Ernst Kapp (classical philologist)

Ernst Kapp (born January 21, 1888 in Düsseldorf , † March 7, 1978 in Munich ) was a German classical philologist .

Life

Ernst Kapp, a grandson of the philosopher Ernst Kapp (1808-1896), studied classical philology at the University of Göttingen after graduating from high school . He followed his academic teacher Eduard Schwartz to the University of Freiburg in 1909 . Here he received his doctorate in 1912 with the dissertation The Relationship of the Eudemian Ethics to the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle . When the First World War broke out , Kapp volunteered and stayed at the front until the end of the war. His college friend Tycho von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff , who was doing his doctorate in Freiburg at the same time, fell at the front in 1915. Ernst Kapp then took over the publication of his unfinished work The dramatic technique of Sophocles , which appeared in 1917 in the series Philological studies . Through this work, Kapp came into contact with his friend's father, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff , who had also been Eduard Schwartz's teacher.

After the end of the war, Kapp returned to his doctoral supervisor. After his expulsion from the University of Strasbourg, Eduard Schwartz was appointed to the University of Munich for the summer semester . Here Ernst Kapp completed his habilitation in 1920 with the text The theory of categories in the Aristotelian topic , which was only printed decades later.

In the winter semester of 1927/1928, Kapp was offered a chair in Classical Philology at the young University of Hamburg , which Karl Reinhardt and Rudolf Pfeiffer had previously held. With his colleague (from 1931) Bruno Snell he worked closely in research and teaching. Kapp taught in Hamburg for almost ten years until he was removed from his position under the National Socialists. Since he could not prove the " Aryan descent " of his wife, he was retired on October 31, 1937 due to the law to restore the civil service .

After his release, Kapp initially went to England for several months (at the invitation of the Egypt Exploration Society ) and finally emigrated to the USA in 1939. From 1941 he was a lecturer in New York at Columbia University . After the end of the National Socialists' rule, Kapp had to fight for a long time to be reinstated in his old rights. At first he stayed in New York, where he was appointed Professor of Greek and Latin in 1948, but informed his friend Snell of his wish to return early on. In 1947 the Hamburg Faculty of Philosophy suggested that Kapp be reappointed to his old chair, which Ulrich Knoche had occupied from 1939 to 1945 . The appointment did not materialize, however: Knoche, who was dismissed as Nazi-charged in 1945, was classified as "exonerated" in the denazification process in 1949, so that he was able to return to the chair in 1950 instead of Kapp. In 1954, Kapp received the legal status of emeritus . Kapp settled down in Hamburg again and held seminars and lectures at the side of Bruno Snell. In 1959 he gave up teaching and moved to Munich, where he died twenty years later at the age of 90.

Ernst Kapp was an expert in Greek philosophy. His studies on Plato , Aristotle and ancient logic were groundbreaking and are still received today.

Fonts (selection)

• Greek Foundations of Traditional Logic . Columbia University Press, New York 1942.
• The origin of logic among the Greeks . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1965.
• Hans and Inez Diller (eds.): Ernst Kapp: Selected writings , Berlin 1968 (with picture)

literature

• Festschrift Ernst Kapp. Presented by friends and students for his 70th birthday on January 21, 1958 . v. Schröder, Hamburg 1958.
• Klaus Alpers , Eva Horváth, Hans Kurig: Philologica Hamburgensia II. Classical philologists in Hamburg from the 17th to the 20th century , Herzberg 1990. Second edition, unpublished manuscript 1996, pp. 9–11.
• Gerhard Lohse: Classical Philology and Current Events. On the history of a seminar at Hamburg University during the National Socialist era . In: Eckart Krause (Ed.): Everyday university life in the “Third Reich”. The Hamburg University 1933–1945 . Part 2, Reimer, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-496-00882-2 , pp. 775-824.
• Hans Peter Obermayer: Kurt von Fritz and Ernst Kapp at Columbia University: A Reconstruction According to the Files . In: Classical World , Volume 101.2 (2008), pp. 211-249.
• Hans Peter Obermayer: "A lifelong friendship" - Kurt von Fritz and Ernst Kapp. In: The same: German ancient scholars in American exile. A reconstruction. De Gruyter, Berlin 2014, pp. 223–402.
• Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.1. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 595

Web links

• Literature by and about Ernst Kapp in the catalog of the German National Library
• Wilt Aden Schröder : Biogram of Ernst Kapp in the scholarly historical prosopography of the Teuchos Center