Charlotte Jolles

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Charlotte Jolles (1995)
Berlin memorial plaque on the house, Großbeerenstrasse 82, in Berlin-Kreuzberg

Charlotte Alice Bertha Eva Jolles (born October 5, 1909 in Berlin ; † December 31, 2003 in London ) was a German-British literary scholar , Fontane researcher and editor.

Life

Charlotte Jolles was the daughter of a Jewish civil engineer. She began to study German , history , pedagogy and philosophy at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin in the summer semester of 1929 . After starting her studies, she soon became interested in the anti-nationalist wing of the German youth movement with connections to international pacifist organizations. Together with these youth groups, she also toured the country around Berlin - the Mark that Fontane describes in many of his novels and in his hikes.

In the summer semester of 1931 Jolles took part in Julius Petersen's advanced seminar on the Berlin novel of the 19th and 20th centuries. He suggested a special study on Fontane as a PhD topic. In the summer semester of 1932 she began to look through the files, manuscripts, correspondence, newspapers and magazines for which Fontane had worked. She was also able to use the large newspaper collection in the Reichstag library before the National Socialists set the building on fire. After extensive studies, the work was completed at the turn of the year 1935/36, an extract from it was published in 1936. Only one typewritten copy of her dissertation appears to have survived. It is located in the university library of today's Humboldt University. It was only at the suggestion and under the editorship of Gotthard Erler , who met Jolles on the occasion of Fontane's 150th birthday in Potsdam in 1969, that the dissertation could be published in full for the first time 46 years later. After exams on the Middle Ages, history and modern literature on February 13, 1937, the doctoral certificate was to be presented to her on February 17. She stayed away from this act because of the expected humiliations.

Her father's illness prevented her from leaving Germany. After his death in 1938, she flew to London via Amsterdam in January 1939 on a visiting visa. She had only brought 10 Reichsmarks and a portable typewriter with her. Kathleen Freeman invited Charlotte Jolles to work in her home for German, Austrian and Czech refugee children, which she ran in her country house in Watford . After the war she became a British citizen. There she resumed her studies, which she completed in 1947 with her work Theodor Fontane and England. A critical study in Anglo-German literary relations in the nineteenth century. graduated as a Master of Arts .

She also taught German at the Grammar School for Girls in Watford. From 1948 she worked full-time in school. In 1955 she was able to resume a university career at Birkbeck College of the University of London and therefore moved to London in 1958. There she went through the British academic hierarchy , became a Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader and finally Professor in 1974. In 1977 she retired .

Charlotte Jolles became known for numerous editions and essays on Fontane; “He was the main hero of her life” (Gotthard Erler). She never really accepted that Germany had been divided by the Cold War. She worked on and about Fontane in both German states. She spent a lot of time in the GDR in the Theodor Fontane Archive in Potsdam. Jolles obtained volumes 17 ( From England and Scotland , 1963) and 19 ( Politics and History , 1969) of the Fontane edition of the Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung Munich and, after the death of Kurt Schreinert, completed the four-volume Fontane letter edition of the Berlin Propylaeen Verlag (1968– 1971).

Honors

At the request of the German Studies Section, Charlotte Jolles was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1987 by the Berlin Humboldt University, the university whose graduation ceremony she was unable to attend in 1937.

In 1990 Jolles became honorary president of the Theodor Fontane Society in Potsdam and headed the Fontane district in Great Britain. In 1994 she was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class . In 1998 she received the Fontane Prize for Literature from the city of Neuruppin .

Even Günter Grass has Charlotte Jolles in his Fontane novel 1995 A broad field mentioned, he called her the " Miss Marple of Fontane research".

On September 21, 2014 , a Berlin memorial plaque was unveiled on her former home in Berlin-Kreuzberg , Großbeerenstrasse 82 .

Works

  • Lonely people . Captain. Nelson and Sons, London a. Edinburgh 1962
  • Theodor Fontane. (Metzler Collection, Vol. 114, Dept. D), Metzler, Stuttgart 1972
  • Fontane and politics. A contribution to the characterization of Theodor Fontane. Text editing and epilogue Gotthard Erler. Structure, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-351-01266-7
  • A life for Theodor Fontane. Collected essays and writings from six decades. Series: Fontaneana, 8th ed. Gotthard Erler, collabor. Helen Chambers, Theodor Fontane Society . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-8260-4252-2 ; therein preface by the editor: Charlotte Jolles. A life for Theodor Fontane, pp. 9 - 24

literature

Web links

Commons : Charlotte Jolles  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Petra Boden: Charlotte Jolles on Julius Petersen. In: Scientific journal of the Humboldt University in Berlin. Social Science Series, Volume 36. Berlin, 1987, p. 632
  2. ^ Fontane and politics. Berlin 1988, foreword, p. 6
  3. ^ Fontane and politics. A contribution to the characterization of Theodor Fontane. Inaugural dissertation (partial print), Bernburg 1936
  4. ^ Theodor Fontane and the Manteuffel era . A decade in the service of the Prussian government. In: Research on Brandenburg and Prussian History , Vol. 49 (1937), pp. 57–114
  5. ↑ a b Fontane and politics. Berlin 1988, afterword, p. 258 f.
  6. ↑ a b A life for Fontane. Gotthard Erler gave a lecture on the fontane researcher Charlotte Jolles. In: Märkische Allgemeine from September 30, 2009
  7. ^ Fontane and politics. Text editing, epilogue Gotthard Erler, Berlin 1983
  8. ^ Fontane and politics. Berlin 1988, afterword, p. 257 f.
  9. ^ Fontane and politics. Berlin 1988, p. 262
personal data
SURNAME Jolles, Charlotte
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jolles, Charlotte Alice Bertha Eva (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-British literary scholar, Fontane researcher and editor
DATE OF BIRTH October 5, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 2003
Place of death London