Fedor Stepun

Fedor Stepun ( Russian Фёдор Августович Степун , scientific transliteration. Fedor Avgustovič Stepun dt eigtl.. Friedrich Steppuhn * 19th February 1884 in Moscow , Russian Empire ; †  23 February 1965 in Munich ) was a Russian-German writer , sociologist , Philosopher and politician .

Life

The Stepuns family were of German and Lithuanian origin. Fedor Stepun spent his childhood on his father's estate, who was the director of a paper mill. In 1900 he graduated from the St. Michael University of Technology in Moscow, comparable to his Abitur . In 1901 he entered the military with an artillery division. He then went to Germany to study, but completed further military training in Russia in 1904.

Stepun first studied philosophy in Heidelberg and wrote his doctorate in 1910 under Wilhelm Windelband . With Max Weber and Georg Simmel , he founded the magazine Logos , which appeared in both Petersburg and Tübingen at the same time .

After his return and further military training (1911), Stepun took part in the First World War as an officer from 1914 . It was only at this point that he took on Russian citizenship. In 1917, after the February Revolution, he was active in the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council.

After the October Revolution he was expelled after imprisonment in 1922 because he was previously considered an opponent of the Bolsheviks and had been active in the government of the February Revolution under Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky . When he was deported , he was on the so-called philosopher ship with Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdjajew , Sergei Nikolajewitsch Bulgakow and Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin , who had also been evacuated .

From 1926 Stepun worked as a professor of sociology at the Technical University of Dresden until he was dismissed from civil service by the Nazis in 1937 and banned from speaking and writing.

Memorial plaque on the house in Munich-Schwabing in which Stepun had lived since 1952

Stepun stayed in Germany (Dresden and Rottach ) and wrote his memoirs during the war years.

In October 1946 he became honorary professor for Russian intellectual history at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . He taught until 1964 and also developed a lively lecture activity, especially in Switzerland and Scandinavia, but also for German radio stations. At the 10th German Sociologists' Day in Detmold in 1950, Stepun was the main speaker alongside Helmut Schelsky .

Stepun was buried in the north cemetery in Munich.

Works (selection)

• The autobiographical work Past and Immortal , which he translated into German himself, has been published as a three-volume work. There is also a one-volume version which he has shortened under the title The Face of Russia and the Face of the Revolution , which was published by Kösel-Verlag in the series The Books of the Nineteen in 1961.
• The Love of Nikolai Pereslegin (1928) was the first book by the publisher Carl Hanser .
• Theater and cinema . Bühnenvolksbundverlag, Berlin 1932
• How was it possible? Hanser, Munich 1929
• Dostoyevsky . C. Pfeffer, Heidelberg 1950
• "Depart now, sad shadow!" . Article in Rheinischer Merkur (1952); in: Book of Friendship. Zenta Maurina on her 70th birthday , Maximilian Dietrich Verlag, Memmingen 1967, pp. 38–42
• Theater and film . Hanser, Munich 1953
• Bolshevism and Christian existence . Kösel, Munich 1959
• Fulfilled and Unfulfilled. - New York, Chekhov Publishing House, 1956; London, Overseas Publications Interchange, 1990.
  • German edition: the past and the immortal . - Kösel, Munich, 1960
• Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy . Hanser, Munich 1961
• When I was a Russian officer . Kösel, Munich 1963 (new edition)
• Mystical world view . Hanser, Munich 1964

literature

• Christian Hufen: Fedor Stepun. A political intellectual from Russia in Europe. The years 1884–1945 . Lukas, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-931836-35-5 (digitized 2010)
• Scholar and Grand Master . In: Die Zeit , No. 8/1954
• Klaus-Georg Riegel: The revolutionary order of the Russian intelligentsia from the perspective of Fedor Stepun . In: Zeitschrift für Politik 3, 1998, pp. 300-325
• Holger Kuße (ed.), Culture as Dialogue and Opinion: Contributions to Fedor A. Stepun (1884-1965) and Semen L. Frank (1877-1950). Sagner, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-86688-052-8
• Christian Hufen: "What does Europe lose when it loses Russia?" - Suggestions from Fedor Stepun (1884 ?? - 1965) for a new Ostpolitik . Philosophical Conversations Volume 44. Helle Panke eV -Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Berlin. Berlin, 2017, 48 pp.

Web links

Commons : Fedor Stepun  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Fedor Stepun in the catalog of the German National Library
• In memory of Fedor Stepun (detailed biography)
• The past & the everlasting (exhibition in the private library)
• Lectures with Fedor Stepun in the online archive of the Austrian Mediathek

Individual evidence

1. ↑ basisdruck.de
2. ↑ Kulturportal-russland.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.