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Helga Grebing
Helga Grebing (February 27, 1930 – September 25, 2017) was a German historian and university professor (Göttingen, Bochum). A focus of her work is on social history and, more specifically, on the history of the labour movement.
Grebing was born on 27 February 1930 in Pankow, Berlin, to a Roman Catholic father, who worked in the building trade, and a Protestant mother. She has referred to her paternal grandmother "without wishing to sound negative", as a "bigot catholic" ("eigentlich bigott-katholisch"). Her mother was a factory worker, who later switched jobs, moving into the food retailing sector. Grebing grew up in and around Berlin.
Her father was involved in a traffic accident when she was five, and was badly burned. A burn turned septic, and he died of the resulting blood poisoning. After this she relocated with her mother to live with relative in the nearby district of Miersdorf. She attended school in the area, including a spell at the commercially oriented secondary school (Handelsschule) in Berlin-Neukölln.
The Second World War provided the backdrop for her early teenage years: during the final two years of the war all the schools in the area were closed and she worked as an "armaments worker" in Wildau at the huge Schwartzkopff Locomotive Plant. She was also required at this time to belong to the BDM national youth organisation for girls. She later said that it was her experiences in the BDM which sensitised her very early on to the potential for a return dictatorship inherent in the circumstances surrounding and following the creation of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) in April 1946.
The war ended in May 1945. In 1946, she completed her schooling, emerging with a qualification for clerical work. Directly after that, now aged 16 and the youngest in her cohort, Grebing responded to a newspaper advertisement and enrolled at the Workers' and Farmers' Faculty, a department of Berlin University, where she received a more academically focused year of secondary schooling. In 1947, she earned her "Abitur", which opened the way for a university-level education. This was part of an unusual scheme that was expressly aimed at school leavers to whom the opportunity of a university education would have been denied during the Nazi years on ground of politics, race or social background. Admission to the course involved an exam: one of her examiners was Hilde Benjamin, a name which later came to wider prominence in connection with the East German show trials of the early 1950s.
Grebing moved on to the main university where she studied history, germanistics, philosophy and civil law. In 1948, she joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD). During the early postwar years a young activist in the Berlin SPD, recently returned from a wartime exile in Norway, was Willy Brandt, with whom at times Grebing found herself working closely on party matters. Much later she would publish a biography of Brandt. The war had ended with Germany divided into military occupation zones. Berlin itself was similarly subdivided. Berlin University had ended up in the Soviet occupation zone, and as NKVD activities within the university intensified, and the nature and extent of the Berlin's political and economic division continued to crystallize, in 1949 Grebing was one of several thousand able to transfer to the newly launched Free University of Berlin set up in the city's US ("western") sector. Here she pursued her studies.
For her doctorate, which she received at the end of 1952, she was supervised by Hans Herzfeld. Her dissertation concerned the Catholic Centre Party and the working classes in the Weimar Republic.
Between 1953 and 1959 she worked as an editor for contemporary history and politics with the Munich publishers Olzog Verlag. She worked as an editor for the Munich-based academic journal Politische Studien. Starting in 1958, she taught at the Academy for Political Education in Tutzing and at other educational institutions operated by the West German Trades Union Confederation and the SPD (party). She was also involved in teacher training.
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Helga Grebing
Helga Grebing (February 27, 1930 – September 25, 2017) was a German historian and university professor (Göttingen, Bochum). A focus of her work is on social history and, more specifically, on the history of the labour movement.
Grebing was born on 27 February 1930 in Pankow, Berlin, to a Roman Catholic father, who worked in the building trade, and a Protestant mother. She has referred to her paternal grandmother "without wishing to sound negative", as a "bigot catholic" ("eigentlich bigott-katholisch"). Her mother was a factory worker, who later switched jobs, moving into the food retailing sector. Grebing grew up in and around Berlin.
Her father was involved in a traffic accident when she was five, and was badly burned. A burn turned septic, and he died of the resulting blood poisoning. After this she relocated with her mother to live with relative in the nearby district of Miersdorf. She attended school in the area, including a spell at the commercially oriented secondary school (Handelsschule) in Berlin-Neukölln.
The Second World War provided the backdrop for her early teenage years: during the final two years of the war all the schools in the area were closed and she worked as an "armaments worker" in Wildau at the huge Schwartzkopff Locomotive Plant. She was also required at this time to belong to the BDM national youth organisation for girls. She later said that it was her experiences in the BDM which sensitised her very early on to the potential for a return dictatorship inherent in the circumstances surrounding and following the creation of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) in April 1946.
The war ended in May 1945. In 1946, she completed her schooling, emerging with a qualification for clerical work. Directly after that, now aged 16 and the youngest in her cohort, Grebing responded to a newspaper advertisement and enrolled at the Workers' and Farmers' Faculty, a department of Berlin University, where she received a more academically focused year of secondary schooling. In 1947, she earned her "Abitur", which opened the way for a university-level education. This was part of an unusual scheme that was expressly aimed at school leavers to whom the opportunity of a university education would have been denied during the Nazi years on ground of politics, race or social background. Admission to the course involved an exam: one of her examiners was Hilde Benjamin, a name which later came to wider prominence in connection with the East German show trials of the early 1950s.
Grebing moved on to the main university where she studied history, germanistics, philosophy and civil law. In 1948, she joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD). During the early postwar years a young activist in the Berlin SPD, recently returned from a wartime exile in Norway, was Willy Brandt, with whom at times Grebing found herself working closely on party matters. Much later she would publish a biography of Brandt. The war had ended with Germany divided into military occupation zones. Berlin itself was similarly subdivided. Berlin University had ended up in the Soviet occupation zone, and as NKVD activities within the university intensified, and the nature and extent of the Berlin's political and economic division continued to crystallize, in 1949 Grebing was one of several thousand able to transfer to the newly launched Free University of Berlin set up in the city's US ("western") sector. Here she pursued her studies.
For her doctorate, which she received at the end of 1952, she was supervised by Hans Herzfeld. Her dissertation concerned the Catholic Centre Party and the working classes in the Weimar Republic.
Between 1953 and 1959 she worked as an editor for contemporary history and politics with the Munich publishers Olzog Verlag. She worked as an editor for the Munich-based academic journal Politische Studien. Starting in 1958, she taught at the Academy for Political Education in Tutzing and at other educational institutions operated by the West German Trades Union Confederation and the SPD (party). She was also involved in teacher training.
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