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Rainer Zitelmann (born 14 June 1957) is a German historian, sociologist, author, management consultant and real estate expert.
Then, Zitelmann pursued a career in conservative print media. After his work as a research assistant at the Free University of Berlin, he became an editorial director for the publishing company Ullstein Verlag in 1992. Soon, he transferred to the German daily Die Welt as the head of desk for contemporary thought. Later, Zitelmann transferred to the desk for contemporary history and finally to the real estate desk.
In 2000, he founded Dr.ZitelmannPB. GmbH, which had many international companies among its clients, including CBRE Group, Ernst & Young Real Estate, Jamestown, Cordea Savills and NCC. Zitelmann was the managing director of Dr. ZitelmannPB. GmbH until the end of February 2016, when he sold the company in an MBO. Dr. Rainer Zitelmann sold his company Dr. ZitelmannPB. GmbH to his closest employee Holger Friedrichs In: Immobilien Zeitung, 10 February 2016.
In 2016, he was awarded his second doctorate, this time in sociology (Dr. rer. pol) at the University of Potsdam. The subject of his second doctoral dissertation was the psychology of the super-rich. His dissertation was published in a variety of languages, including Chinese and Korean, as well as in English under the title The Wealth Elite.
Zitelmann argues that far from seeking the agrarian fantasies of Heinrich Himmler or Richard Walther Darré, Hitler wished to see a highly-industrialised Germany that would be on the leading edge of modern technology.Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London: Arnold Press, 2000 pages 244-245. Closely linked to the latter goal was what Zitelmann maintains was Hitler's desire to see the destruction of the traditional values and class distinctions of German society and their replacement for at least those Germans considered “Aryan” of a relatively-egalitarian merit-based society. Zitelmann argued that far from being incoherent, disorganised, confused and marginal as traditionally viewed, Hitler's social ideas were in fact very logical and systematic and at the core of Hitler's Weltanschauung (worldview).Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London: Arnold Press, 2000 page 245. Zitelmann has argued Hitler was much influenced by Joseph Stalin's modernization of the Soviet Union and that as Führer, Hitler consciously pursued a revolutionary modernization of German society. As part of his arguments, Zitelmann has maintained that "modernisation" should be regarded as a fundamentally "value-free" description, and that one should avoid the knee-jerk association of modernization with "progress" and humanitarianism. Zitelmann's work has faced criticism from those such as Ian Kershaw, who have argued that Zitelmann has elevated what were merely secondary considerations in Hitler's remarks to the primary level and that Zitelmann has not offered a clear definition of "modernization".Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London: Arnold Press, 2000 pages 246-247.
The Bonn-based historian Prof. Klaus Hildebrand reviewed the thesis for the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung in its 29 September 1987, issue: "To view Hitler—just like Stalin and Mao Zedong—as representatives of a permanent revolution or a modernising dictatorship reopens an academic debate that has been ongoing since the years between the wars of the twentieth century. To be welcomed in this context is that Zitelmann, critically controlling his sources and striving for objective balance, inquires with renewed vigour into Hitler’s motives while remaining fully aware of the fact that history fails to coincide with human intentions".
In his research overview, The Hitler of History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), the American historian John Lukacs presented Zitelmann's thesis, as well as his book Hitler. Eine politische Biographie ("Hitler. A Political Biography""), as important contributions to the scientific study of Hitler. The echo in specialist journals, such as the Journal of Modern History (in a review by Prof. Klemens von Klemperer), and the Historische Zeitschrift, were predominantly positive. In the latter, Germany's leading academic journal for historiography, Prof. Peter Krüger wrote, "Rainer Zitelmann has written one of those books that make you wonder why they have not been available much earlier". In the historiographic quarterly Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, the Polish historian Franciszek Ryszka agreed: "Without a doubt, Dr. Zitelmann’s merit is to have substantially amended, and possibly surpassed, all other Hitler biographies".
However, critical voices existed like in the German weekly Die Zeit of 2 October 1987. On 22 September 1989, the critical review in Die Zeit was followed by another review of the two Hitler studies that had some critical remarks but came to the overall conclusion that Zitelmann had submitted a Hitler biography that was "emphatically sober, without any superfluous moralising, not omitting any of the dictator's villainies". However, the reviewer suggested that "the image of Hitler drawn by the author calls some amendments and corrections".
The American Historical Review wrote in May 1989, "Zitelmann's book is an admirable example of exhaustive scholarship on an important aspect of the mind of Hitler. But it is less likely to stand as a decisive synthesis than as a provocative turn in the pursuit of the eternal enigmas of the Third Reich and its creator". In the February 1988 issue of the Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, the American historian Gerhard L. Weinberg wrote, "This work will require all who concern themselves with the Third Reich to rethink their own ideas and to reexamine the evidence on which those ideas are based. For any book to do that today is itself a major accomplishment. It would certainly be most unwise for any scholar to ignore the picture of Hitler presented here simply because it does not fit in with his or her own preconceptions".
Zitelmann criticised David Irving in the liberal German weekly Die Zeit on 6 October 1989 by questioning the fact that Irving had said “not without a certain hubris... that he sees no need to pay any mind to the academic debate and research findings of the 'old school historians' he detests". Zitelmann criticised specifically that Irving had deleted the word "extermination camp" from the new edition of his Hitler biography and that he now appeared to share the notions entertained by revisionist historians. "This entire development", as Zitelmann said in Die Zeit, “has so far not been adequately acknowledged and addressed by West German historians". He called on the historians to be more "aggressive" in critically engaging Irving.
In 1991, Zitelmann edited with the Bielefeld-based historian Michael Prinz the anthology Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung (National-Socialism and Modernisation; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft). On 19 September 1991, Die Zeit read, “The evidence presented here to substantiate the modernisation dynamics of National Socialism is impressive, and they underline how misleading a one-sided view of national-socialism from the perspective of the 'blood and soil' romanticism would be; the latter having been widely spread, and having essentially contributed to an underrating of National Socialism". The reviewer also criticises that the book's contributing authors had exceeded their mark and should have given more attention to the party's art policy, for instance. "The problem of National Socialism and modernisation is therefore not to be resolved with a simple formula. It needs to be constantly reconsidered and to be illuminated from various angles".
In line with their program to treat the time between 1933 and 1945 as scientifically as any other epoch, the book gathered a wide spectrum of authors, from the conservative Ernst Nolte, who again commented on the so-called Historikerstreit, to the liberal Imanuel Geiss, a disciple of Fritz Fischer.
As the historian Peter Brandt wrote in Die Welt on 2 October 1990, "The editors have presented a useful book with many important contributions". However, he added, " criticism that could be raised is that—in spite of the emphasis on keeping out any 'extra-scientific' influences—a prejudice against the supposed 'popular pedagogy' treatment of national-socialism had guided the editors' and some of the authors' pen". Brandt stated, however, that the editors deserved total agreement "as they reject any kind of ban on asking questions". The historian Brigitte Seebacher noted in the Rheinischer Merkur on 5 October 1990, “In short, this volume casts light on the national-socialist epoch, and inspires a renewed discussion of how to deal with it correctly". In the 6 November 1990 issue of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the historian Gregor Schöllgen argued: "Some of the essays will (and should) provoke disagreement. Taken as a whole, this meritorious volume represents an unorthodox contribution toward objectifying the discussion of national-socialism, and one ought to take note of it". The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 23 November 1990 commented that the book was "perfectly suitable to become the subject of dispute.... If it failed to meet this mark, then it would above all be for the reason that only a few readers will be likely to manage to digest the heavy academic fare of the first eighty pages". The review praised Zitelmann's discussion of the historian Ernst Nolte: “Exemplary in its objectivity is Rainer Zitelmann's discussion of Ernst Nolte. Zitelmann points out analogies with Marxist theories on fascism, and suggests that it is impermissible to pinpoint 'anti-Bolshevism in a one-sided and generalising manner' as the central motive of 'the' National Socialists".
Zitelmann also wrote on the subject of Umgang mit der NS-Vergangenheit (dealing with the National Socialist past) in his contribution for the book Bewusstseinsnotstand. Thesen von 60 Zeitzeugen ("The Perceptual State of Emergency: Hypotheses by 60 Historic Witnesses"), edited by Rolf Italiaander (Droste-Verlag, 1990). In 1990, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft published another anthology, edited by Zitelmann with the American historian Ronald Smelser. It offered 22 portraits of the Third Reich's leading figures. Like Zitelmann's doctoral dissertation, the anthology, which combined authors from several countries, was also translated to English, under The Nazi Elite (New York: NYUP, 1993). Reviews were found, for instance, in the Süddeutsche Zeitung of 4 September 1990.
That Zitelmann's sympathies went toward Thomas Dehler, rather than Konrad Adenauer, was evident during an academic panel on 8 December 1997 at which he gave a lecture on occasion of the hundredth anniversary of Dehler's birth. The symposium, organised by the Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in co-operation with the liberals’ parliamentary group, was documented in the conference notes and titled Thomas Dehler und seine Politik (Thomas Dehler and His Politics, Berlin: Nicolai Verlag, 1998). Aside from Zitelmann's contribution, Thomas Dehler und Konrad Adenauer, the volume contains contributions by the liberal politicians Hermann Otto Solms, Wolfgang Mischnick and Hans-Dietrich Genscher.
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