Adolf Spamer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Adolf Spamer (born April 10, 1883 in Mainz , † June 20, 1953 in Dresden ) was a German philologist and folklorist . He was one of the main contributors to the Atlas of German Folklore , co-founder of Folklore in the GDR and was one of the most important scholars of folklore of the interwar period .

Life

Grave of Adolf Spamer at the Dresden-Weißer Hirsch forest cemetery

Adolf Spamer studied German and the minor subjects art history and economics. In 1908 he received his doctorate in Giessen with a thesis on mystic texts. Subsequently, until 1919 he was head of the folkloric state archive at the regional association for the Bavarian homeland security in Munich, interrupted by his participation in the war from 1915 to 1918. He completed his habilitation in 1921 at the University of Frankfurt. In 1926 he was appointed to the Technical University of Dresden . Together with Albert Zirkler , he published the series of publications "Saxon Folklore" at Verlag Brandstetter from 1928 and founded the "Free Association for Folklore Dresden" with Zirkler and other folklorists in 1929, which was renamed "Verein für Volkskunde Dresden" three years later.

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , on November 11, 1933, he signed the confession of the German professors to Adolf Hitler . In 1934 he became a member of the National Socialist Teachers' Association of Saxony. In the same year he became head of the “Folklore Department” in the “Reichsgemeinschaft für Deutsche Volksforschung”, and for a time he also took over the management of the Atlas of German Folklore. In 1936, the first purely ethnological chair in Germany was established at what was then Berlin's Friedrich Wilhelm University and was filled with Adolf Spamer. With the professorship he got into disputes between the Office Rosenberg and the SS-Ahnenerbe . When the general assembly of the Prussian Academy of Sciences unanimously elected him as a member in 1938 , the Reich Ministry of Science refused to approve. Spamer fell ill and moved back to Dresden around 1942.

After the Second World War , the “Institute for Folk Art and Folk Customs” was founded under his leadership in November 1945, renamed “Institute for Folklore” in May 1947 and affiliated to the Dresden University of Technology. Spamer received a professorship for Germanic philology at the pedagogical faculty, from 1947 he was director of the newly founded institute for cultural studies at the technical university, together with the Marxist writer Ludwig Renn . Since 1949 he was a full member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences . He also headed the "Commission for Folklore" of the German Academy of Sciences . Because of his poor health, he won Wolfgang Steinitz as commission head in 1951 , who also became his successor.

Spamer was buried in the Weißer Hirsch forest cemetery. His extensive estate is in the Institute for Saxon History and Folklore .

Fonts (selection)

  • About the decomposition and inheritance in the German. Mystic texts . 1910 (dissertation).
  • The small devotional picture from XIV. To XX. Century . F. Bruckmann, Munich 1930.
  • Credit is dead. On the story of a popular joke . In: Folklore gifts. John Meier offered on his seventieth birthday , Berlin: de Gruyter 1934, pp. 223–243.
  • German folklore . Bibliographical Institute, Leipzig; Herbert Stubenrauch Publishing House, Berlin. Volume 1, 1934, Volume 2, 1935.
  • The tattoo in the German port cities. An attempt to capture their forms and their image quality. Winter, Bremen 1934.
  • Romanus booklet. Historical-philological commentary on a German magic book , (from the estate) edited by Johanna Nickel, (= German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, publications of the Institute for German Folklore Volume 17). Berlin 1958.

literature

  • Spamer, Adolf. In: Dorit Petschel : 175 years of TU Dresden. Volume 3: The professors of the TU Dresden 1828–2003. Edited on behalf of the Society of Friends and Supporters of the TU Dresden e. V. von Reiner Pommerin , Böhlau, Cologne a. a. 2003, ISBN 3-412-02503-8 , p. 920.
  • Arbeitsgruppe Volkskunde, Andreas Martin (Ed.): From the estate of Adolf Spamer. In: Folklore in Saxony. 3 (1997)
  • Andreas Martin: Adolf Spamer in Dresden (1926–1936). On the history of folklore work in Saxony. In: Folklore in Saxony. 13/14 (2002), pp. 223-238.
  • David Oels:  Spamer, Karl Emil Gustav Adolf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , p. 619 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Die kleine Enzyklopädie , Encyclios-Verlag, Zurich, 1950, Volume 2, p. 641.
  2. ↑ a b c d Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 589.
  3. ^ A b Wolfgang Jacobeit : Folklore. A critical look at the history of a science in the first half of the 20th century. In: Wolfram Fischer : Exodus of Sciences from Berlin: Questions - Results - Desiderata; Developments before and after 1933 , Academy of Sciences in Berlin, Working Group Exodus of Sciences from Berlin, de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 1994, ISBN 3-11-013945-6 , p. 227 ff .; preview
  4. ^ A b Leonore Scholze-Irrlitz: University folklore in National Socialism. Sketches for establishing the subject and public relations in Berlin. In: Rüdiger vom Bruch : The Berlin University in the Nazi Era . Volume 2 departments and faculties , with the collaboration of Rebecca Scharschmidt. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-515-08658-7 , p. 138 ff .; preview
  5. ^ A b c d Teresa Brinkel: Folklore knowledge production in the GDR: to the history of a subject and its processing. Lit, Vienna, Berlin, Münster 2012, ISBN 978-3-643-80127-2 , p. 43 ff.
  6. ^ Members of the SAW: Adolf Spamer. Saxon Academy of Sciences, accessed December 3, 2016 .
  7. ↑ First published in 1933 in two episodes of the Niederdeutsche Zeitschrift für Volkskunde. Reprinted by Trickster 1993, ISBN 3-923804-69-5 .
personal data
SURNAME Spamer, Adolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German folklorist
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Mainz
DATE OF DEATH June 20, 1953
Place of death Dresden