Erich Diehl

Erich Diehl (born January 13 ^{. Jul} / 25. January  1890 ^greg. In Daugavpils (Daugavpils) ; † 2. June 1952 in Jena ) was a Baltic German Classical philologist .

Life

Erich Diehl was the son of the graduate engineer Wilhelm Diehl and his wife Clara geb. Jensen. His father was employed on a Russian railway project, which is why the family moved several times. Erich Diehl attended the Petri-Paul-Schule in Moscow from 1897 and from 1902 to 1908 the reformed St.-Petri-Gymnasium in St. Petersburg . He passed his school leaving certificate as the best in his class ( primus omnium ) with distinction. He was awarded a gold medal for his outstanding achievements.

From 1908 to 1913 Diehl studied Classical Philology at the University of St. Petersburg . From 1912 to 1915 Diehl worked as an assistant teacher at the St. Petri and Catharinen schools in Petersburg. His academic teachers Michael Rostovtzeff and Tadeusz Stefan Zieliński introduced him to classical studies and promoted his career: in 1913, after passing his state examination and diploma examination , Diehl received a state scholarship that enabled him to prepare for a scientific career. From 1913 to 1915 he took part in several excavation campaigns in Olbia on the Black Sea , where he laid the foundation for his later topographical research. During his studies, Diehl volunteered as a director of the student association of philologists and as a librarian at the seminar for classical philology. In April 1916 he passed his master's degree from Zielinski .

At Zielinski's suggestion, Diehl dealt with the literary papyri . In his diploma thesis (1913) he reconstructed the tragedy Eurypylos des Sophocles . In his master’s thesis (1916) he reconstructed the Aitia of Callimachos , whose work was one of Diehl’s research focuses from then on. After two trial lectures, Diehl received the venia legendi in Classical Philology. In the summer of 1916 he took part in an expedition to Turkmenistan , during which numerous Roman coins were found. Due to the events of the Russian Revolution , Diehl did not come to work on this find .

On July 1, 1917 Diehl accepted a call to the chair of Classical Philology at Tomsk University , which the Scholars' Commission of the Provisional Government had proposed to him. Diehl took on numerous new duties in Tomsk: he became a founding member of the Society for History, Archeology and Ethnography and Vice Dean , and later Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy. He was also a member of the University's Board of Directors and the Board of Directors of the New Language Teacher Training Institute. In 1921 he married the Baltic German Mary Waldenburg.

In addition to all of his duties, Diehl remained productive: he wrote scientific and popular articles and gave various lectures in Tomsk. Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied and therefore gladly accepted the offer of the University of Riga to move there. In his reply letter to Ernst Felsberg, a professor and senior staff member at the university, he wrote: “Firstly, I would be happy to work in my hometown to contribute to its spiritual flourishing. Secondly, I consider it my duty to prepare a new place for science […] which is being suppressed by the state here in Tomsk. [...] I gladly return the thanks for salvation from mental and physical forced labor to my home country with all my life's work. "

So Diehl moved to Riga in the summer of 1922, where he and his family built a new life. His daughters were born in 1922 and 1923, his sons in 1926 and 1931. Since Diehl did not initially speak the Latvian language and his academic degrees from the Russian Empire were not recognized in the young Republic of Latvia , he was not given a professorship at the university. He worked at a German school in Mitau as a French, Latin and Greek teacher. On September 2, 1922, the faculty of the University of Riga applied for an extraordinary professorship for Diehl, which the Ministry of Education finally approved on June 28, 1929. In order to obtain a full chair, Diehl submitted a dissertation on Callimachus to the university in 1937 , which he defended on May 27, 1938. He was then appointed full professor of Classical Philology on May 24, 1939.

Diehl continued his scientific work uninterruptedly during these years. He also stayed in contact with his academic teachers in St. Petersburg and made contact with researchers in Poland and Germany through Rostovtzeff and Zielinski . Commissioned by Wilhelm Kroll , he wrote several articles for the real encyclopedia of classical antiquity (RE) on the topography of the Black Sea coast. Together with Samson Eitrem and Adolf Jacoby edited the second volume of the Papyri Graecae magicae (1931) by Karl Preisendanz .

During the Second World War , Diehl and his family (like many Baltic Germans) moved to the German Reich in 1939 due to the Nazi propaganda , first to Wartheland , then to Posen . There Diehl tried to achieve a secure academic position. In 1940 he joined the SA , other NS organizations and in 1942 the NSDAP . At the same time he was appointed associate professor of ancient history at the University of Poznan in March 1942 . He based his teaching on the curriculum of Classical Philology and kept it free from National Socialist ideology .

In January 1945 Diehl and his family fled from the advancing Red Army to Thuringia and settled in Greiz . In February he was drafted into the Volkssturm and ended up as a Soviet prisoner of war . After a few months in the prison camp near Krasnogorsk , he was released on September 13, 1945 to Frankfurt (Oder) . He returned to Greiz and initially worked as an interpreter at the University of Jena . He was part of the delegation headed by the rector Friedrich Zucker , who negotiated the reopening of the University of Jena at the Russian military command in Berlin-Karlshorst . When the university began teaching on December 1, 1945, Diehl was entrusted with the representation of the archaeological chair. But on December 15, 1945 he was released again because of his membership in various Nazi organizations. He worked as an interpreter until 1947 before he was appointed professor of the Russian language in December 1947 . In 1951 he received a full professorship for the auxiliary sciences of classical antiquity. But Diehl died on June 2, 1952 as a result of his overhaul.

Diehl's life's work, a collection of sources on the entire Black Sea region based on Latyshev's Scythica et Caucasica , did not come to an end because of his untimely death. His preliminary work, in particular the source book, came to the Jena University Archives together with his estate. Since the rediscovery (2000) Dirk Moldt has been planning an edition of the biographical part of this source book.

Fonts (selection)

• Chrestomathia graeca . Riga 1928.
• Hypomnema: De Callimachi librorum fatis capita selecta . Riga 1937 (dissertation).
• Callimachus' digression style . Riga 1937.

literature

• Dirk Moldt : Erich Diehl - life picture of a German classical philologist from Eastern Europe . In: Hyperboreus . Volume 10 (2004), pp. 161-170.
• Māris Vecvagars: Erihs Dīls Latvijā . With a contribution by Dirk Moldt: Erich Diehl (1890–1952). Life picture of a German classical philologist . Riga 2006 (with picture).
• Dirk Moldt: Between Pontus Euxinus and Jena. Life stages of the classical philologist Prof. Dr. Dr. Erich Diehl (1890–1952) . In: Uwe Hossfeld u. a. (Ed.): College in Socialism. Studies at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (1945–1990) . Volume 2, Cologne 2007, pp. 2050-2070.

Web links

• Literature by Erich Diehl in the catalog of the German National Library
• Baltic Historical Commission (Ed.): Entry on Erich Diehl. In: BBLD - Baltic Biographical Lexicon digital
• Homepage about Ernst Diehl (with picture) by Maris Vecvagars (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Quoted from Moldt (2004) 162f.
2. ^ Moldt (2004) 170.
3. ↑ Homepage Dr. Dirk Moldt , accessed March 20, 2013.