Dieter Leisegang

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Dieter Leisegang

Dieter Leisegang (born November 25, 1942 in Wiesbaden ; † March 21, 1973 in Offenbach am Main ) was a German author , philosopher and translator .

Life

Dieter Leisegang was born on November 25, 1942, the eleventh child of the painter and cartographer Gustav Leisegang . He spent his childhood in Wiesbaden before the family moved to Offenbach am Main in 1959. The first literary works and poems were written in the 1950s and appeared in newspapers, magazines and anthologies.

After graduating from high school, in addition to German studies and history, he studied philosophy at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University , especially with Theodor W. Adorno and Julius Jakob Schaaf . Leisegang developed his approach of a “Universal Relation Theory” into the “Draft of a Philosophy of Relationship”, with which “Leisegang leaves a closed philosophical oeuvre in which profound historical knowledge of the entire history of philosophy is found with an almost startling systematic force on the highest level of reflection and Level of argumentation seamlessly united ”(Julius Schaaf).

In 1963 Leisegang got to know the typographer and publisher Horst Heiderhoff , with whom he published the series of poetry "The Latest Poem", Old Series. In 1963 he had to interrupt his studies because of a serious lung disease before he could return to the university in 1967 after an operation. During his studies he was already active in a variety of ways: as a lecturer for aesthetics at the Werkkunstschule / Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach (1968–1970); as a lecturer for text and rhetoric at the technical college for industrial advertising and sales promotion in Kassel (1968–1971); and as a freelancer in the “Art and Literature” editorial team at Hessischer Rundfunk .

In 1969 he received his doctorate with the thesis The three potencies of relation in the subject philosophy (Julius Schaaf / Theodor W. Adorno), German studies ( Paul Stöcklein ) and Eastern European history ( Klaus Zernack ). Leisegang received a lectureship in the history of philosophy, especially art theory (1971–1973) at Frankfurt University, which he used for a philosophical analysis of the work of Franz Kafka and Karl May . During this time there was also an intensive examination of fundamental questions of graphic design , the result of which is his prolegomena to a theory of design , which he published in 1971 in the magazine design international (of which he was editor with Anton Stankowski and Horst Heiderhoff). In addition, he also dealt with prime numbers .

Leisegang interrupted his teaching activities in Frankfurt in 1972 for a visiting professorship at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (South Africa), where, in addition to a theory of relations written in English, he wrote a philosophical-political treatise on the subject of “Apartheid and Integration as Moments of a True Political Relationship between Black and White in South Africa ”(letter to Julius Schaaf, July 20, 1972). In order to carry out this attempt, using the example of South Africa to demonstrate in relation theory, that one-sided political relationships must lead to a social and economic catastrophe that was already foreseeable at this time, it was no longer given or only in oral form in lectures (a manuscript on this topic went lost when moving). While in South Africa, Leisegang expressly withdrew his application for a full professorship at the JW Goethe University and suspended his teaching assignment there (letter to J. Schaaf, July 20, 1972).

In August 1972 he returned to Germany because of the death of his father. In the winter semester 1972/73 he held the seminar “Philosophical Aspects of Literature, Karl May: Ardistan and Dschinnistan” in Frankfurt, which in a certain sense represents his legacy. In the early morning hours of March 21, 1973, Leisegang shot himself, who had previously informed the criminal police about his suicide in a letter.

philosophy

Like his Frankfurt colleague Wolfgang Cramer , Dieter Leisegang was one of those philosophers who, after Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , dealt with the problem of the “absolute”; The direction of this discussion was generally given by the transition from the concept of substance to the concept of function described by Ernst Cassirer and, in particular, by the investigations of Leisegang's Frankfurt teacher Julius Schaaf .

As in Neo-Kantianism , especially with Paul Natorp , the relation came to the "top of all logical considerations", so Schaaf had the basic principles of a universal one with the aim of overcoming the traditional minimization of the relation and in dealing with the "basic science" of Johannes Rehmke Relational theory developed as the universal method of philosophy. Schaaf sees the only basic concept in relation: “Everything that is is relationship, and everything that is not is also relationship. The relationship is the absolute itself. ”He differentiates between“ external ”(ontological) relations that subsequently connect their carriers (substances) and“ internal ”(logical) relations that first create their relata and emphasizes that neither external (in Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein “external relations”) and internal relations (“intern relations”) do justice to the true essence of the relational; for it is inherent in every relationship that, in that it unites, at the same time divides, and in that it divides, unites at the same time. This parallelism (or equal originality) of unity and difference, the extreme moments of the relation, is what Schaaf calls "transcendental relation": the "unique and absolutely unrelated", which - described by Wolfgang Cramer as "outside" - as the "superobjective par excellence" "Totality of all being, of the real and the unreal" (whereby it is of eminent importance that the "unrelated" does not mean the "A-relative", i.e. the absolute substance, but rather the arelational, non-relational) .

Leisegang deepened this approach by pointing out that every relationship ultimately turns out to be transcendental. That is why he speaks of the “three powers of relation” and emphasizes that “the fundamental characteristics of the relationship of first and second power, separation and unity, difference and identity, cannot be maintained even as relationships”, because this is the case with relation 1. Potency leads to an unmediated dialectic of ideality and reality and in the case of the relation of the 2nd power to an indifferent dialectic of logical atomism and solipsism .

The completion of this Universal Relation Theory - as the synopsis of method (execution) and system (totality) - with a theory of the "ultimate elements" led Leisegang to a destruction of dialectics in favor of a view in which the relational is understood as the highest dimensionality, which “Relates to elements insofar as they are all”: from the pointless point to the totality of the “totally informed bin”.

effect

Leisegang was aware that, as he writes in an unpublished foreword to his main philosophical work “Dimension and Totality”, he was “dealing with philosophical questions that might have gone out of fashion”. But the "problem area around the ultimate element and totality" still forms, as the current development of the sciences shows, the "framework problem of all individual investigations". Paul Drechsel recently pointed out the fundamental importance of a philosophy of relationship in connection with his investigations into a (non-Aristotelian) "logic of globalization":

“The 'relationship' or relation aRb as the most fundamental entity of reality and thought leads a philosophically, logically and epistemologically incomprehensible shadowy existence. One could count the publications dealing with the concept of relations since the times of the ancient Greeks on one hand. The work by Dieter Leisegang 'The Three Potencies of Relation' (1969) can be seen as outstanding, but lonely on a wide field. Probably because of this enormous epistemological repression and the marginalized status of the relational concept, logicians and mathematicians, as well as physicists, react allergically when one tries to interpret this concept. This attitude probably has its explanation in the already dogmatic understanding of Newton's paradigm. The publications on the relation aRb in logic and mathematical set theory are in fact unmanageable, but nowhere is it explained that the relation aRb is a highly problematic relation from an epistemological point of view , actually an antinomy. "

Works

Volumes of poetry

  • Pictures of the Morning (private print), Offenbach am Main 1962.
  • Dawn of Silence , prose, Offenbach am Main 1963
  • Exercise of a way (private print), Offenbach am Main 1964
  • Fractions . Bläschke, Darmstadt 1964
  • Overruns . Bläschke, Darmstadt 1965
  • Interiors. Jolei [d. i. Joachim Leisegang] Woodcuts (based on drawings by Claire-Lise Holy). Epilogue: Hans Hinterhäuser. Heiderhoff, Frankfurt 1966
  • Hoffmann at the window . Drawings by Claire-Lise Holy. Epilogue: Hans-Jürgen Heise. Heiderhoff, Frankfurt 1968
  • Messy area. Aphorisms, poems, translations 1960–1970 . Eight drawings by Jolei. Heiderhoff, Frankfurt 1971
  • Because of private reasons. Poems and aphorisms . Heiderhoff, Frankfurt 1973
  • In the absence of clouds - aphorisms on the landscape . Leisegang's texts on pictures by Jolei. Heiderhoff, Echzell 1976
  • Lots of last words. Poems and miniatures . Ed. U. Afterword by Karl Corino. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1980
  • Exercise a way. Poems . Ed. Roswitha Heiderhoff u. Karl Corino, Heiderhoff, Eisingen 1986

Essays (theory of design)

  • Making the form visible , in: Catalog of the Frankfurter Sezession, Frankfurt 1963
  • Reading the world , in: Horst Heiderhoff, Prints and Typography, Mainz 1965
  • But separate the layers ... Reflections on poems by Paul Lüth , in: Deutsches Ärzteblatt 7, February 12, 1966, pp. 462–463
  • Epilogue , in: Carl Schmachtenberg , Selected Poems, Frankfurt [printed by Horst-Heiderhoff-Presse 2] 1967
  • The choice of a font , in: Horst Heiderhoff Typographie, Wiesbaden 1967
  • What is graphic design and what can it do? / What means graphic design and what can it perform? , in: design international 2 / [19] 70, pp. 8–17
  • Prolegomena to a theory of design I: Introduction , in: design international 4 / [19] 70 [?], Pp. 6-7
  • Prolegomena to a Theory of Design II: Design and Information / Prolegomena to a Theory of Designing II: Designing and Information , in: design international 1 / [19] 71 I, pp. 54–60 [a somewhat longer version under the title Gestalt - Information - Kunst , in: Druck-Print, 1/1971, pp. 13-16; both versions go back to the 26-page typescript in the Dieter Leisegang estate in the German Literature Archive in Marbach, but have been revised in different degrees]
  • Aggression as a doctrine of salvation , in: Der Literat, Heft 12, Frankfurt 1970
  • Heinrich Wehmeiers didactic typography , in: Der Polygraph, supplement to issue 20- [19] 71
  • Gaps in the audience. Relative and absolute in Franz Kafka . In: Philosophy as relational science . Festschrift for Julius Schaaf. Heiderhoff, Frankfurt 1974, pp. XVI / 3-56

Philosophical writings

  • The three powers of relation . Heiderhoff, Frankfurt 1969
  • Dimension and totality. "Drafting a Philosophy of Relationship" . Heiderhoff, Frankfurt 1972
  • Philosophy as relational science . Festschrift for Julius Schaaf (Ed. With Wilhelm Friedrich Niebel). Heiderhoff, Frankfurt 1974

mathematics

  • Preparatory remarks on the topic: Tables of prime numbers in the number range over 10 to the power of seven , typescript o. J., 16 p. (Estate Dieter Leisegang, German Literature Archive Marbach)

Films / broadcast features

  • A window on the world, poems by ten Slovenian authors , Süddeutscher Rundfunk, September 5, 1968
  • Erich Martin, portrait of a painter , Hessisches Fernsehen, July 8, 1969
  • Poets about their poems , Hessisches Fernsehen, July 8, 1969
  • The Paris Biennale for Young Art , Hessian TV, October 22, 1969
  • I write ... Resignation and tendency in German poetry after Auschwitz , Hessisches Fernsehen, November 11, 1969
  • The Gießener Musiktage 1969 , ARD, 23 November 1969
  • From the estate of the sixties , ARD, January 1, 1970
  • Art and kitsch in children's books , Hessisches Fernsehen, February 23, 1970
  • The children's book fair in Bologna , ARD, April 25, 1970

Transfers

  • WH Auden , The Common Life, Darmstadt 1964
  • WH Auden , The Cave of Making, Darmstadt 1965
  • Hart Crane , Moment Fugue, Darmstadt: JG Bläschke Verlag (1966)
  • Edvard Kocbek , Die Dialektik, Frankfurt 1968

Estate (German Literature Archive Marbach)

  • Design and information [= Prolegomena to a theory of design II ], typescript, undated, 27 pp. Din a 4
  • Working copy The three powers of the relation , with autograph notes a. additions
  • Poetry and computer , handwritten. Ms., undated, 3 p. Din a 4
  • Self-review "Messy area" , typescript, dated 1971, 3rd p. Din a 4
  • Fragment: Based on an everyday issue ... [probably 1st disposition for The Three Powers of Relation ], undated, handwriting. Ms., 2 p. Din a 4
  • Dimension and Relation (Appendix to The Three Powers of Relation ) , handwritten. Ms., dated January 26, 1969, 3 pp. Din a 5
  • Foreword to dimension and totality , handwritten. on 2 envelopes, postmarked January 1872
  • Fragment: Aesthetics , handwritten. Ms., undated, 2 p. Din a 5
  • Fragment: The End of Solitude , handwritten. Ms., re. "Dieter - Bärbel dictated", 4 pp. Din a 4 with "Table of Contents" ["1. The end of loneliness, 2. The destruction of art, 3. Alone or the uniformed society ”], undated.
  • Typescript of dimension and totality , with personal revisions
  • Speech for J. Schaaf's 60th birthday Oct. 70 , typescript, 4. S. Din a 4
  • Letters from WH Auden to Leisegang

literature

  • Julius Schaaf, relationship and idea. A platonic reflection , in: Parusia. Studies on the philosophy of Plato and on the history of problems in Platonism , Ed. K. Flasch, Frankfurt 1965, pp. 3–20.
  • Julius Schaaf, instead of an afterword. Speech at the memorial service on March 27 , in: Leisegang, For private reasons , Frankfurt 1973.
  • Jörg Engelmann, Society as a Relationship. Aspects of a relation-theoretical sociology of thinking , Frankfurt 1974.
  • Reiner Kunze, Review of Messy Area and For Private Reasons , in: [Source?] 1976 [quoted in: Corino, Das rettungslose Ich , pp. 199–200].
  • Karl Corino, The hapless me. On the poetry of Dieter Leisegang , in: Leisegang, Loud last words , pp. 199–213.
  • Christoph von Wolzüge, the scandal of the self. Notes on the poetry of Dieter Leisegang , review by: Leisegang, Lauter last words , in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Feuilleton, September 18, 1980, pp. 37–38.
  • Hans Dieter Schäfer, Dieter Leisegang , in: Die deutsche Lyrik 1945–1975, Düsseldorf 1981.
  • Christoph von Wolzüge, The Autonomous Relation. On the problem of the relationship in Paul Natorp's late work. A contribution to the history of the theories of relation , Würzburg / Amsterdam 1984.
  • Rüdiger Bolz:  Leisegang, Dieter. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , p. 154 ( digitized version ).
  • Harald Hartung, Das leergelebte Leben , in: Frankfurter Anthologie 9, Frankfurt 1985.
  • Christoph von Wolzüge, Article Relation IV - 20th Century , in: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Vol. 8, Basel 1992, Spp. 602-606.
  • Petra Ernst, Dieter Leisegang , in: Lexicon of contemporary German literature, 2 volumes, ed. v. Thomas Kraft, Munich 2002.
  • Paul Drechsel, On the “Logic of Globalization”, chap. 2, excursus: The logic of the relation aRb as a synopsis of separating and connecting, www.drechsel-science.de/Globalisierungs-Vortrag/Buch-Kapitel-2.pdf [cf. the reference to the entire manuscript at: www.drechsel-science.de/webseiten/globalisierung.htm].

Web links

Commons : Dieter Leisegang  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Relationship and Idea, in: Parusia, Ed. Kurt Flasch , Frankfurt 1965, p. 3.
  2. ^ Relationship and Idea, in: Parusia, Ed. Kurt Flasch , Frankfurt 1965, p. 17.
  3. ^ The three potencies of relation, Frankfurt 1969, p. 100.
  4. ↑ Dimension and Totality, Frankfurt 1972, p. 40.
personal data
SURNAME Leisegang, Dieter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German author, translator
DATE OF BIRTH November 25, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Wiesbaden
DATE OF DEATH March 21, 1973
Place of death Offenbach am Main