Friedrich Minssen

Friedrich Minssen (born February 26, 1909 in Sopot near Danzig ; † July 25, 1988 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German Romance studies and teacher.

Friedrich Minssen studied French, German and history in Bonn, Paris and Heidelberg and did his doctorate with a dissertation on Dostoyevsky and French criticism with Ernst Robert Curtius in Bonn. After the state examination he entered the Danzig school service, came into conflict with the National Socialists and was released from school service in 1937 after imprisonment and a fine. This was followed by an activity as a publishing editor in Berlin until the outbreak of the war and from 1940 to 1946 military service and imprisonment at the team level. After the war , Minssen initially did not return to school and chose journalistic and editorial work. He represented the business and literature sectors at the American newspapers Today and Neue Zeitung , was part of the editorial team of the magazine Der Ruf (together with Alfred Andersch and Hans Werner Richter ) and sat in on Group 47 .

Friedrich Minssen's second school career began in 1949 as a study assessor in Frankfurt am Main and culminated in 1962 as a high school councilor and head of the grammar schools department in the Hessian Ministry of Education, where he also helped the subject of "political education" to break through. Minssen chaired the "German Association for Political Education" for many years until 1972. In 1954, together with Felix Messerschmid, he founded the leading trade journal Gesellschaft - Staat - Erbildung ( Society - State - Education) and was its editor for over 20 years. Even after the merger with the magazine Gegenwartskunde , Minssen was an active publisher until 1976.

After his retirement in 1974, Minssen and his wife Barbara († November 13, 1979) translated Fritz Reuter's Low German prose works into High German. As early as 1975, Langen Müller Verlag published Das Leben auf dem Lande , the High German broadcast of Fritz Reuters Stromtid . In 1976 the tides of life followed, the novels of remembrance: Ut de Franzosentid, Meine Vaterstadt Stavenhagen, Ut mine Festungstid , then in 1977 Life in Paradise, novels and stories from old Mecklenburg , including Dörchläuchting and De Urgeschicht von Meckelnborg . Soon after their first publication, all Reuter works transferred by the Minssens were taken over by the Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag for paperback editions and reprinted several times. For this work, the couple received the honor letter of the Fritz Reuter Society and the Fritz Reuter Medal of the Landsmannschaft Mecklenburg in 1979 . It is thanks to the Minssens that the Reuters novels are again and again distributed beyond the circle of Low German readers.

Works

• The French Criticism and Dostoevsky , Dissertation, Hamburg 1933.
• On the wealth of storytelling, Fritz Reuter 1810-1874 (co-editor), Munich-Vienna: Langen Müller 1985.