Archive for religious studies
The Archive for Religious Studies was an international German specialist journal on religious studies that appeared between 1898 and 1942. It was founded by Thomas Achelis and with the change of publisher to BG Teubner (Leipzig) in 1904 and change of publisher to Albrecht Dieterich, the program was realigned with the emphasis on philologically-oriented religious studies. After Dieterich's sudden death, Richard Wünsch took over responsibility as editor in 1908 .
The establishment of the journal is considered to be the beginning of the establishment of the discipline of religious studies at German universities. The programmatic essay “What is religious studies?” By the Indologist Edmund Hardy in the first edition provided a definition “which is the core of the subject to this day”.
After the First World War and the initial international isolation and boycott of German science, the archive experienced difficult economic times in the interwar decades. The international character of the magazine was strengthened through close cooperation with the Swedish religious studies, represented by the renowned Graecist Martin P. Nilsson , and through the merger with the Swedish journal “Contributions to Religious Studies” of the “Stockholm Society for Religious Studies”. The merger also compensated for economic problems. Subsequently, Nilsson took over the publishing house together with Otto Weinreich . After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, the scientific climate between Sweden and Germany changed. In particular, the National Socialist ideology (German cult, racism, anti-Semitism) and the influence on the sciences met with increasing skepticism and harsh rejection. In addition to the economic difficulties of the magazine, the scientific struggle for existence against the Nazi system came in the thirties, but also through forced compromises. Nilsson was criticized in Sweden for not distancing himself clearly enough from the Nazi science policy. The Second World War consequently led to the termination of joint publication and funding by the Stockholm Society in 1943, which meant that the archive could no longer be continued and its publication was discontinued.
literature
- Martina Dürkop: The archive for religious studies in the years 1919 to 1939. LIT Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-643-11129-6 . ( limited preview in Google Book search)
