In a recent study of the auto-co-ordination of the German universities, Bruno Reimann drew attention to a form of post-Second World War apologetic writing that deflects critical inquiry by concentrating upon the second-rate and the marginal – the racial anthropologists grafted onto faculties – rather than upon the central figures of scholarly life. Albert Brackmann (1871–1952), was firmly on the inside track. The scion of a family of pastors, scholars and patricians (his mother was an Ebersdorff) from Hanover, he studied theology and history in Tübingen, Leipzig and Göttingen. Specialising in the editing of sources on relations between emperors and popes, he joined the staff of the MGH at twenty-seven, became an extraordinarius in Marburg in 1905 and was called to the chair of history at Königsberg in 1913. Declared unfit for military service, his experiences in a hospital and then helping refugees, collecting contemporary documents and in 1919 supplying a memorandum refuting article 92 of the Versailles Treaty, contributed to his decision to study the history of the Germans in the east. After a short spell in Marburg, from where he contributed leaders to the Königsberger Allgemeine Zeitung, Brackmann moved to Berlin in 1922. He retained an honorary professorship there after becoming general director of the Prussian State Archives in 1929 and commissary leader of the Imperial Archive in 1935.