Anton Hilckman

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Memorial plaque with a portrait of Anton Hilckman on the house where he was born in Bevergern

Anton Joseph Maria Hilckman (born March 4, 1900 in Bevergern (since 1975 part of the town of Hörstel ), † January 25, 1970 in Mainz ) was a German folklorist , opponent of National Socialism , concentration camp survivor and from 1946 to 1968 professor of comparative cultural studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz .

Live and act

The Hilckman House, the birthplace of Anton Hilckman and, since 1966, the Bevergern home

Anton Hilckman grew up as the only child of the merchants August and Antonie Hilckmann in Bevergern. He attended from 1911 to 1918 the school Dionysianum in Rheine and studied after high school economics in Münster and Freiburg , where he in 1921 a doctorate in political science doctorate. Subsequently, he worked primarily as a publicist and private scholar, but also continued to study mathematics , natural sciences , history and philosophy in Münster and Milan , and around 1936 a second time at the University of Milan at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore on Feliks Koneczny to do a PhD in philosophy. In his later work on the method and systematics of cultural studies, he relied on Koneczny's work.

In the interwar period Hilckmann published in philosophical-theological journals in Europe, in Germany among others in the Hochland , in the Allgemeine Rundschau and in the Philosophical Yearbook . As a federalist Catholic, Hilckmann criticized nationalism . He rejected National Socialism as “the most narrow-minded, nationalistic brawl” and “outwardly Bajovarized Teuto-Borussian barbarism”, but welcomed Italian fascism in the sense of a “Christian rebirth of Italy”. With his essay Problems of Pan-Fascism: Is German Fascism Anti-Roman? (1931) it triggered a journalistic dispute between National Socialists and Fascists.

After the National Socialist "seizure of power" Hilckmann was monitored by the Gestapo . From 1935 he partially settled in Nuovi Liguore, Italy. After a private denunciation, he was arrested in Salzburg in 1940 . He was already the target of a campaign in which he was accused of treason for articles from the 1920s after the SA chief Viktor Lutze , who came from Bevergern, complained about him to the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and Public Education . Hilckmann is also said to have made several derogatory comments about the Nazi regime to a craftsman. On April 16, 1941, he was sentenced to three years in prison by the special court in Bielefeld for violating the " Heimtückegesetz ". He was also stripped of his doctorate in 1942 by the University of Freiburg . After three years of imprisonment and an odyssey through changing prisons, Anton Hilckman was transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in April 1943, to the Buchenwald concentration camp on February 6, 1945 and from there 11 days later to the Langenstein-Zwieberge subcamp near Halberstadt, where he feels like HG Adler , Ivan Ivanji u. a. was able to hide from the death marches and was liberated on April 11th.

In 1946, Anton Hilckman was appointed associate professor and full professor for comparative cultural studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. It was the very first institute for this discipline in Germany. In order to create a journalistic forum for the science of cultures, Hilckman founded the series Archive for Comparative Cultural Studies in 1967 , in which contributions from the philosophy of history and cultural studies were primarily published.

In total, Prof. Hilckman published almost 400 publications in 16 different languages.

In 1964 Hilckman donated the house where he was born to the city of Bevergern, with the stipulation that it should serve to cultivate the idea of ​​home and historical memory. The Bevergern Heimatverein implemented this idea and set up a museum about local history in the house. Today's home in Bevergern was inaugurated in 1966 on the occasion of the city's 600th anniversary. In 2006 a street in Bevergern was named after him in honor of Hilckman ("Anton-Hilckman-Straße").

In 1967 Hilckman was awarded the Rottendorf Prize for services to the Low German language .

Fonts (selection)

  • From the sense of happiness / Prosper Adam , Freiburg im Breisgau 1947.
  • Orient et Occident. Une Philosophy de l'histoire [aka JMAntoine], La Vie Intelectuelle, 1948.
  • France yesterday and today , Freiburg im Breisgau 1951.
  • Feliks Koneczny and comparative cultural studies , Saeculum, vol. 3, 1952.
  • together with Albert Freude : Bevergern in the past and present , Münster 1952.
  • Une philosophie de l'histoire inductive: expose de la doctrine de Feliks Koneczny , Actes du XI-me Congrès International de Philosophie, vol. 8, 1953.
  • On the sense of freedom and other essays. Thoughts on the meaning and goal of being human in life and history , Trier 1959.
  • On political education and political maturity , Bonn 1961.
  • The science of cultures. Their meaning and their tasks. Collected essays and lectures , Meisenheim am Glan 1967.
  • Should the Low German dialects die? , Berlin-Grunewald 1967.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Directory of professors at the University of Mainz 1477–1973: Anton Hilckman. University of Mainz, accessed on March 30, 2019 .
  2. ^ Tomasz Stępień: Anton Hilckman-apologeta. In: Civitas christiana. Retrieved March 30, 2019 (Polish).
  3. ^ Bogumił Grott: The civilization theory of Feliks Koneczny . In: Journal of Religious and Intellectual History . tape 50 , no. 4 , 1998, pp. 356-359 .
  4. ↑ a b Christian Botzke, Tomasz Stępień: Hilckmann, Anton Joseph , In: Biographic-bibliographic church encyclopedia . Vol. 31 (2010), Col. 636-648.
  5. ↑ Michael Kißener: Continuity or Change? The first generation of professors at Johannes Guttenberg University Mainz . In: Michael Kißener, Helmut Mathy (ed.): Ut omnnes unum sint (part 1). Founding personalities of the Johannes Gutenberg University . Steiner, Stuttgart 2005, p. 117 f.
  6. ^ Kerstin Kleinhaus: Anton Hilckman - a German European. A Bevergerner resists National Socialism . ( lwl.org [PDF; 48 kB ]).
personal data
SURNAME Hilckman, Anton
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hilckman, Anton Joseph Maria (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German folklorist and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH March 4, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Bevergern
DATE OF DEATH January 25, 1970
Place of death Mainz