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Introduction & biographical note
Helmut Otto Pappe was born on 29 January 1907 in Liegnitz. Very little of his early life is represented in this collection, but it was in Germany that he gained his doctorate and met his wife Wera Kreig. In 1939 he and Wera escaped Nazi Germany to start a life in New Zealand. Helmut Pappe remained in New Zealand for over 10 years, working for C. W. F. Hamilton & Co. ltd (selling industrial machinery), whilst continuing to write academically for personal interest. Between 1949 and 1951 Helmut Pappe began to apply for university posts in Australia and England before being accepted (after an invitation and recommendation by close friend Asa Briggs) at the ÄûÃÊÊÓƵ.
Although Helmut Pappe was employed as a lecturer in sociology it is clear from the catalogue that his academic interests were wide; history, philosophy, law and economic theory all feature heavily in the many handwritten notes which make up part of the collection. Helmut Pappe’s major scholarly interest was study of the life and works of Jean Charles Leonard de Sismondi a nineteenth century economist and historian. Two of his published works concern Sismondi, Sismondi’s Weggenossen (Geneve Broche, 1963) and the seminal translation of Sismondi’s Statistique du Departement du Leman (Droz, Suisse, 1971), Helmut Pappe’s third published book is John Stuart Mill and the Harriet Taylor Myth (Melbourne University Press, 1960).
Introduction to the Catalogue
The Collection is arranged by subject area into 4 separate sections to folder level. Where Helmut Pappe kept a sequence to some items this order has been maintained, even if the relevance of each item in this order seems unclear. Where there was no obvious order to items an order has been imposed according to the subject of the material. Items within folders that Helmut Pappe kept have been retained in that original folder.
Each entry in the catalogue may be a single item or a collection of items. Next to each entry is a box/file number, relating to the box in which the entry can be found and its position in the order of the entries in the box. Each entry in the boxes is clearly labelled and in the box/file order listed in the catalogue. Many entries are not collected in actual ‘files’ but are grouped and attached together and listed as such.
The production of this Catalogue has been made possible through the generosity of Helmut Pappe’s nephew, Professor Ilan Pappe of Haita University, Israel. The cataloguing was undertaken by Helen Cook in 2007, under the supervision of the Special Collections manager Fiona Courage. The appointment of a ÄûÃÊÊÓƵ postgraduate to carry out the cataloguing was brought about by the efforts of Dr Richard Whatmore, who also acted as a student monitor throughout the project.
Dates of Creation of material: 1932 - 1997
Extent: 33 Archive Boxes
Level of Description: Folder level