Wolf-Hartmut Friedrich

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Wolf-Hartmut Friedrich (born March 25, 1907 in Frankfurt (Oder) ; † July 5, 2000 in Göttingen ) was a German classical philologist who worked as a professor at the University of Göttingen (1948–1972).

Life

Wolf-Hartmut Friedrich was born the son of a teacher of ancient languages. After the early death of his father (1915) he was raised by his mother and was influenced by the rural neighborhood in the Oderbruch as well as by the frequent theater and concert visits in Berlin. As a student at the grammar school, he was proposed to the newly established German National Academic Foundation , whose first scholarship he received in 1926. As early as 1925 he had moved to the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and initially enrolled for law; after the first semester, however, due to his inclinations, he decided to switch to classical philology. In Munich he heard, among others, Eduard Schwartz , in Leipzig Richard Heinze , in Kiel Felix Jacoby and Eduard Fraenkel , with whom he moved to Göttingen and Freiburg . Due to the diverse influences of so many strong personalities, Friedrich was able to develop into his own philological greatness as a researcher and later as a lecturer through his autarky.

In his dissertation on the tragedies of Seneca , supervised by Eduard Fraenkel, Friedrich showed the beginnings of a new, post-Aristotelian poetics. In 1931 he became an employee of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae , where he gained valuable experience with the Latin vocabulary and ancient literature. He had already experienced the beginnings of National Socialism as a student, when National Socialist students had become increasingly uncomfortable. In Munich, the change at the beginning of the 1930s could not be overlooked, but Friedrich had nothing but disdain for his colleagues at the thesaurus , who raved about Hitler as the “savior of the nation”. His rejection of National Socialism solidified. After his release from the thesaurus (1935) Friedrich worked as a lecturer for Latin in Cologne . The professors of Classical Philology there, Günther Jachmann and Josef Kroll , enabled the opponents of the regime to earn additional income through teaching assignments. Due to technical differences - Friedrich's textual criticism related to text coherence contradicted Cologne practice - no possibility of a habilitation opened up in Cologne. This happened in 1938 in Hamburg with Bruno Snell , whose circle was both politically and spiritually more free. Friedrich's habilitation project on the poet Lukan was particularly tricky in its ambiguity at that time. For professional reasons, Friedrich joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1937, despite his attitude away from the regime , as well as the NSLB (March 25, 1935) and the National Socialist People's Welfare (1938).

In 1941 Friedrich received a call to the University of Rostock , but in the same year he was drafted as a soldier for World War II and was stationed in Russia, Italy and France. He was taken prisoner of war in Toulouse in 1944, from which he returned to Hamburg in 1946. In 1948 he followed a call to the previous chair of his teacher Fraenkel in Göttingen, where he stayed until his retirement in 1972. He declined calls to Marburg , Berlin and Munich. His successor at the Göttingen chair was Carl Joachim Classen .

In Göttingen, Friedrich gained a lasting reputation as an academic teacher as well as a scientist. His lectures, some of which he expressly held for audiences from all faculties, were very stimulating and empathetic for a traumatized generation. After his election as a full member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen (1953) he developed a lively publication activity, the results of which he published mainly in the organ of the Academy. He took a lively interest in new discoveries in philology (in 1959 he presented the newly found Dyskolos of Menander to the Academy ). In his long retirement after 1972, he remained active into old age and used the experience and knowledge he had gathered from lectures to write writings such as Über den Hexameter (1977) or On the Structure of Homeric Epics (1977). During these years he also gave numerous guest lectures. His memoirs, which were also written in retirement, give an insight into his youth, his career and his views on National Socialism.

Fonts (selection)

  • Investigations into Seneca's dramatic technique , Freiburg 1933
  • Caesar, Cato and Fortuna at Lucan , Hamburg 1938
  • The spring star: French poetry from Ronsard to Malherbe, selected and transcribed by W.-H. Friedrich , Hamburg 1947
  • Euripides and Diphilos: On the dramaturgy of late forms , Munich 1953
  • Wounding and death in the Iliad: Homeric modes of representation , Göttingen 1956
    • English translation: Gabriel Wright, Peter Jones ( transl .): Wounding and death in the Iliad , London 2003
  • Greek tragedians: Aeschylus Sophocles Euripides , Göttingen 1958
  • Europe and the bull: Applied mythology in Horace and Properz , Göttingen 1959
  • Medea's revenge , Göttingen 1960
  • Menander's comedy The Misanthrope: A recent papyrus find , Göttingen 1963
  • Model and redesign: Six chapters on the history of tragedy , Göttingen 1967
  • Carl Joachim Classen , Ulrich Schindel (eds.): Duration alternating: essays by Wolf-Hartmut Friedrich , Göttingen 1977
  • Libyco cursu: on the beginning and end of the 5th book of the Aeneid , Göttingen 1982
  • On the prosperity of the parables , Göttingen 1996
  • Ernst Heitsch , Ulrich Schindel (eds.): Present past: Studies on ancient literature and its afterlife , Göttingen 1998

literature

  • Rolf-Ulrich Kunze : The German National Academic Foundation from 1925 until today. On the history of the gifted in Germany. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-05-003638-9 , pp. 62–65 and 258–259 ( Education and Science Edition 8), (At the same time: Mainz, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 1999).
  • Ulrich Schindel : Wolf-Hartmut Friedrich †. In: Gnomon . 73 (2001), pp. 742-745 (with illustration).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See the obituary in Gnomon 73 (2001), p. 742
  2. ↑ See the obituary in Gnomon 73 (2001), p. 742
  3. ↑ Caesar, Cato and Fortuna with Lucan . Hermes 73 (1938). Pp. 391-423.
  4. ^ Eckart Krause, Ludwig Huber, Holger Fischer (eds.): Everyday university life in the "Third Reich". 1. Introduction, general aspects, Volume 2 , Berlin / Hamburg 1991, p. 821 Note 107. Rolf-Ulrich Kunze: The Study Foundation of the German People since 1925. On the history of the promotion of gifted children in Germany . Berlin 2001, pp. 258f.
personal data
SURNAME Friedrich, Wolf-Hartmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German classical philologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 25, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt (Oder)
DATE OF DEATH July 5, 2000
Place of death Goettingen