Willi Alfred Boelcke was born in
Berlin-Lankwitz, a suburb in the southern part of the Berlin conurbation. He grew up in the Berlin area. His father was a businessman-entrepreneur. After successful completion of his school career he attended, starting in 1949, both the recently rebranded
Humboldt University in the
Soviet occupation zone/
East Berlin and its recently inaugurated rival institution in the
U.S. occupation zone /
West Berlin. He studied
History,
Germanistics,
Economics and
Jurisprudence, graduating with his first degree in 1953. Between 1959 and 1962 Boelcke was in receipt of a research scholarship for the
Bonn-based
German Research Foundation ("Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft" / DFG). During the 1950s the political administrative borders between East and West Berlin were progressively reinforced with physical barriers, and it became harder for Berliners to view their city as a single entity. Nevertheless, until the sudden appearance in August 1961 of the
Berlin Wall it was not impossible for East Germans to cross over to
West Berlin and from there to make their way to a new life in
West Germany in pursuit of greater freedom and prosperity. Between
1953 and 1961 several million East Germans
did just that, leaving behind them an intensifying labour shortage. At some point between 1959 and (probably) 1961, Willi Alfred Boelcke became one of the intra-German emigrants. Sources are silent as to the extent and duration of his debriefing. In 1967 he received his
habilitation (higher university degree) from the
University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim. His degree topic this time was "Constitutional changes and economic structures" covering the medieval and modern periods, taking examples from the traditionally aristocratically ruled
central German lands covering approximately the modern territories identified during much of the twentieth century as Thuringia and Saxony. Other things being equal, the
habilitation opened the way to a lifelong career in the West German universities sector. He accepted a professorship as
Economic and
Social Historian at the
University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim in 1969 and remained in the post for more than a quarter of a century, until 1994. == Works ==