Alexander Cartellieri (19 June 1867 – 16 January 1955) was a German historian, principally of the High Middle Ages. Between 1904 and 1934 he held a full professorship for Medieval and Modern History at the University of Jena. After his retirement in 1934, he continued to live in Jena through the National Socialist years, the war, Soviet occupation and the early years of German partition.
A committed monarchist and, until the First World War, well networked internationally with fellow medievalists, his personal diaries, which have been extensively researched and analysed posthumously, provide insights which are enlightening about the times through which he lived, and quite possibly constitute a more important contribution to European historiography than any of his published articles and books on the Medieval centuries. The war led him to break off his international contacts, most importantly with French and Belgian medieval scholars. He was never reconciled to the post-imperial "Weimar Republic" (as Adolf Hitler scathingly termed the democratic regime that operated in Germany between 1919 and 1933, thereby popularising a term that was quickly adopted by historians during the 1930s). Cartellieri campaigned against the "burdensome and humiliating" Versailles peace treaty, even though – unlike many German historians of the time – he never retreated into a narrowly nationalist historical vision. After 1933, the foreign policy successes of the Hitler government impressed him, but he resisted or ignored any pressures to become a propagandist for a National Socialist government strategy that was more and more obviously based on violence, both domestically and on the world stage.
Life Provenance and early years Alexander Maximilian Georg Cartellieri was born on 19 June 1867 in Odessa, a cosmopolitan and commercially vibrant Black Sea port which had been part of the Russian Empire since 1789. He was the third of his parents' five recorded children. Leopold Cartellieri (1828–1903), his father, was a businessman who at the time of Alexander's birth was serving as German consul in the city. On his father's side the family could trace their ancestry back to Eighteenth century Milan, where a number of Cartellieris had been professional musicians. Alexander Cartellieri's great grandfather Antonio Cartellieri (1772–1807), a composer of church music who made his career Germany, had himself been the son of two opera singers, respectively from Milan and Riga, who were also living and working, at the time of his birth, in northern Germany. Antonio Cartellieri had in 1786 been relocated with his mother to Königsberg in East Prussia, following his parents' divorce. Alexander Cartellieri's more recent Cartellieri ancestors had made their way in life not as musicians but as businessmen. His grandfather, Julius Friedrich Leopold Cartellieri (1795–1873), was a city councillor and at one stage the treasurer in the port city of Pillau (which after 1945 became part of the Soviet Union and was renamed Baltiysk/Балтийск). Alexander Cartellieri's mother, born Cölestine Manger (1831–1918), was the daughter of a mine owner, originally from Kassel. In 1872 the Cartellieris relocated from Odessa to Paris where the children grew up. The move was undertaken in connection with Leopold Cartellieri's work for the international "Ephrussi & Co." bank. Alexander Cartellieri was unusual among German university history professors in having been born and grown up abroad. A few months before they moved to Paris the Franco-Prussian War had ended in French defeat. The traumatic Siege of Paris, the emperor's proclamation of 18 January 1871 in the Palace of Versailles and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine were all fresh and raw in the minds of Parisians. The family's social contacts were accordingly restricted to the very small number of German families living in the city.
Cartellieri's father was a huge admirer of Chancellor Bismarck and an enthusiastic backer of unification. The father's linguistic talents and his patriotism influenced the son. Cartellieri was baptised as a Protestant. It was also important for his father that his birth be registered in the Imperial Register in 1867. While he was still young his parents arranged for tutors to come to the house to teach him French. He quickly became fascinated by the , lined up alongside the left bank of the Seine. An entry in his diary dated June 1882 recalls his decision "gradually to assemble [his] own collection of the most important classics, especially those that dealt with [his particular passion, which was already the study of] ... history". He was particularly fascinated by Leopold von Ranke, for many twentieth century historians an iconic figure, who had done much to redefine the study of History in Europe and North America. Cartellieri would much later describe Ranke as "the greatest historian of all peoples and times"Alexander Cartellieri: diary entry 2 January 1949, in: Matthias Steinbach & Uwe Dathe (compilers): "Alexander Cartellieri. Tagebücher eines deutschen Historikers. Vom Kaiserreich bis in die Zweistaatlichkeit (1899–1953)". München 2014, p. 889. Another early focus of his historical passions, triggered by frequent walks in the Tuileries and to the royal tombs at Saint-Denis, involved the French monarchy.
In April 1883 Cartellieri was removed to the provincial German town of Gütersloh (between Dortmund and Hanover), which at that time had a population of fewer than 10,000. His father was keen that he should spend his later school years at a Gymnasium (secondary school) in Germany in order that he might complete the German school curriculum and gain admission to a German university. His father's longer-term ambition for him was that he should be able to enter government service in the new Germany. In addition to preparing him for university admission, three years in Gütersloh was an irresistible book-buying opportunity. He expanded his collection to above 400 volumes.Matthias Steinbach: "Die Welt Cartellieris. Von einem Geschichtsprofessor und seinen Büchern", in: "Zeitschrift des Vereins für thüringische Geschichte" vol. 52, 1998, pp. 247–269, here: p. 250 These included von Ranke's already six volume "World History" series. His reading of the books inspired his decision, noted in his diary in November 1886, to become a university history professor. In February 1887 he passed his "Abitur" (school final exams), obtaining the highest marks in that year's cohort of candidates. He was quickly retired from completing his voluntary period of military service on account of the extent of his short-sightedness.
Student years in Tübingen, Leipzig and Berlin At the start of the 1887, summer term Cartellieri enrolled at the University of Tübingen, where he studied History with Bernhard von Kugler. Away from the lectures and tutorials, during his time at Tübingen the nearby castle of the Hohenzollerns and the remaining ruins of Hohenstaufen Castle made a lasting impression on him. Subjects that particularly interested him at university, in addition to History, were Philosophy, Archaeology and Literature. He also continued to expand his personal collection of books, which by the time of his graduation had grown to become a personal history library. His parents were providing him with a generous 1,500 Mark annual allowance, and he shunned the dissolute life-style sometimes associated with well-funded students of the period, which left him with substantial funds for buying books. An important early acquisition was a book by the influential historian (and one-time home tutor to Felix Mendelssohn) Johann Gustav Droysen. After a year at Tübingen, armed with a letter of recommendation from his tutor, Bernhard von Kugler, Cartellieri transferred to Leipzig University. At Leipzig University, it was the Medievalist palaeographer Wilhelm Arndt who awakened Cartellieri's interest in Philip II of France. He became a regular presence at Wilhelm Maurenbrecher's lectures on eighteenth century history. In another part of the university, he was also able to attend, as a student, Wilhelm Wundt's "Laboratory of Popular and Experimental Psychology". In 1889 Cartellieri transferred again, this time to the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin. His principal tutor here was Paul Scheffer-Boichorst, a man known for the rigour of his methodology in respect of historical sources. Having studied with Scheffer-Boichorst during the 1880s and 1890s would confer valuable professional cachet throughout the careers of those, such as Cartellieri, who went on to become university professors themselves.Johannes Haller: Lebenserinnerungen. Gesehenes, Gehörtes, Gedachtes. Stuttgart 1960, p. 99. The lectures of Heinrich von Treitschke covering the principal topical themes of the day, such as the "Jewish question", the church-state rivalries known collectively to historians as the "Kulturkampf" and education reform, also made a lasting impression on him. It was, according to his own diaries, from von Treitschke that he acquired his defining "belief in the German nation and in the Prussian state".Diary entry of 10 November 1890, quoted by Matthias Steinbach: "Alexander Cartellieri (1867–1955) – biographical introduction", in Matthias Steinbach, Uwe Dathe (compiler-editors): "Alexander Cartellieri. Tagebücher eines deutschen Historikers. Vom Kaiserreich bis in die Zweistaatlichkeit (1899–1953)". München 2014, pp. 7–30, here: pp. 11, 16, 21. Alongside Heinrich von Treitschke, Otto von Bismarck was always a defining figure in German and world history, from Cartellieri's perspective.
At the end of 1890, Cartellieri completed his doctoral dissertation on the early life of King Philippe Auguste of France. It was published in Revue historique in 1893.
It was also in 1890 that Alexander Cartellieri met Margarete Ornold (1870–1931), the daughter of a Berlin lawyer. They married on 23 July 1894. Had he anticipated the posthumous publication of his diaries, he might or might not have confided to their pages his explanation that marriage seemed to him to be "still the best way to satisfy certain feelings .... [and] to get hold of a good cook, house keeper and carer" According to at least one source, Cartellieri was able to benefit from "material support" from his Margarete's father for the rest of his life. The couple's five children included the jurist-historian , whose own children include the bank director Ulrich Cartellieri. Margarete Cartellieri did indeed look after the household, but she also helped him with his work, proof reading and correcting his books ahead of publication.
Archivist in Karlsruhe After receiving his doctorate, with the backing of Scheffer-Boichorst, Cartellieri obtained a research post at the Baden Commission for Historical Studies, based in Karlsruhe. There, in 1892, the focus of his work became the "Regesta" (manuscript archives) of the Bishop of Konstanz ("Regesta episcoporum Constantiensium"). Some sort of basic indexing was already in place, but he was called upon to come up with descriptive entries in order to make the index more usable for researchers. This principally involved parchment records from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He also had frequent recourse to source records not held in Karlsruhe, and there were regular "archive trips" south, to Lucerne, Konstanz, Bregenz, Lindau and Freiburg. He also visited the Vatican Archive to view source material on the Bishops of Konstanz between 1351 and 1383. While in Karlsruhe he was also preparing for the government teaching exams. In the end he seems to have suffered some sort of fainting attack, caused by overwork, and was instructed to take a four-week break.