Ernst Zyhlarz

Ernst Zyhlarz (born August 27, 1890 in Prague , † July 12, 1964 in Hamburg ) was an Austrian Africanist who taught at the University of Hamburg from 1931 to 1945 .

Life

The student was already interested in the Arabic and Hebrew languages . Zyhlarz secretly converted to the Jewish faith in 1910. He did his military service in Galicia and learned Yiddish . Shortly before completing his law degree at the University of Vienna , he was drafted into the war from 1914 to 1918 and again worked in Galicia. In 1918/19 he switched to studying Egyptology with Hermann Junker . There he learned Hamitic languages . In 1921 he received his doctorate and in 1930 his habilitation . From 1931 he taught as a private lecturer in Vienna and in the same year moved to Carl Meinhof in Hamburg . In 1933 he signed the confession of professors at German universities and colleges about Adolf Hitler . Since 1938 he had to expect that his conversion to Judaism would become known. In 1939 he married a woman of Russian-Baltic origin. During the World War he isolated himself more and more, but kept in contact with Jews and Eastern Europeans.

Zyhlarz assumed the existence of a Hamitic language tribe and tried to combine Egyptology and African studies. This so-called Hamit theory turned out to be a scientific dead end. Many Africanists in Hamburg were members of the NSDAP during the Third Reich . Zyhlarz was not a member, but was considered a racist . His lectures had titles such as “Rassenartung und Sprache”, “Racial Problems in the Egyptian Language” and “Aryan Conquest Policy in the Egyptian Orient”.

In 1945, Zyhlarz was released from university service by the British military administration. An objection procedure was unsuccessful. He only achieved a pension from 1955. He saw an intrigue of former regime professors against him and named Wilhelm Gundert , Adolf Rein , Hans Peter Ipsen and others. a. Because of health and psychological problems, he could no longer work intensively.

Fonts

• Basics of Nubian grammar in the Christian early Middle Ages (Old Nubian). Grammar, texts, commentary and glossary. Leipzig 1929–1930 (Reprint: 1966)
• On the position of the Darfur Nubian. Vienna 1928

literature

• Herrmann Jungraithmayr, Wilhelm JG Möhlig (Hrsg.): Lexicon of African Studies. African languages ​​and their exploration. Reimer, Berlin 1983

Web links

• CV of daughter Katja Post-Zyhlarz Afrikanistik.at