Franz Koch (Germanist)

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Franz Koch (born March 21, 1888 in Attnang , Upper Austria ; † December 29, 1969 in Tübingen ) was a German-Austrian Germanist and literary historian .

Life

Koch studied philosophy and linguistics at the University of Vienna , where he joined the Upper Austrian Germanic fraternity . His doctorate took place in 1912, his habilitation in 1925. From 1925 he was a private lecturer in modern German literary history in Vienna.

During the time of National Socialism , Koch was professor for German literary and intellectual history in Berlin from 1935 to 1945 . In 1936 he was a member of the advisory board of the Jewish question research department within the Nazi Reich Institute for the History of New Germany . In 1937 he joined the NSDAP after the membership ban on membership was relaxed . In the same year he published the book Goethe and the Jews, which contained the text of a lecture given to the Reichsinstitut in May 1937 and which significantly promoted the image of the supposedly nationalist, anti-Semitic poet under National Socialism. From 1939 he was editor of the Handbuch des Deutschen Literatures . In 1940 he published the book Poetry and Faith in the central publishing house of the NSDAP . He was also the main editor for modern literary history at the Rosenberg office . Like Adolf Bartels , Heinz Kindermann , Hellmuth Langenbucher , Peter Walther Linden, Arno Mulot , Josef Nadler and Hans Naumann, Koch was one of the leading literary scholars of the “Third Reich” who repeatedly called for a “new 'National Socialist poetry'”.

From 1946 to 1952 Koch taught at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen without receiving a full professorship. Koch, judges Gerd Simon , was one of the “most blatant racists” and the “ prototype of a National Socialist Germanist”. For Simon it is strange and questionable about Koch's appointment to Tübingen in 1946 that the man had never worked at the University of Tübingen before. Nevertheless, he retired here in 1958, incidentally against opposition from the faculty.

Koch's well-known work is the German culture of idealism , which appeared in the Handbuch der Kulturgeschichte in 1935 .

In the Soviet occupation zone , Koch's writings Goethe and the Jews (1937) and History of German Poetry (1941) were placed on the list of literature to be sorted out. In the German Democratic Republic followed on this list nor in the Franz Eher Verlag published poetry and Faith (1940). At the end of July 1945, his membership in the former Prussian Academy of Sciences , of which he had been a full member since 1939, was terminated.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Franz Koch: Goethe and the Jews. Hamburg 1937. First appeared in Research on the Jewish Question. Vol. 2: Session reports of the second working conference of the Research Department Jewish Question of the Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany from May 12-14 , 1937. Hamburg 1937. pp. 116–142.
  2. ^ W. Daniel Wilson: Jew friend, Jew enemy - or Jew? Goethe and Judaism under National Socialism. In: Goethe and the Jews - the Jews and Goethe. Contributions to a relationship and reception story. Edited by Anna-Dorothea Ludewig, Steffen Höhne. Berlin / Boston: de Gruyter, 2018. ISBN 978-3-11-052803-9 . Pp. 235-253, here pp. 243-246.
  3. ↑ For his memberships and activities cf. Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 320.
  4. ↑ January 26, 1895 in Barmen - July 21, 1943 in Suresnes (in the Nazi military hospital). Doctorate in 1918. Since 1920 freelance 'scientific writer' in Leipzig. From 1925 editor "Zeitschrift für Deutschkunde ", from 1926 to 1936 also co-editor of the paper. April 1, 1933 member of the NSDAP and the SA . In addition to a number of German-tumbling works on German literary history, especially on the classical period, z. B. "Goethe and the German Present" 1932, Linden wanted to form National Socialist theory through "Tasks of a National Literary Studies", 1933, a work that is part of the program of national literary historiography.
  5. ^ Jan-Pieter Barbian : Literary politics in the Nazi state. From synchronization to ruin. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2010, p. 390.
  6. ↑ Uwe Baur, Karin Gradwohl-Schlacher: Literature in Austria 1938–1945: Handbook of a literary system. Volume 3: Upper Austria. Böhlau, Vienna 2014, p. 270
  7. ^ On Tübingen German Studies after World War II
  8. ↑ Joachim Lerchenmueller u. a .: In the run-up to the mass murder. 3rd edition Tübingen 1997, p. 19f.
  9. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-k.html
  10. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1948-nslit-k.html
  11. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1953-nslit-k.html
  12. ^ Members of the previous academies. Franz Koch. Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences , accessed on April 14, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Koch, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Austrian German philologist and literary historian
DATE OF BIRTH March 21, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Attnang , Upper Austria
DATE OF DEATH December 29, 1969
Place of death Tübingen