Ernst Alfred Philippson

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Ernst Alfred Philippson (born April 6, 1900 in Mönchengladbach ; † August 9, 1993 in Urbana (Illinois) , USA ) was a German-American German and English Medievalist ( Old Germanist ). He was Professor of German Philology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign .

family

Philippson comes from a German family of scholars. His parents were Ernst Moritz Philippson (1871-1924), a dentist, and Johanna, née Mühlinghaus (1878-1945). His cousin was the geographer Alfred Philippson as an outstanding scientific personality. Contrary to large parts of the extended family, he was not brought up in their Jewish tradition, but was initially reformed and later non-denominational. Philippson was married to Margarete Josephine, née Hecker (1903–1989).

life and work

He experienced the First World War as a soldier in the Prussian army only briefly in the last months of 1918 after graduating from high school at the humanistic grammar school in Mönchengladbach.

From the winter semester 1918/19 on he studied German, English and history in Bonn , Munich (1920/21) and in Cologne from the winter semester 1921/22 to 1923. In Cologne he received his doctorate from Friedrich von der Leyen with a Germanistic thesis on fairy tale research: “The fairy tale type of King Drosselbart” . In 1924 he passed the state examination for teaching at grammar schools for the subjects of German, English and history. In Cologne in 1928 the habilitation took place with the English language work: "Germanic paganism among the Anglo-Saxons" with Herbert Schöffler .

First he was an assistant at the German seminar in Cologne from 1925 to 1931 and there after his habilitation from 1928 to 1937 private lecturer in English philology. During this period in the early 1930s, he made lecture tours to the United States until 1933. As early as 1928 to 1929, through his travel contacts, he accepted a teaching position at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. His academic commitment in the United States continued through a further teaching position from 1931 to 1933 at Ohio State University in Columbus . In September 1933 Philippson emigrated to the United States. There he took from 1935 to 1947 an assistant professor for German at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor . In 1937 he "voluntarily" returned his Cologne teaching permit. During the Second World War, he taught German and regional studies on behalf of the US Army officers.

In 1947 he switched to the German Department in Urbana as an Associated Professor until 1951 , and in 1951 he was given a full professorship for German Philology. In 1968 he retired, but continued to teach at Columbia University in New York .

Philippson taught and researched German literature from the beginnings of the Old High German phase to the early modern period and the late 17th century. Furthermore, the English and Germanic philology and especially the old Germanic religion and religious history and Germanic mythology. One of the academic students was Elmer H. Antonsen, who studied German . He was temporarily sole editor (1953–57) and co-editor (1957–71) of the journal Journal of English and Germanic Philology .

Honors

The University of Cologne honored Philippson in 1972 with the renewed award of his academic degree on the 50th anniversary of his doctorate. This award was the first of its kind at a university in the Federal Republic.

Memberships

Publications (selection)

  • The fairy tale type of King Drosselbart (Greifswald 1923)
  • The Germanic mother and matron cult on the Lower Rhine . In: Germanic Review Vol. 19, 1944, pp. 81-142.
  • Germanic paganism among the Anglo-Saxons (Leipzig, B. Tauchnitz, 1929. Reprint: New York, Johnson Reprint Corp., 1966)
  • The genealogy of the gods in Germanic religion, mythology and theology (Urbana, PLMA, 1953)
Editions
  • Texts from the late Middle Ages and the early modern period (with Hugo Moser and Karl Stackmann) (Berlin, E. Schmidt, 1956–72)
  • Benjamin Neukirch's anthology of Herr von Hoffmannswaldau and other Germans of exquisite and somewhat unprinted poems (with Angelo George de Capua) (Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1961–65)

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Philippson, Ernst Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American German and English mediaevalist and university lecturer
DATE OF BIRTH April 6, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Mönchengladbach
DATE OF DEATH August 9, 1993
Place of death Urbana, Illinois , USA