Curt Paul Janz

Curt Paul Janz (1986)

Curt Paul Janz (born September 25, 1911 in Basel ; † August 28, 2011 in Muttenz ) was a Swiss musician who became known for his fundamental biographical work on Friedrich Nietzsche .

Life

Curt Paul Janz was the only child of Theodor Sutter and Frieda geb. Seehaus was born. After his parents divorced, his mother moved with him to live with her parents in simple, Protestant, middle-class relationships. As the son of a singing and piano teacher, he grew up with music. The mother's second marriage to Max Rudolf Janz from Germany could not be consummated for reasons of Swiss immigration law and was soon divorced.

Janz received piano and violin lessons from childhood. At the age of 12 he made the decision to become a musician. After attending secondary school, he entered the conservatory, where he majored in violin with Josef Braunstein and viola and clarinet as a minor. At the age of 19 he passed the audition for the orchestra of the Basler Orchestergesellschaft (today the Basel Symphony Orchestra ), but had to relearn the viola within four weeks. In addition, thanks to his minor, he was assistant principal clarinetist.

Through his intensive preoccupation with the life and work of the composer Richard Wagner , Janz came across Friedrich Nietzsche and the problematic relationship that both had with each other ( “ Nietzsche contra Wagner ” ). With that, Janz had found his life theme. Because Nietzsche was originally a professor of classical philology , Janz acquired knowledge of the ancient languages. He also began studying philosophy as a listener in Basel and made contact with the Darmstadt Nietzsche researcher Karl Schlechta , who had edited an edition on Nietzsche in the early 1950s , which remained the authoritative one until the critical edition was published.

Since Nietzsche had also dabbled as a composer, Janz, commissioned by the Swiss Music Research Society, decided first to open up and publish the musical legacy of the philosopher. It was published by Bärenreiter-Verlag in 1976 .

For his magnum opus , the three-volume Nietzsche biography, Janz initially relied on the preparatory work of Richard Blunck, who died in 1962, who had completed the first volume published in 1953 and left the rest in sketches. Karl Schlechta supported the German Research Foundation for Janz to complete the biography. The three-volume work was published in 1978 after 15 years of work and is considered a standard work due to its accuracy of detail and sobriety - despite criticism, among other things, of passages of racial biology that were largely reproduced unchanged in 1978 in the first volume by Blunck and of the superficial treatment of Nietzsche's early philological work of biographical Nietzsche research. In 1979 Janz was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Basel.

In addition to the Nietzsche biography, his main work, various publications and articles in commemorative publications and yearbooks were made. Again and again he advocated the performance of Nietzsche's musical works.

During the 43 years of his musician career, he successfully represented the interests of his profession, for example the implementation of annual and collective employment contracts for the orchestral musicians of the orchestra of the Basler Orchestergesellschaft (today the Basel Symphony Orchestra) and the transformation of the Basel section of the Swiss Musicians' Association from a more social one Club transformed into a union organization with new statutes in 1943.

Honors

• 1973 honorary member of the Swiss Musicians Association
• 1978 Primo premio Internazionale di Filosofia Federico Nietzsche Taormina
• 1979 Dr. honoris causa from the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Basel for his main work
• 1998 Award of the Great Nietzsche Literature Prize of the State of Saxony-Anhalt in Naumburg

Works

• Kierkegaard and the musical, represented by his conception of Mozart's "Don Juan" . In: Die Musikforschung, 10 (1957), issue 3.
• Friedrich Nietzsche's letters. Text problems and their importance for biography and doxography . Theological Verlag, Zurich, 1972. (= Basel contributions to philosophy and its history; 6.)
• (Ed.): Friedrich Nietzsche. The musical estate , Bärenreiter-Verlag, Basel, 1976.
• Friedrich Nietzsche. Biography . Volume 1: Childhood, Youth, the Basel Years . - Volume 2: The Ten Years of the Free Philosopher . - Volume 3: The years of infirmity. Documents, sources and registers . Carl Hanser-Verlag, Munich, 1978–1979. Multiple reprints, translations into different languages.
• The orchestra musician. Contributions to a professional profile , Swiss Musicians' Association, Basel, 1980.
• Franz Overbeck's appointment to the University of Basel in 1870 . In: Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde , Vol. 92, 1992, pp. 139–165. ( Digitized version ).
• The music in Friedrich Nietzsche's life . In: Nietzsche Studies 26 (1997).

literature

• Renate Reschke: Laudation for Curt Paul Janz on the occasion of the awarding of the Nietzsche Prize of the State of Saxony-Anhalt on October 24th, 1998 . In: Nietzscheforschung 5/6 (1999), pp. 15-22.

proof

1. ↑ See Richard Blunck: Friedrich Nietzsche. Childhood and youth. Ernst Reinhard Verlag, Munich / Basel 1953, p. 12
2. ↑ See Hubert Cancik : Nietzsches Antike. Lecture . Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 1995, p. 132f.
3. ↑ Christian Benne: Nietzsche and the historical-critical philology . Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2005. (Monographs and texts on Nietzsche research; 49.) pp. 20f.

Web links

• Literature by and about Curt Paul Janz in the catalog of the German National Library