Franz Böhm (philosopher)

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Franz Josef Böhm (born March 16, 1903 in Munich , † beginning of March 1946 in Lebedjan ) was a German philosopher . As a Neo-Kantian doctorate and habilitation, he also included ethnic elements in his work during the Nazi era . At the beginning of 1938, following a period of substitution, he took over Ernst Hoffmann's vacant extraordinary position at the University of Heidelberg , but his work there remained limited due to his entry into the Wehrmacht in 1940. At the end of 1941 Böhm was given a professorship at the Reich University of Strasbourg , but had to limit himself to journalistic contributions because of his military service. After the war he could not continue his academic career, he died in a prisoner of war camp.

Life

Böhm was the son of a medical officer and grew up in Nuremberg , where he graduated from the Melanchthon Humanist High School in 1923 . He began his studies in Würzburg , moved to Heidelberg after two semesters in 1924, where he studied art history and general political science in addition to philosophy. In 1928 he received his doctorate with Heinrich Rickert with his thesis Logic of Aesthetics . In the summer of 1932 he submitted his habilitation thesis Ontology of History . In both works Böhm presented himself as (according to Christian Tilitzki "downright slavish") supporter of Neo-Kantianism.

After Karl Jaspers had retired in 1937, Dean Hubert Schrade suggested to the rector Ernst Krieck in mid-August of that year that he should refrain from filling the chair because of the “current situation of philosophy in Germany”. Instead, Ernst Hoffmann's vacant professorial position should be held to be occupied by a philosopher. The proposal was received positively because the Reich Ministry of Education forced the dismantling of the philosophical chairs anyway. When Böhm, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Erwin Metzke presented the three-way proposal in December , Böhm was by far the favorite because he had been in Krieck's favor for a long time. The proposal referred to Bohm's work Anticartesianism, which was completed in autumn 1937 . German philosophy in the resistance , which was seen as a promising attempt to undertake a National Socialist reinterpretation of the history of philosophy, which could only continue as a "world view history". Boehm had thus completely detached himself from Rickert's influence, this can be seen from the fact that he no longer uses abstract concepts and is not subject to the temptation to present conceptual history as the history of philosophy. Böhm, who had been a member of the NSDAP since May 1, 1937 , but had not otherwise emerged politically, was then entrusted with a mandate to represent the extraordinary office, which was finally assigned to him in early 1938. The Reich Ministry of Education confirmed this without further comment and without having presented a personnel proposal.

In 1940 Böhm was called up. On December 1, 1941, he received a chair for “Philosophy and European History of Worldview” at the University of Strasbourg and was appointed director of a seminar of the same name. The aim should be the deepening of the "historical knowledge of the ideological foundations of European cultures" and visualization of the "guiding values ​​of our ethnic community in the concrete historical situation of our time". Due to his convocation, Böhm was still mainly bound to Paris , which is why he did not realize his ambitions and had to limit himself to occasional journalistic contributions to the “European history of worldview”.

During this time, Böhm also wrote articles for German occupation newspapers ( Brussels newspaper , German newspaper in the Netherlands ). He then took part in the war again, was taken prisoner and died of malnutrition in a camp in Lebedjan in early March 1946.

Act

Initially a student of Heinrich Rickert, Böhm was introduced to the philosophy of late antiquity, the Middle Ages and modern times from Augustine to Descartes, which Rickert did not pay much attention to . Hoffmann also made it possible for Böhm to publish texts in the Badische Lehrerzeitung a long time before his dissertation .

At the time of the Weimar Republic a culturally idealist anti-modernist, he seemed to explain Rickert's ideal cultural values ​​in his essay "The Culture Problem", but allowed himself some updates, which clearly left the hermetic character of his dissertation and habilitation. For the 1500th anniversary of Augustine, he published a series of articles in the Badische teacher's newspaper and, as a Catholic, was receptive to a “medieval cultural totality” or “cultural unity”. At least the universality of the spiritual represented a permanent obligation for him, an absolutization of modern phenomena of this totality such as race, people, nation or whatever empirically results for worship, he rejected. The nation, “economic absolutism”, capitalism and Marxism would have to (again) enter the service of “ideal culture”. In doing so, Böhm saw the necessity for this culture to allow a modern individuality, which also showed his adherence to Rickert's cultural philosophy based on national liberalism as well as his rejection of romantic regressions.

For Böhm, culture was ideally suited to achieving class reconciliation. While a surrender to the immanent legality of the economic-technical process would only make culture an issue for a few, culture could again become a matter of the people through a cultural mastery of the process. Böhm did not fix the concept of the people ethnically, so that he considered it desirable that people could meet on a common level in the sense of Lessing's Nathan .

After the seizure of power , Böhm changed his anti-modernism in such a way that he tightened its religious expectations, secularism in the understanding of history had to be abandoned, history had to be understood as religious again, and countermeasures had to be initiated to counteract the 19th-century detachment from transcendence . This was where the First World War came in for Böhm , which with its “onset of fate” destroyed all illusions about the universality of culture and made it clear that the people represented a reality. For Böhm, the concept of the people's spirit transferred the natural and cultural peculiarities of a people into a metaphysical order. In this order, the individual character becomes the bearer of a vocation that is not self-imposed, but can only be experienced and fulfilled with the greatest commitment.

For Christian Tilitzki , this inclusion of the people in a metaphysical order, which represents Boehm's longing for “unavailable norms of action”, looks like “Catholicism that has not been overcome”. The religious aspect declined in the period that followed, but the main motif from the Weimar period, the culture-critical approach, was retained. The “values” and the “human culture” had now been replaced by the people and the constant forces working in them, which were supposed to bring the “realm of means” as an expression of a destructive modernity under pressure back into a reasonable system of order. The earlier cultural values ​​now stood in this concept for a western, French spirit.

Even if Böhm was appointed to the special position in Heidelberg with reference to his anti-Cartesianism , the work nevertheless found many critics. Gotthard Günther defended the “ratio” against Böhm's “tirades against the rational”, while Hermann Zeltner and Johannes Hoffmeister complained that Böhm got lost in political-historical polemics (Zeltner) and fragmentary (Hoffmeister). Further criticism related to the fact that Böhm found it difficult to separate German and Western traditions, and he was also accused of covering up the “primordial enmity between the West and Bolshevism”.

During the short period leading up to the convocation, Böhm's impact on the next generation of academics was minimal. Three doctorates were based on his suggestion, otherwise he mostly acted as a co-referee for Krieck's doctoral and post-doctoral candidates and supervised former students of Hoffmann and Jaspers.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christian Tilitzki: The German University Philosophy , Volume 1, p. 326.
  2. ↑ Christian Tilitzki: Die deutsche Universitätsphilosophie , Volume 1, pp. 692-693.
  3. ^ Christian Tilitzki: Die deutsche Universitätsphilosophie , Volume 1, p. 694 (convocation) and Volume 2, p. 809 (Chair in Strasbourg).
  4. ^ Brussels newspaper based on Rolf Falter: De Brussels newspaper (1940-1944) in: Historica Lovaniensia 137, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Faculty of History), Leuven 1982, p. 72. In the Deutsche Zeitung in the Netherlands in the issues of 28. August 7th and November 7th 1940 ( digitized holdings of the Royal National Library of the Netherlands ).
  5. ^ Christian Tilitzki: Die deutsche Universitätsphilosophie , Volume 1, p. 693, footnote 420.
  6. ↑ Christian Tilitzki: The German University Philosophy, Volume 1, pp. 326–327.
  7. ^ A b Christian Tilitzki: The German University Philosophy , Volume 1, p. 327.
  8. ^ Christian Tilitzki: The German University Philosophy , Volume 1, p. 693.
  9. ↑ Christian Tilitzki: Die deutsche Universitätsphilosophie , Volume 1, pp. 693-694.
  10. ^ Christian Tilitzki: The German University Philosophy , Volume 1, p. 694.
  11. ↑ Christian Tilitzki: The German University Philosophy , Volume 1, p. 694 and footnote 424 on this page.
personal data
SURNAME Boehm, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Böhm, Franz Josef (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH March 16, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH March 1946
Place of death Lebedjan