Franz Dirlmeier

Franz Dirlmeier (born November 22, 1904 in Donauwörth ; † June 9, 1977 in Vathy on Ithaca ) was a German classical philologist . Dirlmeier held professorships in Munich (1941), Mainz (1946), Würzburg (1951) and Heidelberg (1959).

Life

Until the end of the Second World War

Franz Dirlmeier studied Classical Philology at the University of Munich , where Eduard Schwartz influenced him the most. After receiving his doctorate under Rudolf Pfeiffer and Albert Rehm (1931), he worked as a lecturer at the University of Belgrade from 1931 to 1934 . During the time of National Socialism , Dirlmeier was a prominent representative of the ruling ideology. In 1933 he was a co-founder of the Belgrade NSDAP local group . As a result of his political involvement, his contract in Belgrade was not renewed in the summer of 1934. Dirlmeier returned to Munich to do his habilitation there . He worked in Munich as an assistant and gave elementary courses for the students. His courses with titles such as Aristotle's Creation of the First Nordic, Autonomous Ethics were heavily ideologically embellished. Dirlmeier was involved in the National Socialist German Lecturer Association and the National Socialist Teachers Association , where he had been a shop steward at the University of Munich since 1935 and a member of the Gaustab since 1937.

Immediately after his habilitation, which was supervised and supported by Rehm and Pfeiffer, Dirlmeier received a lecturer position at the University of Munich. From 1937 on he represented the professorship of his teacher Pfeiffer, who had been dismissed as the husband of a Jewish woman and had emigrated to England. He applied to fill the professorship and showed himself to be an opportunist here too, by writing several petitions to the Rosenberg office . He transferred his opportunism to his students. In 1937 he advised the student Franz Josef Strauss to join the NSKK . In 1938 he was appointed as the chair successor and full professor in the course of a house appointment. His professional and political qualifications played an equally important role in his appointment. At the Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutsches Ahnenerbe e. V. Dirlmeier also headed the Department of Classical Philology and Antiquity from 1939. From the summer semester of 1941 Dirlmeier was dean of the university's faculty of philosophy. In 1940 he was elected a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

After the end of the Second World War

After the end of the Second World War , Franz Dirlmeier was released in December 1945 and had to face the denazification process . He avoided coming to terms with his troubled past by moving to the French zone of occupation , where denazification was less strict than in the American zone . Here Dirlmeier found a job as a research assistant at the newly founded Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in the winter semester 1945/1946; In 1946 he was appointed full professor and chair holder of classical philology. In 1951 he accepted an appointment at the University of Würzburg and in 1959 at the University of Heidelberg , where he stayed until his retirement (1970). Since 1961 he was a full member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences , where he was also secretary of the philosophical-historical class for several years. He spent his retirement with his wife on the Greek island of Ithaca , where he died in the summer of 1977 at the age of 72. One of his students is Herwig Görgemanns .

Research priorities

Franz Dirlmeier concentrated his research on the three ethical writings of Aristotle: the Eudemian Ethics , the Nicomachean Ethics and the Magna Moralia . While in his early career he followed Werner Jaeger's approach and ascribed the Eudemian ethics to the young Plato student Aristotle, the Nicomachean ethics to the more mature Aristotle and declared the Magna Moralia to be false, in the years after the Second World War he approached that of Hans position represented by Arnim . His translation of the Nicomachean Ethics is still in use today.

Publications (selection)

• Apollo. God and educator of the Hellenic nobility. 1939.

literature

• Albrecht Dihle : Franz Dirlmeier November 22, 1904 - June 9, 1977. In: Yearbook of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences for 1978. Heidelberg 1979, pp. 77–79.
• Herwig Görgemanns : Franz Dirlmeier †. In: Gnomon . Volume 50, 1978, pp. 702-704 (with picture).
• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
• Jula Kerschensteiner : The Chronicle of the Seminar for Classical Philology at the University of Munich in the war years 1941–1945. In: Eikasmós . Volume 4, 1993, pp. 71-74.
• Maximilian Schreiber: Classical Studies in National Socialism. In: Elisabeth Kraus (Ed.): The University of Munich in the Third Reich (= contributions to the history of the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich. Vol. 1). Volume 1. Utz, Munich 2006, pp. 181–248.

Remarks

1. ↑ Franz Josef Strauss - FAQ
2. ^ Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 113.
3. ^ Member entry by Franz Dirlmeier at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on January 26, 2017.
4. ↑ Maximilian Schreiber: Classical Studies in National Socialism. In: Elisabeth Kraus (Ed.): The University of Munich in the Third Reich. Volume 1. Munich 2006, pp. 181–248, here: p. 245.