Percy Ernst Schramm
Encyclopedia
Percy Ernst Schramm was a German
historian
of medieval political symbolism and ritual. His research focused primarily on the ideology of the medieval state, particularly the ways in which the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire
in the Middle Ages
represented their authority through images and rituals, as well as the transmission of ideas about the Roman Empire in medieval political and religious thought. His work is still considered a foundational contribution to the fields of art history
and political theory. Schramm is also well-known to military historians as the official staff diarist of the German High Command during World War II
and a key witness at the Nuremberg Trials
.
. His father, Max Schramm, was mayor from 1925 to 1928. The young Percy served in the German Army during World War I
and he went on to study history and art history at several of Germany's elite universities, including Hamburg
, Munich and Heidelberg. In 1922, he completed his doctoral studies at the University of Heidelberg under the medieval historian Karl Hampe
. He remained at Heidelberg for two more years to write his Habilitationschrift on the topic of German imperial ideology in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and in particular, how the German emperors of the medieval period appropriated the imagery and history of the ancient Roman Empire
for their own rule. Published in 1929 as Kaiser, Rom und Renovatio: Studien und Texte zur Geschichte des romischen Erneuerungsgedankens vom Ende des karolingischen Reiches biz zum Investiturstreit (Emperor, Rome and Renovatio: Studies and Texts on the History of Roman Ideologies of Renewal from the End of the Carolingian Empire to the Investiture Controversy), Schramm's thesis was a landmark piece of highly original, interdisciplinary scholarship that transformed the way medieval historians approached the subject of political ideology. He demonstrated that art history, a field of study which at the time fell mostly to dilettantes and gentleman scholars, deserved a place in serious academic inquiry alongside history and philology. Schramm's work also emphasized the centrality of symbols and ritual in articulating and defining political ideologies.
In a rite of passage required of most German medievalists at the time, Schramm worked for two years at the Monumenta Germaniae Historica
before being offered a professorship. In 1929, he was awarded a chair in history at the University of Göttingen, one of Germany's most prestigious universities. His students at Göttingen included Berent Schwineköper
and the American professor of German History, Donald Detwiler. Schramm remained there until his retirement in 1963. Speaking fluent English, he received an invitation to teach at Princeton University
during the 1933 academic year.
and was selected as the official staff historian, or diarist, for the German High Command Operational Staff (Wehrmachtfuehrungsstab). Schramm, given the rank of major, was tasked with maintaining detailed records about the day-to-day activities and decisions of the General Staff, which included the top military field commanders in the German Army. This allowed Schramm unprecedented access to the highest echelons of the German military and its inner workings. As a result, Schramm was called as a key witness at the Nuremberg Trials
after the war, where he testified on behalf of General Alfred Jodl
. Schramm maintained that Jodl, while a loyal soldier, was not an ideological Nazi and did not participate in any war crimes. Nonetheless, Jodl was convicted and hanged in 1946. (Jodl was posthumously acquitted in 1953 by a German denazification court.)
In the years after the war, Schramm authored a number of books on the history of the German military, as well as in-depth accounts of the desperate last days of the Third Reich as seen from inside the military command. Schramm's work in this field, particularly his multi-volume edition of the official diaries of the High Command, is still highly valued by military historians. In 1962, he published (to some controversy) a biography of Adolf Hitler
as a military commander (Hitler als militärischer Führer). Schramm had had a good deal of personal contact with the Führer in the course of his duties and contrasted the patriotism and professionalism of the generals he served under with Hitler's irrationality and growing paranoia as the war took a turn for the worse. Schramm attempted to exonerate the army leadership by placing the blame for the war and its loss squarely at the feet of Hitler and his fanaticism.
Schramm also published, in 1963, an introduction to Henry Picker's Hitlers Tischgespräche (Hitler's Table Talk
) entitled "The Anatomy of a Dictator". Whatever the merits of his other work, this particular piece inspired some criticism in the German press at the time, where he was accused of being an apologist for National Socialism. In a penetrating series of lectures one year later at the University of Munich, during the summer term of 1964, the political philosopher and philosopher of history Eric Voegelin
dismissed these charges (the lectures were later translated and published under the title of Hitler and the Germans). Rather, Voegelin argued at length, based on a close reading of Schramm's text and comparing it unfavourably with Alan Bullock
's analysis, Schramm gave no insight into 'the problem of Hitler', and that this was in any case an 'alibi' for the real problem. The real problem, Voegelin stated, drawing on classical thinkers from Plato to Schelling, as well as from contemporary German writers such as Carl Amery
Capitulation: The Lesson of German Catholicism and Robert Musil
On Stupidity) was the way that German Anstand bourgeois morality had rendered many (but not all) of the German population spiritually blind and effectively stupid, a state of affairs that had been allowed to persist until the present day. Schramm himself, Voegelin argued quite carefully, was, in a similar sense, stupid.
waned in the late 40's, however, he was rehabilitated and returned to his professorship in Göttingen. Between 1954 and 1956, he produced what was perhaps his second most significant work, after Kaiser, Rom, Renovatio, titled Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik (Signs of Authority and the Symbolism of the State). Herrschaftszeichen was a major survey of the representative art of medieval rulers or symbols of their power, including their regalia
, seals, coinage, armaments, clothing, and other objects. These objects and their history were catalogued in more detail in a book Schramm authored together with the eminent art historian Florentine Mütherich, Denkmale der deutschen Könige und Kaiser (1962) (Monuments of the German Kings and Emperors).
The enduring legacy of Schramm's work in these and numerous other studies and articles, was to demonstrate the importance of symbols, liturgical ceremony, gestures and images as critical sources for political history. Along with his contemporaries, Ernst H. Kantorowicz and Carl Erdmann
, Schramm introduced an important element of cultural history to a field which (especially in Germany) tended to focus largely on institutions and their texts.
In 1958, Schramm was inducted into the Order Pour le Mérite
, an award recognizing his contributions to the arts and sciences in Germany.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
of medieval political symbolism and ritual. His research focused primarily on the ideology of the medieval state, particularly the ways in which the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
in the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
represented their authority through images and rituals, as well as the transmission of ideas about the Roman Empire in medieval political and religious thought. His work is still considered a foundational contribution to the fields of art history
Art history
Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...
and political theory. Schramm is also well-known to military historians as the official staff diarist of the German High Command during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and a key witness at the Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
.
Early life and education
Schramm was born to a wealthy and cosmopolitan family in HamburgHamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
. His father, Max Schramm, was mayor from 1925 to 1928. The young Percy served in the German Army during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and he went on to study history and art history at several of Germany's elite universities, including Hamburg
University of Hamburg
The University of Hamburg is a university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by Wilhelm Stern and others. It grew out of the previous Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen and the Kolonialinstitut as well as the Akademisches Gymnasium. There are around 38,000 students as of the start of...
, Munich and Heidelberg. In 1922, he completed his doctoral studies at the University of Heidelberg under the medieval historian Karl Hampe
Karl Hampe
Karl Hampe was a German historian of the Middle Ages, particularly the history of the Empire in the High Middle Ages. Hampe was born in Bremen and graduated from Berlin in 1902, when he was appointed to a professorship in Heidelberg...
. He remained at Heidelberg for two more years to write his Habilitationschrift on the topic of German imperial ideology in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and in particular, how the German emperors of the medieval period appropriated the imagery and history of the ancient Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
for their own rule. Published in 1929 as Kaiser, Rom und Renovatio: Studien und Texte zur Geschichte des romischen Erneuerungsgedankens vom Ende des karolingischen Reiches biz zum Investiturstreit (Emperor, Rome and Renovatio: Studies and Texts on the History of Roman Ideologies of Renewal from the End of the Carolingian Empire to the Investiture Controversy), Schramm's thesis was a landmark piece of highly original, interdisciplinary scholarship that transformed the way medieval historians approached the subject of political ideology. He demonstrated that art history, a field of study which at the time fell mostly to dilettantes and gentleman scholars, deserved a place in serious academic inquiry alongside history and philology. Schramm's work also emphasized the centrality of symbols and ritual in articulating and defining political ideologies.
In a rite of passage required of most German medievalists at the time, Schramm worked for two years at the Monumenta Germaniae Historica
Monumenta Germaniae Historica
The Monumenta Germaniae Historica is a comprehensive series of carefully edited and published sources for the study of German history from the end of the Roman Empire to 1500.The society sponsoring the series was established by the Prussian reformer Heinrich Friedrich Karl Freiherr vom...
before being offered a professorship. In 1929, he was awarded a chair in history at the University of Göttingen, one of Germany's most prestigious universities. His students at Göttingen included Berent Schwineköper
Berent Schwineköper
Berent Schwineköper was a German archivist and historian.Born in Magdeburg, Prussian Saxony, Schwineköper was the son of an apothecary. At the universities of Göttingen, Vienna, and Freiburg, Schwineköper studied history, German studies, art history, and historical auxiliary sciences...
and the American professor of German History, Donald Detwiler. Schramm remained there until his retirement in 1963. Speaking fluent English, he received an invitation to teach at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
during the 1933 academic year.
Second World War
During World War II, Schramm volunteered again for service in the WehrmachtWehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
and was selected as the official staff historian, or diarist, for the German High Command Operational Staff (Wehrmachtfuehrungsstab). Schramm, given the rank of major, was tasked with maintaining detailed records about the day-to-day activities and decisions of the General Staff, which included the top military field commanders in the German Army. This allowed Schramm unprecedented access to the highest echelons of the German military and its inner workings. As a result, Schramm was called as a key witness at the Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
after the war, where he testified on behalf of General Alfred Jodl
Alfred Jodl
Alfred Josef Ferdinand Jodl was a German military commander, attaining the position of Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command during World War II, acting as deputy to Wilhelm Keitel...
. Schramm maintained that Jodl, while a loyal soldier, was not an ideological Nazi and did not participate in any war crimes. Nonetheless, Jodl was convicted and hanged in 1946. (Jodl was posthumously acquitted in 1953 by a German denazification court.)
In the years after the war, Schramm authored a number of books on the history of the German military, as well as in-depth accounts of the desperate last days of the Third Reich as seen from inside the military command. Schramm's work in this field, particularly his multi-volume edition of the official diaries of the High Command, is still highly valued by military historians. In 1962, he published (to some controversy) a biography of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
as a military commander (Hitler als militärischer Führer). Schramm had had a good deal of personal contact with the Führer in the course of his duties and contrasted the patriotism and professionalism of the generals he served under with Hitler's irrationality and growing paranoia as the war took a turn for the worse. Schramm attempted to exonerate the army leadership by placing the blame for the war and its loss squarely at the feet of Hitler and his fanaticism.
Schramm also published, in 1963, an introduction to Henry Picker's Hitlers Tischgespräche (Hitler's Table Talk
Hitler's Table Talk
Hitler's Table Talk is the title given to a series of wartime conversations and monologues delivered by Adolf Hitler, which were transcribed from 1941 to 1944...
) entitled "The Anatomy of a Dictator". Whatever the merits of his other work, this particular piece inspired some criticism in the German press at the time, where he was accused of being an apologist for National Socialism. In a penetrating series of lectures one year later at the University of Munich, during the summer term of 1964, the political philosopher and philosopher of history Eric Voegelin
Eric Voegelin
Eric Voegelin, born Erich Hermann Wilhelm Vögelin, was a German-born American political philosopher. He was born in Cologne, then Imperial Germany, and educated in political science at the University of Vienna. He became a teacher and then an associate professor of political science at the...
dismissed these charges (the lectures were later translated and published under the title of Hitler and the Germans). Rather, Voegelin argued at length, based on a close reading of Schramm's text and comparing it unfavourably with Alan Bullock
Alan Bullock
Alan Louis Charles Bullock, Baron Bullock , was a British historian, who wrote an influential biography of Adolf Hitler and many other works.-Early life and career:...
's analysis, Schramm gave no insight into 'the problem of Hitler', and that this was in any case an 'alibi' for the real problem. The real problem, Voegelin stated, drawing on classical thinkers from Plato to Schelling, as well as from contemporary German writers such as Carl Amery
Carl Amery
Carl Amery , the pen name of Christian Anton Mayer, was a German writer and environmental activist. Born in Munich, he studied at the University of Munich. He was a participant of Gruppe 47.-Works:-References:...
Capitulation: The Lesson of German Catholicism and Robert Musil
Robert Musil
Robert Musil was an Austrian writer. His unfinished long novel The Man Without Qualities is generally considered to be one of the most important modernist novels...
On Stupidity) was the way that German Anstand bourgeois morality had rendered many (but not all) of the German population spiritually blind and effectively stupid, a state of affairs that had been allowed to persist until the present day. Schramm himself, Voegelin argued quite carefully, was, in a similar sense, stupid.
Post-war career
Because he had been a member of the Nazi Party and served in a relatively high position in the army during the war, Schramm was removed from his university post. As denazificationDenazification
Denazification was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of any remnants of the National Socialist ideology. It was carried out specifically by removing those involved from positions of influence and by disbanding or rendering...
waned in the late 40's, however, he was rehabilitated and returned to his professorship in Göttingen. Between 1954 and 1956, he produced what was perhaps his second most significant work, after Kaiser, Rom, Renovatio, titled Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik (Signs of Authority and the Symbolism of the State). Herrschaftszeichen was a major survey of the representative art of medieval rulers or symbols of their power, including their regalia
Regalia
Regalia is Latin plurale tantum for the privileges and the insignia characteristic of a Sovereign.The word stems from the Latin substantivation of the adjective regalis, 'regal', itself from Rex, 'king'...
, seals, coinage, armaments, clothing, and other objects. These objects and their history were catalogued in more detail in a book Schramm authored together with the eminent art historian Florentine Mütherich, Denkmale der deutschen Könige und Kaiser (1962) (Monuments of the German Kings and Emperors).
The enduring legacy of Schramm's work in these and numerous other studies and articles, was to demonstrate the importance of symbols, liturgical ceremony, gestures and images as critical sources for political history. Along with his contemporaries, Ernst H. Kantorowicz and Carl Erdmann
Carl Erdmann
Carl Erdmann was a German historian who specialized in medieval political and intellectual history. He is noted in particular for his study of the origins of the idea of crusading in medieval Latin Christendom, as well as his work on letter collections and correspondence among secular and...
, Schramm introduced an important element of cultural history to a field which (especially in Germany) tended to focus largely on institutions and their texts.
In 1958, Schramm was inducted into the Order Pour le Mérite
Pour le Mérite
The Pour le Mérite, known informally as the Blue Max , was the Kingdom of Prussia's highest military order for German soldiers until the end of World War I....
, an award recognizing his contributions to the arts and sciences in Germany.
Select bibliography
- 1928. Die zeitgenössischen Bildnisse Karls des Grossen. Leipzig.
- 1928. Die deutschen Kaiser und Könige in Bildern ihrer Zeit, 751-1190. Berlin.
- 1930. Kaiser, Rom und Renovatio. Leipzig.
- 1937. Geschichte des englischen Königtums im Lichte der Krönung. Weimar. Translated into English as:
- 1937. A History of the English Coronation, tr. Leopold G. Wickham Legg. Oxford.
- 1939. Der König von Frankreich: das Wesen der Monarchie vom 9. zum 16. Jahrhundert. Darmstadt.
- 1954-1978. With others. Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik: Beiträge zu ihrer Geschichte vom dritten bis zum sechzehnten Jahrhundert. Stuttgart.
- 1962. Hitler als militärischer Führer. Erkenntnisse und Erfahrungen aus dem Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht. Frankfurt am Main / Bonn.
- 1962-1978. With Florentine Mütherich. Denkmale der deutschen Könige und Kaiser: ein Beitrag zur Herrschergeschichte. Munich.
- 1963/4. Neun Generationen: Dreihundert Jahre deutscher "Kulturgeschichte" im Lichte der Schicksale einer Hamburger Bürgerfamilie (1648–1948). Göttingen.
- 1968-71. Kaiser, Könige und Päpste: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Geschichte des Mittelalters. 4 vols. in 5. Stuttgart.