Anton Jirku

Anton Jirku (born April 27, 1885 in Birnbaum , Moravia , † December 3, 1972 in Graz ) was a German-Austrian Old Testament scholar and religious scholar .

Life

Anton Jirku, the son of an economics director, attended grammar schools in Brno , Krems an der Donau and Hungarian Hradisch . After Graduate (1904) he studied at the Vienna University of Protestant theology and Semitic philology and graduated in 1908 with the promotion of Dr. phil off. He then deepened his studies at the University of Berlin and from 1911 at the University of Rostock , where he obtained his theological license in 1913 and qualified as a professor in 1914 at the University of Kiel for the Old Testament .

During the First World War , Jirku served as an ensign in the Austro-Hungarian Army . He was active in the German-Völkisch movement in Austria and acquired Prussian citizenship in 1920; in the same year he also took part in the Kapp Putsch .

After his discharge from military service, Jirku took on the chair of Carl Heinrich Cornill in Halle (Saale) in the summer semester of 1919 and then returned to Kiel, initially as adjunct professor and from 1921 as associate professor. He married the daughter of the Anglicist Ferdinand Holthausen , Thekla Holthausen. In the winter semester of 1921/22 he represented Ernst Sellin's chair in Kiel. In 1922 he received an honorary doctorate from the theological faculty of the University of Kiel and accepted a position as a full professor for the Old Testament at the University of Breslau . From there he undertook research trips to Palestine and Syria (1926, 1929, 1932), where he also took part in archaeological excavations.

During the time of National Socialism , Jirku (like other professors of the Protestant theological faculty) was involved with the German Christians and joined the NSDAP in 1933 . However, he came into conflict with the NSDAP Gauleitung and was therefore transferred to Greifswald in 1934 and to Bonn in 1935 .

"We can only use professors here in Bonn who have an intimate relationship with National Socialism."

- Anton Jirku 1935

Because of his political engagement, he was relieved of his professorship in 1945 and has lived as a private scholar ever since. In the denazification process , he was initially classified as a "minor culprit", which would have meant a loss of retirement pension. Upon his contradiction, Jirku was classified as a "follower" on August 22, 1949, which prevented the freeze on property; however, he was not allowed to resume teaching. He was retired on September 1, 1949. From 1956, Jirku spent his old age in Graz and Fieberbrunn in Tyrol. He continued to argue about his appointment as Professor Emeritus , which he was granted in 1959 on the condition that he waived all related rights in the faculty.

In the Soviet occupation zone , Jirkus, writings published in Bonn University's printing works, Das Alte Testament und die deutsche Gegenwart (1935) and Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Christianity (1938) were placed on the list of literature to be sorted out; In the GDR , The Battle for Syria-Palestine, the Bridge between Africa and Asia (1942) was added.

Jirku dealt with the history of the Old Testament and Judaism in the broadest sense. In doing so, he also included the parallel transmission of the other languages.

Fonts (selection)

• Studies on the cuneiform geography of Syria . 1910
• The Elephantine Jewish Community and its Old Testament Relationship . Berlin-Lichterfelde 1912
• The demons and their defense in the Old Testament . Leipzig 1912. Reprint Ann Arbor 1980
• Mantik in ancient Israel . Rostock 1913 (Licensed thesis)
• Materials on the popular religion of Israel . Leipzig 1914
• The magical meaning of clothing in Israel . Rostock 1914 (Kiel habilitation thesis)
• The oldest history of Israel in the context of educational presentations . Leipzig 1917. Reprint Hildesheim 1973
• The main problems of the early history of Israel . Gütersloh 1918
• The Old Testament doctrine from the Mosaic time . Berlin-Lichterfelde 1918
• Ancient oriental commentary on the Old Testament . Leipzig / Erlangen 1923. Reprint Hildesheim 1972
• The migrations of the Hebrews in the third and second millennium BC . Leipzig 1924
• The fight for Syria. Palestine in ancient oriental times . Leipzig 1926
• The Old Testament in the context of ancient oriental cultures . Leipzig 1926
• Secular law in the Old Testament: studies of the history of style and comparative law on the legal laws of the Pentateuch . Gütersloh 1927
• The Israelite Jubilee Year . Leipzig 1929
• History of the people of Israel . Leipzig 1931
• The old testament and the German present . Bonn 1935
• The Egyptian lists of Palestinian and Syrian place names in transliteration and with historical-archaeological commentary . Leipzig 1937. Reprint Aalen 1962
• Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Christianity . Bonn 1938
• The older copper-stone age of Palestine and the ceramic culture area . Berlin 1941. 2nd, unchanged edition, Aalen 1968
• The fight for Syria. Palestine, the bridge between Africa and Asia . Bonn 1942
• The excavations in Palestine and Syria . Halle (Saale) 1956. 2nd, enlarged and improved edition, Graz 1970
• The World of the Bible: Five Millennia in Palestine-Syria . Stuttgart / Zurich 1957. Reprint Berlin / Darmstadt / Vienna 1963, Essen / Wiesbaden 1985
  • French translation by Lilly Jumel: Le Monde de la Bible: 112 hors-texte . Paris 1958
  • Dutch translation by RMF Houwink: De wereld van de Bijbel: 5 millennia in Palestina en Syrië . Amsterdam 1959
• Canaanite myths and epics from Ras Shamra-Ugarit . Gütersloh 1962
• History of Palestine-Syria in ancient oriental times . Aalen 1963
• The myth of the Canaanites . Bonn 1966
• From Jerusalem to Ugarit: Collected Writings . Graz 1966
• Jirku, A., The decipherment of the Gublitic script ( Byblos script ) by E. Dhorme: FF 26 (1950) 90-2 (1 fig.)
• Anton Jirku, vocabulary and grammar of the Gublitic inscriptions. Journal of the German Oriental Society Vol. 102 (nF 27), No. 2 (1952), pp. 201-214

literature

• Jendris Alwast:  Jirku, Anton. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 3, Bautz, Herzberg 1992, ISBN 3-88309-035-2 , Sp. 105-105.
• Dietrich Meyer: The Protestant theological faculty in Breslau in the years 1933 to 1935. In: Peter Maser (Hrsg.): The church struggle in the German East and in the German-speaking churches in Eastern Europe. Göttingen 1992, pp. 98-135.
• Wolfram Kinzig : Word of God in ruins. Karl Barth and the Evangelical Theological Faculty before and after the war. In: Thomas Becker (ed.): Between dictatorship and a new beginning: The University of Bonn in the Third Reich and in the post-war period. Bonn 2008, pp. 23–57.

Web links

• Literature by Anton Jirku in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry on Anton Jirku in the Catalogus Professorum Halensis

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Enrollment entry in the Rostock matriculation portal
2. ↑ Quoted in: Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 287
3. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1948-nslit-i.html
4. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1953-nslit-i.html