Conze, Werner

Werner Conze (December 11, 1910 – April 1986) was a German historian. Georg Iggers refers to him as "one of the most important historians and mentors of the post-1945 generation of West German historians." Beginning in 1998, Conze's role during the Third Reich and his successful postwar career in spite of this became a subject of great controversy among German historians. A student of the national conservative historian Hans Rothfels at the University of Königsberg, Conze began his career during the Nazi period, working on Ostforschung, specifically studying German language islands and agrarian society in Eastern Europe. Conze became a member of both the SA and the Nazi Party. His early writings evince völkisch and antisemitic ideas, including advocating for the purging of Jews from Eastern Europe by unspecified means. After the war, Conze continued to work in academia, eventually becoming a professor at the University of Heidelberg. From 1956 to 1961, he was a member of the Schieder commission, which documented the expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe at the end of the War in a way that skirted the issue of German atrocities. In the postwar years, Conze moved away from his earlier völkisch positions and became a major mentor of new historians between the 1950s and 1970s; he was one of the most significant advocates of social history. Through his work on the encyclopedia Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, he was also important for the development of conceptual history. He served as rector of the University of Heidelberg from 1969 to 1970 and as chairman of the Deutscher Historikerverband from 1972-1976.