History: Ludwig Elm: Unmistakable signs left

In 2008, in tranquil Potsdam in the north of the US state of New York – the place was of course founded by German emigrants – a conference took place that was dedicated to the “debits and credits” of the GDR historians. After 1990, they were pushed to the margins of the German scientific community, but many of them organized themselves into a “second scientific culture,” including the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Thuringia, whose most active contributors for many years included Ludwig Elm. Although Elm Street in Potsdam, America, is not named after him (Elm means elm in English), the historian of the same name, who took part in that conference, left unmistakable marks in science and science policy that should be remembered here.

Born in Greußen, Thuringia, he completed an apprenticeship as an agricultural assistant, studied agriculture at the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1952 and history and philosophy in Leipzig from 1953 to 1956. His further career took place at the University of Jena, where, after receiving his doctorate and habilitation, he became a professor of scientific socialism with a focus on history. Elm researched and wrote primarily about bourgeois-liberal parties and associations in Wilhelmine Germany as well as about conservative trends and ideologies in the Federal Republic.

The historian, ultimately vice-rector for social sciences at the University of Jena and member of the Cultural Association in the GDR People’s Chamber, sought and found international connections even beyond imposed borders. Like many other GDR scientists, he had to take early retirement in 1991. Since then, he has commented on GDR history in numerous publications, in which, looking back, he did not leave out his own suppression of some problems.

However, Elm is fully justified in defending his scientific work against the blanket devaluation that became fashionable after 1990. Since 1964, in source-based, stylistically polished research on West German conservatism, he has exposed its connections to the anti-democratic thinking of the Weimar Republic, to fascism and to right-wing extremism of the post-war years; a problem that the mainstream of German historians has only recently turned to. The most important of his more than twenty book monographs include “Between Progress and Reaction. History of the parties of the liberal bourgeoisie in Germany 1893–1918″, “University and neo-fascism. Contemporary historical studies on university policy in the Federal Republic of Germany” and “Heading into the Fourth Reich? On the origin and nature of a conservative utopia” and “German conservatism after Auschwitz”. His autobiography “History of a Historian” was published in 2018. Memories from three German states «examines, without any scandal, his work as a scientist, science politician, member of the People’s Chamber and, from 1994 to 1998, of the German Bundestag.

Politically, Ludwig Elm was active for the PDS, among other things, in the Bundestag’s Enquete Commission, which dealt with coming to terms with the GDR. However, he left the Die Linke party in 2008, disappointed by what he saw as its course of adjustment to the zeitgeist. This can also be seen in the fact that “West Germans in particular benefited from the East German left-wing voter potential” by taking on well-paid positions as elected officials and in the party’s political apparatus. The Marxist’s political, not always uncontroversial statements were unmistakable in the years that followed.

On August 10th, Ludwig Elm turns 90. Congratulations, dear Lutz!