Friedrich Ohly

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Ernst Friedrich Ohly (born January 10, 1914 in Breidenbach , Biedenkopf district , † April 5, 1996 in Münster ) was a German Germanic Medievalist .

Life

After graduating from high school in Frankfurt am Main, Friedrich Ohly studied German, Greek philology and history at the universities of Frankfurt , Vienna and Königsberg from 1932 and completed his dissertation in Frankfurt with Julius Schwietering in 1938 on sagas and legends in the imperial chronicle. Investigations into the sources and structure of the poetry , which appeared in 1940 (2nd edition Darmstadt 1968). Besides Julius Schwietering, Ohly mentions Paul Hankamer and Max Kommerell as his academic teachers . Just like his dissertation, his habilitation thesis , submitted between front-line deployments in 1944 , under the title Hohelied-Studien. Basics of a history of the interpretation of the Song of Songs in the West up to around 1200 did not appear until 1958, a clear distance to the ideological tendencies of the time of its origin. The dissertation plans originally developed at Hankamer in Königsberg could not be realized because Ohly was expelled from the university after the student attempts to defend Hankamer against attacks by the Nazi student body and Hankamer lost his professorship. After one year of military service, Ohly was dismissed in 1940 because of an eye wound and he was able to take on an assistant position at Schwietering in Berlin; in the spring of 1944 he was drafted again.

After returning from military service and a long Soviet prisoner-of-war period, Ohly worked as a lecturer in Frankfurt from 1953, then on professorships in Chicago and Mainz (extraordinary professorship in 1957) before he was appointed full professor at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel ( 1958). In 1964 he accepted a call to the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, where in 1968 he and the historian Karl Hauck founded a special research center for mediaeval history.

From his return from captivity to his retirement in Münster in 1982, Ohly's publications and many of his lectures were purposeful and guided by complex perception focused on the central questions and research objects that he in his major publications in Münster with strong effects on other subjects and on treated a large group of students. His students include: a. Hartmut Freytag , Wiebke Freytag , Wolfgang Harms , Christel Meier-Staubach , Heinz Meyer, Dietmar Peil, Uwe Pörksen , Uwe Ruberg , Meinolf Schumacher , Klaus Speckenbach and Uwe Wolff .

In 1967 Ohly was awarded the Brothers Grimm Prize from the Philipps University of Marburg . In 1985 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Chicago. Calls to Chicago, Berlin, Cologne, Innsbruck, Freiburg / Br. and he refused Vienna. In 1973 he became an honorary member of the Modern Language Association of America, in 1970 a member of the Rhenish-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, the Accademia Senese degli Intronati Siena (1979), the Medieval Academy of America (1979), the Accademia Peloritana dei Perilocanti Messina (1983), the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen (1991) and the Institute of Germanic Studies London (1994).

plant

The main merit of the Germanist and comparativeist Ohly is to have recognized and established the medieval doctrine of the significance of things in the world and in writing as a central hermeneutical approach and as an object of medieval interdisciplinary basic research. Like the allegory research, Ohly's work is comparative in his extensive, diachronous studies of motifs and metaphors, which often extend into the 19th century and are predominantly anthropologically relevant topics: memory, awe, love, search, knowledge, guilt, despair, betrayal, Formulas for the relationship between God and man. Hereby he stands z. Not far from ER Curtius' topos research, in contrast to whom Ohly emphasizes less the continuity of antiquity than its characteristic break through Christian adaptation, i.e. emphasizes Christian and individual forms. He is close to Hans Blumenberg in his interest in the existence, world and poetry inferring and conveying value of metaphors (Book of Nature, Homer's Golden Chain, Deus Geometra, etc.). The most lasting effect comes from Ohly's inaugural lecture in Kiel, The Spiritual Sense of the Word in the Middle Ages . Further book publications gradually redeemed parts of the conceptualized program and expanded it to include neighboring eras and linguistic areas.

Publications

Independent publications

  • as ed. with Max Wehrli : Julius Schwietering, Philologische Schriften. Munich 1969.
  • Diamond and goat's blood. The history of tradition and interpretation of a natural process from antiquity to modern times. Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-503-01253-2 ; also abbreviated in: Werner Schröder (Ed.): Wolfram-Studien. 17 volumes. Schmidt, Berlin 1970-2002; Volume 3 (Schweinfurt Colloquium 1972). Berlin 1975, pp. 72-188.
  • The accursed and the chosen one. From living with guilt. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1976, ISBN 3-531-07207-2 (in English: The Damned and the Elect. Guilt in Western Culture. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1992, ISBN 0-521-38250-5 ).
  • Writings on medieval meaning research. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1977, ISBN 3-534-07515-3 (2nd, unchanged edition, ibid 1983).
  • Law and gospel. On the typology in Luther and Lucas Cranach. To the blood stream of grace in art (= series of publications of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. NF vol. 1). Aschendorff, Münster 1985, ISBN 3-402-04520-6 .
  • Sweet nails of passion. A contribution to theological semantics. In: Günter Heintz, Peter Schmitter (eds.): Collectanea philologica. Festschrift for Helmut Gipper on his 65th birthday (= Saecvla spiritalia. Vol. 15). Volume 2. Koerner, Baden-Baden 1985, ISBN 3-87320-414-2 , pp. 403-613 (also published independently: (= Saecvla spiritalia. Vol. 21). Koerner, Baden-Baden 1989, ISBN 3-87320 -421-5 ).
  • Metaphors for the levels of sin and the counter-effects of grace (= Rheinisch-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Lectures. G: Geisteswissenschaften. 302). Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1990, ISBN 3-531-07302-8 .
  • Selected and new writings on literary history and meaning research. Edited by Uwe Ruberg and Dietmar Peil. Hirzel, Stuttgart et al. 1995, ISBN 3-7776-0654-5 .
  • as editor: The St. Trudperter Song of Songs. A teaching of the loving knowledge of God (= Library of the Middle Ages. Vol. 2 = Library of German Classics. Vol. 155). With the collaboration of Nicola Kleine. Deutscher Klassiker-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-618-66020-0 .
  • On the doctrine of signatures in the early modern period. Remarks on medieval prehistory and on the peculiarity of an epoch-making way of thinking in science, literature and art. Edited from the estate by Uwe Ruberg and Dietmar Peil. Hirzel, Stuttgart et al. 1999, ISBN 3-7776-0952-8 .
  • The pearl of the word. On the history of a picture for poetry. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2002, ISBN 3-458-17108-8 .

Autobiographical

  • Luck of a prisoner with Pushkin and with stones. In: Journal for Culture Exchange. Vol. 37, 1987, ISSN  0044-2976 , pp. 87-92, (on Ohly's translations of Russian literature).

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 181.
  2. ^ First in: Journal for German antiquity and German literature . Vol. 89, No. 1, 1958/1959, pp. 1-23, JSTOR 20654913 ; Independent: (= Libelli series. Vol. 218, ZDB -ID 846543-5 ). Special edition, unchanged reprographic reprint. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1966; in Italian: Sul significato spirituale della parola nel medioevo. In: Friedrich Ohly: Geometria e Memoria. Lettera e Allegoria nel Medioevo. A cura di Lea Knight Santini. Il Mulino, Bologna 1985, ISBN 88-15-00809-8 , pp. 249-275; in Hungarian: A szavak szellemi jelentése a kozépkorban. In: József Pál (ed.): Az ikonológia elmélete. Szöveggyűjtemény az irodalom és a képzőművészet szimbolizmusáról (= Acta Universitatis Szegediensis de Attila József Nominatae. Ikonológia és műértelmezés. Vol. 1, ISSN  0237-5079 ). Volume 1. József Attila Tudományegyetem Összehasonlító Irodalomtudományi Tanszéke, Szeged 1986, pp. 229-265; in English: The Spiritual Sense of Words in the Middle Ages. In: Forum for Modern Language Studies. Vol. 41, No. 1, 2005, pp. 18-42, doi : 10.1093 / fmls / cqi002 .
personal data
SURNAME Ohly, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ohly, Ernst Friedrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Germanist and Medievalist
DATE OF BIRTH January 10, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Breidenbach , Biedenkopf district
DATE OF DEATH April 5, 1996
Place of death Muenster