Eduard Engel

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Eduard Engel

Eduard Engel (born November 12, 1851 in Stolp , † November 23, 1938 in Bornim near Potsdam) was a German linguist and literary scholar who became known as a fighter for "language and style refinement". Although he protested against "rough language school mastery", he occasionally overstepped the curve, similar to his linguistic colleagues from the General German Language Association .

Life

Eduard Engel was born on November 12, 1851 in the district town of Stolp in Western Pomerania . His parents were the district court clerk Levin Engel and his wife Rahel Engel, née Klotzmann. After his father's death in 1861, he was able to attend grammar school as a free student , although the funds for school fees were now lacking .

Eduard Engel studied Sanskrit as well as classical and Romance philology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin from 1870 to 1873 . In 1873 he moved to Rostock and received his doctorate there in 1874. His dissertation, written in Latin, was entitled De pristinae linguae Francicae syntaxi (German: About the sentence structure of the old French language).

Even as a student, Engel worked as a clerk in the stenographer's office in the Prussian House of Representatives . From 1871 to 1919 he was an official stenographer in the German Reichstag and from 1882 to 1904 head of the stenographer's office in the Reichstag. In 1875 he married the Spaniard Paula Dolores de Blavieres y Mendoza (died 1910); the marriage remained childless. From 1912 onwards he was married to Anna Gänger (died 1947).

From 1879 to 1884 Engel was editor of the magazine for foreign literature . He published books on French, English and North American literature and stood up as a critic for authors such as Émile Zola , Edgar Allan Poe , Wilhelm Raabe and Theodor Fontane . In 1903 he received the title of professor and was a member of the examination office of the oriental seminar at the University of Berlin. His History of German Literature from Its Beginnings to the Present , published in 1906 , had thirty-eight editions. In it he largely dispensed with the "presentation and discussion of intellectual or formal-historical contexts, even as a reflection of historical and social conditions" and limited himself to "brief characteristics of the individual authors and their works", but took a conservative standpoint and polemicized against modern literary trends : "He strongly rejected naturalism, [...] in particular he was zealous against Hauptmann , as later against Rilke and George , and on top of that he got more and more obsessed with linguistic puristic views."

Engel wrote short stories in earlier years and later dealt not only with language, but also with historical and political issues (The homeland of Odysseus: Lewkas or Ithaca ; France's spiritual leader; 1914-1919. A diary; Kaspar Hauser - swindler or prince?) . His love for Greek culture was very formative for him. However, he was never able to realize his plan to buy a house in Greece or even acquire ownership of a piece of land or an island.

Engel was politically conservative. Like many Germans, he met the First World War with enthusiasm. Approvingly he commented on the assassination ( "execution") of the Socialist Kurt Eisner ( "Hellhound"), Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg ( "deserved end") in 1919 and the center politician Matthias Erzberger ( "Erzverderber") 1921. The seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933 welcomed Engel with qualifications: He praised the conformity and the suppression of the Social Democrats and Communists, but criticized that the National Socialists would divide the people and damage Germany's reputation abroad. But now Engel's membership in Judaism was fatal. Despite his German national sentiments, he was banned from publishing, his pension was canceled, his successful works were defamed and no longer printed. Deprived of all regular sources of income, he had to rely on friends for support. Angel died, impoverished, 1938.

The language critic

His strict language awareness, which was accompanied by a rejection of dispensable foreign words, only developed around the turn of the century. In 1911, Engels' most famous work came out, Deutsche Stilkunst , in which he wrote against "foreign words" over several chapters, but also noted:

“But should science do without its foreign art expressions entirely? Are you such a mad purist that you want to ban philosophy, metaphysics, criticism, theology, infinitive, medicine, literature, drama, poetry, etc. from the language of scholars? - I am neither a mad purist, nor a purist at all in the silly sense that foreigners associate with it out of a guilty conscience, and it does not occur to me that the now and probably for a long time hard to dispense, firmly established artificial words of the sciences belong to condemn. The reader has long known that I myself use a certain number casually, not exclusively, but occasionally alternately, but in any case do not discard them all. "

Angels as victims of plagiarism

Engels Deutsche Stilkunst , which had found enormous approval as a textbook on expression, was last published in 1931 in its thirty-first edition.

In 1944, a new book by Ludwig Reiners came out under the same title at Verlag CH Beck , which, according to the Swiss linguist Stefan Stirnemann , is plagiarism. This book saw numerous new editions until the 1990s. According to the literary scholar Reuschel, who does not judge quite as harshly as Stirnemann, Reiners' work shows “hundreds of similarities with Engel's work” in just a few of the chapters she examined. She closes her work with the sentences “Engel and his stylistic art must do justice by referring to him instead of Reiners. The success of Reiner's style should not continue [...]. ”Stirnemann writes that such a“ fraud ”was only possible in the Third Reich because“ Jews ”had no legal protection. The heirs of Engels could not prevent the fraud because they were persecuted and had no rights. Stirnemann considers it impossible that the publisher had not noticed this fraud. Even after the war, Engels publications were not reprinted. The German style art in the 1922 edition was digitized and made freely available after the protection period had expired. In 2016 a new two-volume edition of the 31st edition from 1931 with a foreword by Stefan Stirnemann was published by Die Andere Bibliothek . In April 2017, the Persephone publishing house in Zurich published a new one-volume edition of the 30th edition from 1922.

Works (selection)

  • Italian love songs , Aschersleben 1875
  • Lord Byron. An autobiography based on diaries and letters , 1876 (5th ed. 1904: Byron's letters and diaries )
  • Queen Luise , Berlin 1876
  • History of French literature from its beginnings to the present , Leipzig 1882 (9th edition 1920)
  • Did Francis Bacon write the plays of Shakespeare? 2nd edition Leipzig 1883
  • History of English literature and the literature of North America , Leipzig 1883 (9th edition 1923)
  • Psychology of French Literature , 1884 (3rd edition Berlin 1903)
  • The translation epidemic in Germany , 1884
  • Heine's Memoirs (Ed.), 1884
  • The pronunciation of the Greek , Jena 1887
  • Greek Spring Days , Jena 1887 (4th edition Radebeul 1927)
  • Wall to wall (novella), 1890
  • Identified (novella), 1890
  • William Shakespeare , 1897
  • Life's dice game (novella), 1903
  • Shakespeare riddle , Leipzig 1904
  • History of German literature from its beginnings to the present , 2 volumes, 1906 (38th edition 1929; digitized version of the first volume from 1906 ; digitized version of the second volume from 1906 )
  • Goethe. The man and the work , 1909 (14th edition 1921)
  • Brief German literary history , 1909 (37th edition 1929)
  • Deutsche Stilkunst , 1911 (31st edition 1931; new edition in two volumes with a foreword by Stefan Stirnemann, Die Andere Bibliothek , Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-8477-0379-2 ; digitized version of the 30th edition from 1922 )
  • The residence of Odysseus , 1912
  • German master prose , 6 editions in 1913
  • Popular edition of Goethe's works (ed.), Leipzig 1912
  • 1914-1919. A diary. Westermann, Berlin / Braunschweig / Hamburg 1915–1920 (6 volumes, digital copies ).
  • Speak German! On the auxiliary service at the fatherland , 1917 (published in the fourth year of the World War for German existence , preceded by the Schiller quote: "The German language will rule the world."; 40th edition 1923; full text of the 2nd edition 1917 )
  • Entwelschung, German dictionary for office, school, house and life , 1918 (5th edition 1929; revised 1955 by Lutz Mackensen ; digitized version of the 1918 edition )
  • Gutes Deutsch , 1918 (5th edition 1933, digitized version of the first edition )
  • Joyful and Sorrowful, Goethe's Poems of Love , 1920
  • Foreign dictionary , 1922
  • What remains? World literature , 1928 ( digitized version )
  • People and things. From a life , Koehler & Ameling, Leipzig 1929
  • Kaspar Hauser. Swindler or prince? , Westermann, Braunschweig 1931

literature

  • Gerhard Baumann : Jewish and national literary studies. A comparison between Eduard Engel and Adolf Bartels. Rather, Munich 1936 (anti-Semitic diatribe).
  • Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand :  Engel, Eduard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 499 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Charlotte Jolles : "Theodor Fontane wrote me dozens of letters ...". Newly discovered letters from Fontane to Eduard Engel . In: Yearbook of the German Schiller Society . Vol. 28 Stuttgart 1984, pp. 1-59.
  • Helmuth Mojem: The fallen angel. Life and work of the literary historian Eduard Engel. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 28./29. January 1995.
  • Helmuth Mojem: literary business and literary self- image . The correspondence between Wilhelm Raabe and Eduard Engel. In: Yearbook of the Raabe Society . Tübingen 1995, pp. 27-87.
  • Anke Sauter: Eduard Engel. Literary historian, silence teacher, language cleaner. A contribution to the history of purism in Germany. (= Dr. Rabe's doctoral hat; 4). Collibri, Bamberg 2000, ISBN 3-926946-43-1 ( plus dissertation, University of Bamberg, 1999).
  • Gottfried Fischer: For the language tutor Eduard Engel on his 150th birthday. In: Wiener Sprachblätter . 1/2002, pp. 3-5. Mother tongue, Vienna 2002.
  • Judith Hansen: Engel, Eduard. In: Christoph König (Ed.), With the assistance of Birgit Wägenbaur u. a .: Internationales Germanistenlexikon 1800–1950 . Volume 1: A-G. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2003, ISBN 3-11-015485-4 , pp. 437-438.
  • Heidi Reuschel: tradition or plagiarism? The “Art of Style” by Ludwig Reiners and the “Art of Style” by Eduard Engel in comparison. University of Bamberg Press, Bamberg 2014, ISBN 978-3-86309-284-9 ( online ).

Web links

Wikisource: Eduard Engel  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Eduard Engel: German style art . 22nd to 24th edition. Tempsky / Freytag, Vienna / Leipzig 1917, p. 46.
  2. ^ Eduard Engel: German style art . 22nd to 24th edition. Tempsky / Freytag, Vienna / Leipzig 1917, p. 52.
  3. ↑ a b Heidi Reuschel: Tradition or Plagiarism? The “Art of Style” by Ludwig Reiners and the “Art of Style” by Eduard Engel in comparison. University of Bamberg Press, Bamberg 2014, ISBN 978-3-86309-284-9 , p. 82 f.
  4. ↑ a b c Helmuth Mojem: The fallen angel. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . 28/29 January 1995.
  5. ↑ Heidi Reuschel: Tradition or Plagiarism? The “Art of Style” by Ludwig Reiners and the “Art of Style” by Eduard Engel in comparison. University of Bamberg Press, Bamberg 2014, ISBN 978-3-86309-284-9 , p. 86.
  6. ↑ Heidi Reuschel: Tradition or Plagiarism? The “Art of Style” by Ludwig Reiners and the “Art of Style” by Eduard Engel in comparison. University of Bamberg Press, Bamberg 2014, ISBN 978-3-86309-284-9 , p. 85.
  7. ↑ Eduard Engel: 1914-1919. A diary. Georg Westermann, Berlin / Braunschweig / Hamburg 1920, p. 2478 ( digitized version ).
  8. ↑ Anke Sauter: Eduard Engel. Literary historian, silence teacher, language cleaner. A contribution to the history of purism in Germany. Collibri, Bamberg 2000, ISBN 3-926946-43-1 , p. 127.
  9. ↑ Anke Sauter: Eduard Engel. Literary historian, silence teacher, language cleaner. A contribution to the history of purism in Germany. Collibri, Bamberg 2000, ISBN 3-926946-43-1 , pp. 129-131.
  10. ^ Eduard Engel: German style art . 22nd to 24th edition. Tempsky / Freytag, Vienna / Leipzig 1917, pp. 144–257.
  11. ^ Eduard Engel: German style art . 22nd to 24th edition. Tempsky / Freytag, Vienna / Leipzig 1917, p. 210 f.
  12. ↑ a b c Stefan Stirnemann: A fraudster as a classic. Eduard Engels “German Style Art” and Ludwig Reiners. In: Critical Edition . 2/2004, pp. 48-50 (PDF; 77 kB).
  13. ↑ Heidi Reuschel: Tradition or Plagiarism? The “Art of Style” by Ludwig Reiners and the “Art of Style” by Eduard Engel in comparison. University of Bamberg Press, Bamberg 2014, ISBN 978-3-86309-284-9 , p. 407.
  14. ↑ Quotations from Stirnemann 2019, s. Web links.
  15. ^ Yahya A. Elsaghe: The imaginary nation. Thomas Mann and the "German" . Wilhelm Fink, Munich 2000, p. 364 and 392 ( snippets from Google Books).
personal data
SURNAME Engel, Eduard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German literary scholar
DATE OF BIRTH November 12, 1851
PLACE OF BIRTH Stumble
DATE OF DEATH November 23, 1938
Place of death Bornim near Potsdam