Chris Liebold
Topic: Dr. Arnold Paulssen and the Founding of the State of Thuringia in 1920
Speaker: Dr. Bernhard Post, former director of the State Archives of Thuringia
Time: Friday, 08.09.2023, 3:00 p.m.
Place: TU Ilmenau,Faradaybau, Weimarer Straße 32
Admission: 5 Euro
On the historical cemetery of Weimar you can find the honorary grave of Dr. Arnold Paulssen. Below his birth and death dates "1864-1942" it bears the inscription "His life's work was the unification of Thuringia". The trained administrative lawyer has been unjustly forgotten, because he played a significant role in the founding of the state of Thuringia. As a long-time representative of Thuringian states to the Federal Council, Paulssen witnessed the end of the monarchy in Berlin. He used his political experience in the negotiations for the founding of the state of Thuringia.
In his lecture at the TU Ilmenau Citizens' Campus' Dr. Bernhard Post reports, long-time director of the Main State Archives in Weimar and director of the Thuringian State Archives until his retirement, will report on the work and significance of Dr. Arnold Paulssen, who after the founding of the state in 1920 and is thus considered to be Thuringia's first minister president. The political career of the politician, who until then had been respected across party lines, ended with the participation in government of the National Socialists in 1930. He also gave up the chairmanship of the board of the Nietzsche Archive Foundation when Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, sister and executor of the estate of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, began courting the Nazis. In 2022, Paulssen's partial estate was transferred to the State Archives of Thuringia.
Dr. Uwe Geishendorf
Central Institute for Education
+49 3677 69-4675
buergercampus@tu-ilmenau.de