Friedrich Schönemann (Americanist)

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Friedrich Schönemann (born May 30, 1886 in Cottbus , † April 24, 1956 in Husum ) was a German literary scholar and Americanist. He dealt with culture, economic policy and society in the USA.

Life

Schönemann received his doctorate in 1911 at the University of Marburg with a dissertation on Achim von Arnim. From 1911 to 1920 he taught as a German lecturer in the USA. From 1921 he headed the English seminar at the Friedrich Wilhelms University (FWU). In 1926/27 he founded the amalgamation of the America Department of the FWU's English Department with the Berlin America Institute . In 1930 he was habilitated as an associate professor at the FWU and taught the cultural studies of North America. He also had a teaching position at the German University of Politics . In the Weimar Republic he was a member of the DVP , after the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists on May 1, 1933, he became a member of the NSDAP . He became a shop steward for the Reich Propaganda Ministry .

In the winter of 1933 he gave a lecture tour in the USA on the German language there. The Wittenberg College in Springfield (Ohio) awarded him the 1934 Dr. Suffered. hc, the German Academy in Munich the Ralph Beaver Strassburger Prize for the best work in promoting German-American relations. In 1936 he held the only chair for literature and art history in North America in Nazi Germany . 1937/38 he was visiting professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln . In 1940 he became full professor for America studies at the Faculty of Foreign Studies at FWU and head of the America Department at the German Institute for Foreign Studies connected to the faculty.

During the Second World War appeared in the crew organ Brussels newspaper some articles Schönemann's to his field, the end of 1943, an editorial in its sister publication German newspaper in Ostland to the "ideology of the USA". After the end of the war, Schönemann retired.

From 1950 to 1954 he was a parliamentary group member of the FDP and a member of the state parliament in Schleswig-Holstein ( member of the state parliament and deputy secretary until 1952), where he served on the agricultural committee and the committees for health care, public education and youth issues, and from 1951 to 1954 Member of the State Electoral Committee.

plant

In 1921 he published his theses Amerikakunde , in which he assumed that the German Empire had lost the war because the Germans did not know the USA.

In 1942 he published a standard work on the national history of the USA and based it on Frederick Jackson Turner . His ideas and formulations corresponded to the contemporary style that Klemperer subsumed under Lingua Tertii Imperii in 1947 . The United States' Declaration of Independence and the War of Independence (1775–83) described Schönemann as the “American spirit” and “fate” of this people. Under Turner's frontier thesis and American exceptionalism, the idea of ​​individual freedom and sovereignty of the individual inevitably developed. The articles of the Weimar Constitution (1919) do not correspond to the “national German way”. According to Hegel and the legal historical school , individual rights cannot be derived from the laws of nature: the state is not the result of an agreement and does not contain any natural rights. The state represents a “spiritual whole” and a moral whole, in which the individuals participate with their subjective will. The term 'equality' in the US only means 'equality of opportunity'. It was only in post-revolutionary generations that this would lead to 'brilliant generalization', since the declaration contained nothing, for example, about the equality of slaves. The 'authoritarian state idea' therefore fights the western democracies and their idea of ​​individual basic rights as not applicable to Europe.

In the Soviet occupation zone , Schönemann's writings America and National Socialism (Junker and Dünnhaupt, Berlin 1934), Democracy and Foreign Policy of the USA (Junker and Dünnhaupt, Berlin 1939), the aggressive economic policy of the United States in South America and the position of Germany (Enke , Stuttgart 1939) and England against America (Junker and Dünnhaupt, Berlin 1940) as well as The British Empire and United States of America (Junker and Dünnhaupt, Berlin 1943), edited by him together with Karl Heinz Pfeffer , on the list of literature to be sorted out set.

Private

During his visiting professorship in Nebraska in 1937/38, Schönemann met Marie Lau (born April 23, 1906 in Lincoln ), whose ancestors came from Husum. In 1939 he was divorced from his first wife, the writer Toni Harten-Hoencke (1872–1941) and married Marie Lau. Both had two daughters, Barbara (* 1940) and Rosemarie (* 1942).

After the end of the war, the family moved to Husum. In 1950 Schönemann published again a "Little America customer".

Fonts

  • L. Achim von Arnim's intellectual development is explained in his drama " Halle and Jerusalem ". Leipzig 1912
  • Gustav Falke : a study. Baltimore, 1916.
  • America customer. a contemporary requirement . Bremen, Angelsachsen-Verlag GMBH, 1921.
  • Mr. Samuel Langhorne Clemens . Braunschweig: G. Westermann, 1923.
  • The art of mass influence in the United States of America . Stuttgart. German publishing company. 1924
  • Mark Twain as a literary personality . Jena, Frommann, 1925.
  • Schönemann, Toni Harten-Hoencke: American poetry . Munich, Kunstwartverlag GDW Callwey, 1925.
  • Schönemann, Benjamin Barr Lindsey, Wainwright Evans, Toni Harten-Hoencke: The Revolt of modern youth. Munich, Kunstwartverlag GDW Callwey, 1925.
  • American democracy today . Stuttgart. German Verl.-Anst. 1932
  • From colony to empire . Stuttgart. German Verl.-Anst. 1932
  • American humor . Bielefeld, Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing. 1934.
  • America and National Socialism . Berlin: Junker and Dünnhaupt , 1934.
  • Democracy and Foreign Policy of the USA Berlin, Junker und Dünnhaupt Verlag, 1939.
  • The aggressive economic policy of the United States in South America and the position of Germany . Stuttgart: Enke, 1939.
  • UNITED STATES. and world politics . Berlin, Junker and Dünnhaupt, 1940.
  • England versus America, a historical-critical consideration . Berlin, Junker and Dünnhaupt, 1940.
  • History of America except Canada. History of the United States of America . Leipzig, Bibliographical Institute. 1942.
  • The Anglo-American and Judaism . In: Der Weltkampf, 1942, pp. 17–26.
  • u. a. with Adolf Halfeld , Otto Koischwitz : Culture in USA. The reality of a mass madness . Berlin: Junker and Dünnhaupt, 1943.
  • Schoenemann, Scott Nearing; Joseph Freeman: Dollar Diplomacy, A Study of American Imperialism. Heidelberg, Kurt Vowinckel Verlag , 1943.
  • Schönemann, Karl Heinz Pfeffer: The British Empire and the USA. Berlin, 1944.
  • Little America customer . Bonn: Athenaeum, 1950.

literature

  • Christian H. Freitag: The development of American studies in Berlin until 1945, taking into account the American work of state and private organizations . Dissertation, Berlin 1977 (passim about Friedrich Schönemann)
  • Frank-Rutger Hausmann : English and American Studies in the “Third Reich” . Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2003, pp. 503–504.
  • Frank-Rutger Hausmann:  Schönemann, Friedrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3 , p. 404 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Wilhelm Kosch (Ed.): German Literature Lexicon . Stuttgart 1947-1958

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b 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. 541.
  2. ↑ Annual reports German history 1933-34
  3. ^ Frank-Rutger Hausmann: English and American studies in the "Third Reich" . Vittorio Klostermann . Frankfurt / Main 2003 partly online
  4. ^ Brussels newspaper based on Rolf Falter: De Brussels newspaper (1940-1944) In: Historica Lovaniensia 137, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Faculty of History), Leuven 1982, p. 68. Deutsche Zeitung im Ostland of December 6, 1943, available from periodika .lndb.lv.
  5. ↑ http://lissh.lvn.parlanet.de/cgi-bin/starfinder/0?path=samtflmore.txt&id=fastlink&pass=&search=R%3D162&format=WEBVOLLLANG
  6. ↑ Schönemann: History of the United States of America . 1942.
  7. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-s.html
  8. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1948-nslit-e.html
personal data
SURNAME Schönemann, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German literary scholar, Americanist and politician (FDP), MdL
DATE OF BIRTH May 30, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH cottbus
DATE OF DEATH April 23, 1956
Place of death Husum