Friedrich Brie

Friedrich Daniel Wilhelm Brie (born November 21, 1880 in Breslau ; † September 12, 1948 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a full professor of English and rector of the University of Freiburg .

Life

Friedrich Brie was born in Breslau as the son of the full professor for constitutional and canon law, Siegfried Brie . During his studies in Heidelberg he became a member of the black fraternity and later fraternity Vineta Heidelberg . Brie doctorate in 1902 in Berlin to Dr. phil., three years later followed his habilitation in Marburg with Wilhelm Viëtor with a thesis on the Middle English prose chronicle The Brute of England .

In 1907 he married Käthe Erdmann, daughter of Benno Erdmann , professor of philosophy in Berlin, and sister of Lothar Erdmann .

In 1910 he was appointed professor for English studies in Freiburg, which was initially an associate professor, and then from 1911 a full chair. In the winter semester of 1911/12 he was the first lecturer at the University of Freiburg to teach American literature (Irving and Poe). During the First World War, Brie wrote a number of strongly nationalist and anti-British books and articles, including "Imperialist Currents in English Literature" (1916). Under the impression of his lecturer Max Henry Ferrars, he supported the Irish struggle for freedom.

In the twenties Brie was rector of the university for a year (1927/8). In the same year he made the acquaintance of Matthew Taylor Mellon from the Pittsburgh Carnegie / Mellon dynasty in the USA and recruited him as a lecturer for the English seminary in Freiburg where Mellon received his doctorate in 1934 with a thesis on the slavery question. As a half-Jew in the sense of the Nazi ideology, Brie should actually have been dismissed; Colleagues, Mellon and the rector Metz kept him in office until 1937/38, so that he was even able to publish his main work, "The National Literature of Scotland ... up to the Renaissance" (1937). Forced retirement in 1937, he was arrested during the Reichspogromnacht on November 9, 1938 and interned in the Dachau concentration camp for a few days.

During the war he secretly held private meetings and was supported by members of the Freiburg professorial resistance group. He published until 1940; some of these articles are worded so ambiguously that resistive meanings can be gleaned. After the end of the war he was reinstated in his chair by the French administration as the first professor at the university and served as dean of the philosophy faculty. During a hike with students on the Schlossberg, he suddenly died of a heart attack. His name appears in the entrance hall of Collegiate Building I on the memorial for those persecuted and victims of the Nazi regime.

In 1933 Brie became an associate member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences , from which he was expelled in 1939. In 1947 he was reinstated as an extraordinary member.

Web links

• Ernst Theodor Sehrt:  Brie, Friedrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 610 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Literature by and about Friedrich Brie in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Friedrich Brie: Imperialist currents in English literature . Ed .: M. Niemeyer. 2nd, revised and expanded edition. Halle 1928, OCLC 3032590 (279 pages).
2. ^ Friedrich Brie: The national literature of Scotland from the beginnings to the Renaissance . Ed .: Max Niemeyer. 1st edition. Max Niemeyer Verlag, Halle 1937, OCLC 2102540 .
3. ↑ Eckhard Wirbelauer: The Freiburg Philosophical Faculty 1920-1960 .  ( 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. Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg / Munich 2006.  
4. ^ Members of the HAdW since it was founded in 1909. Friedrich Brie. Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, accessed on July 18, 2016 .