Brigitte Hamann

Brigitte Hamann (née Deitert; 26 July 1940 – 4 October 2016) was a German-Austrian[1] author and historian based in Vienna.

Presentation of the Honorary Prize of the Austrian Booksellers to Brigitte Hamann in the Vienna City Hall on 22 November 2012. To the left: the eulogist, Prof. Gerald Stourzh, to the right city councillor Michael Ludwig

Biography

Born in Essen, Germany, Hamann studied history in Münster and Vienna and for a time worked as a journalist in her native Essen. In 1965 she married the historian and university professor Günther Hamann (1924–1994), moved to Vienna and obtained Austrian in addition to German citizenship.[2] The couple have three children, one of them being the journalist and feminist Sibylle Hamann. She worked with her husband at the University of Vienna and in 1978 obtained her doctor's degree on the basis of a thesis on the life of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, which was published in book form that same year. She described her working method as follows: "(Coming from Germany) I had a different view of Austria, and I began to write with a certain detachment".[2]

The success of this first book led to others, notably on Empress Elisabeth of Austria, Adolf Hitler, and Winifred Wagner.

Hamann's 1999 book, Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship, examined how societal attitudes at the time shaped Hitler's anti-Semitic views during his time in Vienna between 1908 and 1913, and the effects of his inordinate fear of both infection and women. Following the publication of The Hidden Hitler by the historian and University of Bremen professor Lothar Machtan, Hamann investigated claims about Hitler's homosexuality and appears in the 2004 HBO documentary film, Hidden Fuhrer: Debating the Enigma of Hitler's Sexuality, by the American documentarians Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato.

In 2005 Hamann released Winifred Wagner: A Life at the Heart of Hitler's Bayreuth, a biography of Winifred Wagner, the British-born woman who became a founding member of the Nazi Party and a close friend of Hitler. The publication earned her "Book of the Year" honors and Opernwelt (Operaworld) magazine and "Historical Book of the Year" honors from Damals history magazine. That same year she received the Presseclub Concordia[3] "Concordia-Preis" in recognition of her work. She died on 4 October 2016 at the age of 76.[4]

Honors

Books translated into English

An English translation of the rororo monograph Die Familie Wagner is to appear.

Books in German

Numerous editions, paperbacks, and translations

References

  1. ↑ In an email to HPaul on 28 May 2009, B. Hamann wrote: "Since I have lived for more than forty years in Vienna, I naturally consider myself an Austrian, even though I don't talk like one"
  2. 1 2 ORF-Seite
  3. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 9 October 2006. Retrieved 2006-02-27.
  4. ↑ m.b.H., STANDARD Verlagsgesellschaft. "Historikerin Brigitte Hamann gestorben". Retrieved 2016-10-04.
  5. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 13 February 2007. Retrieved 2006-02-27.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/13/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.