Georg Ostrogorsky im Spiegel seiner Korrespondenz mit Percy Ernst Schramm
Georg Ostrogorsky in the mirror of his correspondence with Percy Ernst Schramm

Summary/Abstract: This contribution concerns the history of two disciplines, Medieval and Byzantine Studies (also partly East and Southeast European history) in the period 1925–1968. The annotated correspondence published here sheds new light on the life and work of two eminent scholars, the medievalist and modern historian Percy Ernst Schramm (*Hamburg 1894–† Göttingen 1970), who often enough also considered problems of Byzantine history, and the Byzantinist George Ostrogorsky (*Saint Petersburg 1902–† Belgrade 1976). From 1924 onward a blossoming friendship connected them. The correspondence preserved in Schramm’s literary estate at the Hamburg State Archives consists of 20 writings: 17 letters and 1 postcard written by Ostrogorsky, thus 3 at Helsinki (1925, 1926), 4 at Breslau/Wrocław (1932, 1933), 10 (+ a postcard) at Belgrade (1933, 1935, 1950, 1951, 1954, 1958, 1968), 1 from Mozirje (1963); 2 letters, preserved as carbon copies, were typed by Schramm, including the important one, written on 30-6-1941 in the “Southeast,” containing his statement in favour of Ostrogorsky, which he (as a captain of the Wehrmacht) had addressed to the Belgrade office of military intelligence, as he had been informed that Ostrogorsky had been examined regarding the conveyance of books of the Prague Kondakov Institute to its Belgrade section. The second missive was a letter of thanks for Ostrogorsky’s season’s greetings in 1961. Among the many persons of the protagonists’ family or academic circle who figure repeatedly in the letters include Schramm’s wife Ehrengard Schramm, née von Thadden († 1985), and Ostrogorsky’s first wife Irene/Irina Nikolaevna Ostrogorsky, née Sauer († 1948), his second wife Fanula Papazoglou († 2001), and his Heidelberg supervisor, Edgar Salin († 1974). The idea to deal with the correspondence was conceived when the author prepared his paper “Anmerkungen zu einer aktuellen Kontroverse, oder: Was hat Georg Ostrogorsky mit Franz Dölgers Familie der Könige zu tun?” for the Hamburg conference of the DAFBS in February 2019. It took place in the Warburg-Haus, erected by Aby Warburg for his Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek, now the seat of the Aby Warburg Foundation. Thus, it seemed appropriate to remind the audience of Schramm’s close friendship with Warburg, his teacher and mentor for many years, but also of the fact that Richard Salomon (1884–1966), Byzantinist, medievalist and Hamburg’s first professor of East European history, had belonged to Warburg’s circle. The paper’s aim was to inform the audience about the results of the author’s recent articles on Dölger’s construct of the Family of Kings in the Middle Ages (1940), namely that it was primarily a reply to Ostrogorsky’s article Die byzantinische Staatenhierarchie7 (1936) and therefore, contrary to Wolfram Brandes (2013), not caused by Dölger’s affinity to the Nazi ideology of world dominance. Thus Dölger’s construct was never criticised by Ostrogorsky, who by no means was a Nazi, for he had lost his post at the University of Breslau through the Nazi racist legislation owing to his partly Jewish descent. That is why he emigrated to Prague, where he was offered a chair at the University of Belgrade, which he accepted. In this light the author reminded the audience of Salomon’s similar fate. He too, being likewise discharged from his post because of his Jewish descent, emigrated to the USA in 1937, where he became professor at Kenyon College (Ohio). He was the supervisor of Hildegard Schaeder’s (1902–1984) famous dissertation “Moskau – das Dritte Rom”, printed in 1929. As a member of the Lutheran Church “Bekennende Kirche”, she was denounced in 1943 to the Gestapo and interned in the concentration camp at Ravensbrück, where she barely escaped death.

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