Notker Hammerstein

Born in Offenbach am Main, Hammerstein is the son of the elementary school teacher August Hammerstein (1890–1976).

Notker Hammerstein (born 3 October 1930) is a German historian.

His research interests are mainly in the field of Universitätsgeschichte and history of science as well as the history of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.

He attended the Heinrich-von-Gagern-Gymnasium in Frankfurt and passed his Abitur there in 1949.

He then studied economics and philosophy, later history, philosophy and English literature at the Goethe University Frankfurt and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

In 1956 he was appointed a Doctor in Frankfurt by Otto Vossler, then became a research assistant and from 1960 assistant at the Department of History.

In 1968 he habilitated and obtained the Lehrberechtigung for Medieval and Modern History.

In 1971 Hammerstein was appointed professor in the course of the new Hessian Higher Education Act and in 1973 he was appointed to a newly established Extraordinary Office for Early Modern History at Frankfurt University.

He was disenfranchised in 1999.

His brother Reinhold was professor for musicology at the Heidelberg University, his brother Gerhard honorary professor for criminal law at the University of Freiburg.

In 1999 Hammerstein published a book on the history of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich.

Ernst Klee called this book an "attempt at a clean slate", since Hammerstein described the work of the Nazi psychiatrist Robert Ritter as "general medical research", although he had divided the work of the Nazi psychiatrist into "full Gypsies", "Gypsy half-breeds" and "non-Gypsies" in his "expert opinions" in a racist manner.