Ernst Alker

Ernst Alker (born December 22, 1895 in Vienna , † August 5, 1972 in Cademario ) was an Austrian - Swedish literary scholar .

Live and act

Alker was the son of an imperial councilor in the k. k. Ministry of Finance. He attended a grammar school in Vienna , where he then studied German and art history . Alker oriented himself towards the literary scholar Walther Brecht and obtained the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Vienna in 1918 . A short stay as a private librarian in Sweden was followed from 1920 to 1922 as an unpaid civil servant in the Austrian National Library .

Years in the Netherlands brought him a further doctorate in 1924 ("Doctorandus in de letteren en wijsbegeerte" in Groningen ) and a position as a teacher of German language and literature at the grammar school in Arnhem . In 1929 he followed a call to the Municipal Book Hall in Leipzig . There he was a scientific consultant until he became head of studies at the library school in Bonn in the same year with the Saxon librarianship exam passed in 1931 . In the following year he also worked as an examination commissioner during the librarianship exams at the Prussian State Library in Berlin .

Alker disliked the activities of the National Socialists who came to power in 1933 . He emigrated to Sweden in 1934, where he worked at Lund University with a lecturer in German language and literature and the Stockholm School of Commerce , also with a lecturer. In 1937 he married the librarian Maria Pawelka and in 1946 took Swedish citizenship.

In 1946 there was an appointment to the University of Freiburg in Switzerland as professor of German literary history. He could no longer finish work on his last work, for which the title Die Deutschsprachige Literatur had been planned since 1914 . However, the book was published as a fragment under the title Profiles und Gestalten der Deutschen Literatur after 1914 by Eugen Thurnher .

Works (selection)

• Gottfried Keller and Adalbert Stifter , 1923
• Philipp Hafner. An old Viennese comedy poet , 1923
• Franz Grillparzer. A struggle for life and art , Marburg 1930
• History of German literature from Goethe's death to the present , vol. 1 u. 2, Stuttgart 1949/50 (2nd and 3rd editions 1962 and 1969 published under the title Die deutsche Literatur im 19. Jahrhundert ; digitized in the Internet Archive )
• Profiles and shapes of German literature after 1914 , Alfred Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1977

literature

• Marianne Rolle: Ernst Alker. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . April 24, 2001 , accessed January 15, 2020 .
• Eugen Thurnher: Ernst Alker. An introduction to his posthumous work . In: Ernst Alker: Profiles and Forms of German Literature after 1914 , Stuttgart 1977, pp. V − XVI

Web links

• Literature by and about Ernst Alker in the catalog of the German National Library
• Publications by and about Ernst Alker in the Helveticat catalog of the Swiss National Library