Karlheinz Weißmann

Karlheinz Weißmann (born 1959 in Northeim, West Germany) is a German historian, author and intellectual of the “New Right”.

Life

Weißmann studied protestant theology, pedagogics and history at the University of Gottingen and at the Technical University in Braunschweig. In 1989 graduated with a Ph.D. from the history department in Braunschweig. Subsequently, he worked as a high school teacher from 1984 until 2020 at a Gymnasium in Northeim, Lower Saxony.

Publications and journalism

Weißmann has published more than twenty books on historical and political subject. Some of his books deal with German and European political and intellectual history in the 19th and 20th century, notably the „Conservative Revolution“ movement during the Weimar Republic and National Socialism and related movements. Lately, he has published a book on Martin Luther and a critical account of the culture wars since 1968.

In 1994 he took part in a debate with leading conservative German intellectuals under the motto “What’s right?” in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Weißmann’s contribution was entitled “Die Nation denken” (Thinking the Nation) with a subtitle “We are no conspirators”. In the same year he was one of the authors of the book “Die selbstbewußte Nation” (The Selfconscious Nation” which triggered a national debate in Germany. [1][2] Since the 1990s he is considered one of the leading, however controversial right-wing authors. He has long sought to help establish a political movement to the right of the Christian Democrats. He is a prolific writer for newspaper and journals of the political right, mainly the weekly Junge Freiheit. In 2017 he helped to establish the bimonthly journal Cato. The left wing daily newspaper Die Tageszeitung has called him disparagingly “The Uber-Intellectual” of the German right.[3]

He sits on the advisory board of the Desiderius Erasmus Stiftung, a foundation associated with the Alternative for Germany party.

References
  1. See Jan-Werner Müller: From National Identity to National Interest: The Rise (and Fall) of Germany’s New Right, in Müller (ed.): German Ideologies, Studies into the Political Thought and Culture of the Bonn Republic, Palgrave Macmillan 2003.
  2. Gerd Langguth: Die Intellektuellen und die nationale Frage. Campus Verlag, 1997, p. 306
  3. https://taz.de/Neurechter-Denker-Karlheinz-Weissmann/!5399096/
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