that whatever Germany did to start the First World War was only a defensive reaction imposed by geography.〔 The sessions of the 1986 Römerberg Colloquia involving Stürmer were stormy〔Evans 1989, page 173〕 When it become time to print the proceedings of the Colloquia, Stürmer refused to allow his contributions to be published, complaining of the "defamations and denunciations" he alleged to had been subjected to〔Evans 1989, page 173〕 When Stürmer's contribution, the essay "Weder verdrängen noch bewältigen: Geschichte und Gegenwartsbewusstein der Deutschen" was published in the Swiss journal ''Schweizer Monatshefte'', it was heavily edited by Stürmer to remove many of his more controversial statements about the need for Germans to forget about Nazi crimes in order to feel good about their past.〔Evans 1989, page 173〕 Despite his editing of his essay, Stürmer refused to allow it to be published in an anthology about the ''Historikerstreit'' out of the concern it might damage his reputation as a historian〔Evans 1989, page 173〕 Stürmer's critic, the British historian Richard J. Evans stated that the remarks he quoted Stürmer as making at the 1986 Römerberg Colloquia came from a tape-recorded record at the Colloquia, and not from the edited version provided by Stürmer〔Evans 1989, page 173〕 Jürgen Habermas began his article “A Kind of Settlement of Damages” in the ''Die Zeit'' newspaper on July 11, 1986 with an attack on Stürmer. Habermas took Stürmer to task for his statement that history served the purpose of integrating the individual into the wider community, and as such history had the needed to provide a “higher meaning” to create the proper national consciousness in the individual, who otherwise would lack this national consciousness〔Habermas, Jürgen “A Kind of Settlement of Damages” pages 34-45 from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, 1993 page 34.〕 Habermas accuse Stürmer on marching to a “geopolitical drumbeat” with his depiction of German history determined by geographical factors requiring authoritarian government.〔Habermas, Jürgen “A Kind of Settlement of Damages” from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, 1993 page 43.〕 Habermas wrote Stürmer was trying to create a "vicarious religion" in German history intended to serve as a "...kind of NATO philosophy colored with German nationalism"〔Habermas,Jürgen "A Kind of Settlement of Damages" page 34-44 from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, 1993 pages 42-43〕 In response to Habermas’s essay, Stürmer in a letter to the editor of the ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung'' published on August 16, 1986 wrote that Habermas was confusing the “national question” with the “German question”, and argued that the German predicament was due to Germany’s geographical situation in the heart of Europe.〔Stürmer, Michael “Letter to the Editor of the ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung'', August 16, 1986” pages 61-62 from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, 1993 page 61.〕 Stürmer denied seeking to “endow” history with a “higher meaning”, and accused Habermas of seeking to do that〔 Stürmer charged that Habermas had created an “indictment that even fabricates its own sources”.〔 Stürmer ended his letter with the remark about Habermas "It's a shame about this man who once had something to say".〔 Repying to Stürmer, Habermas in his "Note" of February 23, 1987 accused Stürmer of having the "chutzpah" to deny his own views when he wrote that he was not seeking to "endow" history with a "higher meaning"〔Habermas, Jürgen "Note, February 23, 1987" pages 260-262 from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, 1993 page 260〕 Habermas quoted from Stürmer's book ''Dissonanzen des Fortschritts'' to support his contention"〔Habermas, Jürgen "Note, February 23, 1987" pages 260-262 from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, 1993 pages 260-261〕 In response to Habermas, Stürmer in his "Postscript" of April 25, 1987 accused Habermas of being a Marxist who was responsible for "the invention of fact-free scholarship"〔Stürmer, Michael "Postscript, April 25, 1987" pages 266-267 from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, 1993 page 266.〕 Stürmer claimed that Habermas had played an "obscene role" in the West German election of 1987 by labeling anyone he disliked as a Nazi, and that the reasons for Habermas's attack on him were help the SPD in the election.〔 Stürmer charged that Habermas was guilty of misquotation, and of making confusing statement such as his claim that he was working to create a "NATO philosophy" while seeking to close Germany to the West.〔 Many of Stürmer's critics in the ''Historikerstreit'' such as Hans-Ulrich Wehler and Jürgen Kocka accused Stürmer of attempting to white-wash the Nazi past, a charge Stürmer vehemently rejected.〔 In response to Stürmer's geographical theories about how Germany's "land in the middle" status had forced authoritarianism on the Germans, Kocka argued in an essay entitled "Hitler Should Not Be Repressed by Stalin and Pol Pot" published in the ''Frankfurter Rundschau'' on September 23, 1986 that “Geography is not destiny”〔Kocka, Jürgen "Hitler Should Not Be Repressed by Stalin and Pol Pot" pages 85-92 from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1993 page 91.〕 Kocka wrote that both Switzerland and Poland were also "lands in the middle", and yet neither country went in the same authoritarian direction as Germany〔 Martin Broszat accused Stürmer of attempting to create an "ersatz religion" in German history that Broszat argued was more appropriate for the pre-modern era then 1986〔Broszat, Martin "Where the Roads Part" pages 125-129 from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, 1993 pages 126-128〕 Hans Mommsen wrote Stürmer's attempts to create a national consensus on a version of German history that all Germans could take pride in was a reflection that the German rightists could not stomach modern German history, and were now looking to create a version of the German past that German rightists could enjoy〔Mommsen, Hans "The Search for the 'Lost History'" pages 101-113 from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, 1993 page 101.〕 Mommsen charged that to find the "lost history", Stürmer was working towards "relativizing" Nazi crimes to give Germans a history they could be proud of〔Mommsen, Hans "The Search for the 'Lost History'" pages 101-113 from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, 1993 page 109.〕 However, Mommsen argued that even modern right-wing German historians might have difficulty with Stürmer's "technocratic instrumentalization" of German history, which Mommsen claimed was Stürmer's way of "relativizing" Nazi crimes〔 In another essay, Mommsen argued that Stürmer's assertion that he who controls the past also controls the future, his work as a co-editor with the ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung'' newspaper which had been publishing articles by Ernst Nolte and Joachim Fest denying the “singularity” of the Holcaust, and his work as an advisor to Chancellor Kohl should cause "concern" with historians.〔Mommsen, Hans "The New Historical Consciousness" pages 114-124 from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, 1993 page 115.〕 Stürmer was attacked by Habermas and Wehler for writing the following: Habermas accused Stürmer of believing that "a pluralism of values and interests leads, when there is no longer any common ground...sooner or later to social civil war".〔Muller, page 38.〕 Hans-Ulrich Wehler called Stürmer's work "a strident declaration of war against a key element of the consensus upon which the socio-political life of this second republic has rested heretofore".〔 Stürmer's defenders such as the American historian Jerry Muller argued that Wehler and Habermas were guilty of misquoting Stürmer, and of unjustly linking him with Ernst Nolte as a sort of guilt by association argument.〔Muller, pages 38 & 40.〕 In response to his critics, Stürmer in an essay entitled "How Much History Weights" published in the ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung'' on November 26, 1986 wrote that France was a major power in the world because the French had a history to be proud of, and claimed that West Germany could only play the same role in the world if only they had the same national consensus about pride in their history as did the French.〔Stürmer, Michael "How Much History Weighs" pages 196-197 from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1993 pages 196-197〕 Stürmer used as the example of the sort of history that he want to see written in Germany Fernand Braudel's ''The Identity of France'' volumes.〔Stürmer, Michael "How Much History Weighs" pages 196-197 from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1993 page 197〕 Stürmer wrote that Braudel and the other historians of the Annales School had made geography the centre of their studies of French and European history while at the same time promoting a sense of French identity that gave the French a history to be proud of.〔 Stürmer went on to argue that the German people had not had a really positive view of their past since the end of the First Reich, and this lack of a German identity to be proud of was responsible for all of the disasters of German history since then〔 Stürmer asserted "All of our interpretations of Germany had collapsed"〔 As a result, Stürmer claimed that at present, the German people were living in historical "rubble", and that the Federal Republic was doomed unless the Germans once again had a sense of history that provided the necessary sense of national identity and pride〔 The classicist Christian Meier, who was president of the German Historical Association in 1986 wrote that Stürmer was seeking to make history serve his conservative politics by arguing that Germans needed a history capable of creating a national identity that would allow Germans to face the challenge of the Cold War with pride and confidence in their future〔Meier, Christian “Not a Concluding Remark” pages 177-183 from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1993 page 181〕 Meier argued that Habermas was correct in expressing his concerns about Stürmer’s work, but asserted that Habermas had wrongly accused the Atlanticist Stürmer of seeking to revive the original concept of the ''Sonderweg'', that of Germany as a great Central European power that was neither of the West nor of the East〔 That aside, Meier felt that Stürmer’s claim that the future belonged to those who controlled the past, and that it was the duty of German historians to ensure the right sort of future by writing the right sort of history was troubling〔Meier, Christian “Not a Concluding Remark” pages 177-183 from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1993 page 181〕 Imanuel Geiss wrote that Stürmer was acting within his rights in expressing his right-wing views, and arguing against Habermas claimed there was nothing wrong in claiming that geography was a factor in German history〔Geiss, Imanuel "On the ''Historikerstreit''" pages 254-258 from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1993 pages 256-257.〕 The British historian, Richard J. Evans who was one of Stürmer's fiercer critics accused Stürmer in his 1989 book ''In Hitler's Shadow'' of being an apparent believer that: Along the same lines, Evans criticized Stürmer for his emphasis on the modernity and totalitarianism of National Socialism, the role of Hitler, and the discontinuities between the Imperial, Weimar and Nazi periods.〔Evans 1989, page 114.〕 In Evans's view, the exact opposite was the case with National Socialism as a badly disorganized, anti-modern movement with deep roots in the German past, and the role of Hitler much smaller than one Stürmer credited him with.〔Evans 1989, page 115.〕 Evans accused Stürmer of having no real interest in the collapse of Weimar, and only using the Nazi ''Machtergreifung'' as a way of making contemporary political points.〔Evans 1989, page 116.〕 Evans denounced Stürmer for writing a laudatory biography of Otto von Bismarck, which he felt marked a regression to the Great man theory of history and an excessive focus on political history.〔Evans 1989, page 119.〕 In Evans's opinion, a social historical approach with the emphasis on society was a better way of understanding the German past.〔 In his 1989 book about the ''Historikerstreit'', ''In Hitler's Shadow'', Evans stated that he believed that the exchanges during the ''Historikerstreit'' had destroyed Stürmer's reputation as a serious historian.〔Evans 1989, page 123.〕 Much of Stürmer's work since the ''Historikerstreit'' has been concerned with creating the sense of national identity he feels Germans are missing. In his 1992 book, ''Die Grenzen der Macht'', Stürmer suggested that German history be viewed in the long-term starting from the 17th century to the 20th century to find the "national and trans-national traditions and patterns worth cherishing".〔Kershaw, page 242.〕 Stürmer argued that traditions were tolerance for religious minorities, civic values, federalism and striking the fine balance between the peripheries and the center.〔 In a July 1992 interview, Stürmer called his historical work a "bid to prevent Hitler remaining the final, unavoidable object of German history, or indeed its one and only starting point".〔Interview with David Walker in ''The Times Higher Education Supplement'', July 24, 1992.〕 In 2004 Stürmer became a founding member of the Valdai International Discussion Club. Stürmer's latest book, a biography of the Russian Prime Minister and former President Vladimir Putin, appeared in 2008. A British reviewer praised Stürmer for his refusal to hold Putin's KGB background against him and for his willingness to accept Putin for who he was.〔 〕 Much of Stürmer's biography was based upon his interviews with Putin during the annual meetings of the Valdai group.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Michael Stürmer」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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