Citizenship German Nationality German | Name Franz Seidler Role Author | |
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Born 2 March 1933 (age 91)
Vitkov/Wigstadt, Czechoslovakia ( 1933-03-02 ) Institutions Bundeswehr University of Munich (1973–1998) Alma mater Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, University of Cambridge, Sorbonne University, NATO Defence College Notable awards Federal Cross of Merit (1978) Books Hitler's Secret Headquarters: The Fuhrer's Wartime Bases, from the Invasion of France to the Berlin Bunker Education University of Cambridge, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, University of Paris Fields Modern history, Social history | ||
Franz Wilhelm Seidler (b. 2 March 1933) is a German historian, author and expert on German military history. From 1973 to 1998, he was a professor of Modern History at the Bundeswehr University Munich. Since retirement, he has published works of revisionist nature in extreme right-wing publishers, such as Pour le Mérite Verlag.
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Career
As a child, Seidler came as a refugee to West Germany, following the expulsion of Germans after World War II by the Czechoslovak government from his native Moravian Silesia.
Seidler studied history, German and English at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the University of Cambridge and the Sorbonne University of Paris between 1951 and 1956. He was a civil servant (Studienreferendar and Studienassessor) of the state of Baden-Württemberg from 1956 to 1959. From 1959 to 1963 he was Deputy Director of the Bundeswehrfachschule in Cologne, and was subsequently employed by the Federal Ministry of Defence, as an Adviser in the Department of Administration and Law, from 1963 to 1968. He was Scientific Director of the Heeresoffiziersschule München from 1968 to 1972, and attended the NATO Defence College Senior Course in Rome in 1972.
From 1973 until his retirement in 1998, he was Professor of Modern History, particularly social and military history, at the Bundeswehr University Munich. He has been active as an expert adviser for the CDU/CSU faction in the Bundestag in the 1990s.
Since his retirement Seidler has published books with the extreme right wing publisher Pour le Mérite Verlag of Dietmar Munier. A reviewer in the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, writing on Seidler's book Phantom der Berge, stated that "Since his retirement he publishes one book after the other, with which he has distanced himself from serious historical research." His biography of Fritz Todt has been described as offering too positive a picture of Todt and as reflecting a neo-conservative perspective.