Georg Gottfried Gervinus

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Georg Gottfried Gervinus
Georg Gottfried Gervinus, lithograph by Joseph Anton Bauer
Bust in the stairwell of the Heidelberg University Library

Georg Gottfried Gervinus (born May 20, 1805 in Darmstadt , † March 18, 1871 in Heidelberg ) was a German historian and national liberal politician.

Life

After apprenticeship as a bookseller in Bonn and commercial training in Darmstadt, Gervinus studied from 1825 to 1827 at the University of Gießen , then until 1829 at the University of Heidelberg history , philology and philosophy . In 1835 he was appointed professor of history and literature in Heidelberg . In 1836 he moved to Göttingen . There he was deposed and expelled from the country in 1837, as he was one of the Göttingen Seven - besides him these were Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm , Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann , Wilhelm Eduard Albrecht , Heinrich Ewald and Wilhelm Eduard Weber - against the repeal of the Hanoverian constitution by the king, Ernst August , protested. This act caused a sensation in the German public.

He then traveled with his young wife Victoria (1817-1893), a daughter of the physician and botanist Franz Joseph Schelver , with whom he had been married since 1836, to Italy, where he stayed for a long time, and with the young historian Karl Hegel met, with whom he and the lawyer Georg Beseler had a childhood friendship.

Between 1835 and 1842 Gervinus published his main work, the history of German national literature . In 1844 he resumed his academic work in Heidelberg as an honorary professor.

First edition of the Deutsche Zeitung on July 1, 1847
History of German Poetry, Leipzig 1853 (title page)

From 1847 he was editor of the Deutsche Zeitung founded by Karl Mathy and Friedrich Daniel Bassermann , at that time the newspaper of the liberal intellectuals. Gervinus was a member of the preliminary parliament and the committee of seventeen formed by it . From May 18 to July 31, 1848, he was a member of Wanzleben's national assembly in Frankfurt .

Georg Gottfried Gervinus grave stele with bust in the Heidelberg Bergfriedhof (in Dept. H), the original burial site has been abandoned

In 1853 he was sentenced to two months imprisonment by the Mannheim court for high treason for democratic publications ( introduction to the history of the nineteenth century ) and again released from university service. Shortly afterwards, however, this judgment was annulled by the Higher Court in Mannheim, because the charge of high treason should not have been accepted by the Court. The charges were then withdrawn and dropped entirely for reasons not stated. The Prussian Academy of Sciences accepted him in 1845 as a corresponding member and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in 1863 as a foreign member.

What is extraordinary about Gervinus' biography is that he did not support the uncritical legitimation of Bismarck's politics, which was widespread among the German historians of his time. In particular, his endeavor to break away from a purely nation-state perspective in order to follow the overall developments of the restoration era, makes him an individual phenomenon.

In 1960 the Gervinuspark in Essen was named after him.

Works (selection)

  • Introduction to the History of the Nineteenth Century , 1853
  • History of German Poetry , 5 vols., 1853 digitized
  • GG Gervinus life. By himself, 1860 , 1893
  • History of the poetic national literature of the Germans , 5 vols., 1835–1842
  • History of the Nineteenth Century since the Vienna Treaties , 8 vols., 1855–1866
  • Broad history , 1837
  • Handel's oratorio texts , GG Gervinus (translator), Berlin, Verlag v. F. Duncker, 1875
  • Handel and Shakespeare: On the Aesthetics of Music , Leipzig 1868

literature

  • Erich Angermann :  Gervinus, Georg Gottfried. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , pp. 335-338 ( digitized version ).
  • Michael Ansel: GG Gervinus' history of the poetic national literature of the Germans. Nation-building on the basis of literary history. Frankfurt am Main u. a .: Lang 1990 (= Munich Studies on Literary Culture in Germany ; 10), ISBN 3-8204-1267-0 .
  • Wilhelm Beseler : The Gervinus trial. Negotiations before the Grand Ducal Badisches Oberamt Heidelberg and the Grand Ducal Court Court of the Lower Rhine District of Mannheim, together with the legal opinion of the Law Faculty of the University of Göttingen and the Court Court judgment of March 8 , Braunschweig: Schwetschke u. Son 1853. ( digitized version )
  • Rolf Böttcher: National and state thinking in the work of Georg Gottfried Gervinus. Diss. Cologne 1935, Düsseldorf: Nolte 1935.
  • Rolf-Peter Carl: Principles of the literature review with Georg Gottfried Gervinus. Bonn: Bouvier 1969 (= literature and reality ; 4).
  • W. Dietze: Georg Gottfried Gervinus as a historian of German national literature . In: Sinn und Form 11 (1959), p. 445 ff.
  • Dagmar Drüll: Heidelberger Gelehrtenlexikon 1803-1932 . Edited by the rectorate of the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität-Heidelberg. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, Tokyo 2012, ISBN 978-3642707612 .
  • Wolfgang Ebling: Georg Gottfried Gervinus (1805-1871) and music. Munich u. a .: Musikverl. Katzbichler 1985 (= contributions to music research ; 15), ISBN 3-87397-264-6 .
  • Karl-Georg Faber: Gervinus or: The misery of a philosophy of history. A contribution to the discussion. In: Theses of History. Contributions to history. Vol. 1: Objectivity and partiality, ed. v. Reinhart Koselleck , Munich: dtv 1977.
  • Lothar Gall : Georg Gottfried Gervinus . In: Hans-Ulrich Wehler : Deutsche Historiker , Volume 1, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht 1973, pp. 493-512.
  • Knut Hennies: Failed hope and indifference. The literary history of GG Gervinus in the tension between fundamental philosophy and historicism. Frankfurt am Main u. a .: Lang 1984 (= Giessener work on modern German literature and literary studies ; 4,) ISBN 3-8204-7910-4 .
  • The high treason trial against Gervinus , ed. v. Walter Boehlich , Frankfurt am Main: Insel 1967 (= Insel Collection ; 24/2).
  • Gangolf Huebinger : Georg Gottfried Gervinus. Historical judgment and political criticism. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck u. Ruprecht 1984 (= series of publications by the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences ; 23), ISBN 3-525-35920-9 .
  • Marion circle: Karl Hegel. Historical significance and scientific history location (= series of publications of the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences ; 84), Göttingen u. a .: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2012, ISBN 978-3-525-36077-4 . (See e-book and reading sample )
  • Werner Moritz (Ed.): Georg Gottfried Gervinus 1805-1871. Scholar - politician - publicist. Ubstadt-Weiher: regional culture publishing house 2005, ISBN 978-3-89735-445-6 .
  • Hans Rosenberg : Gervinus and the German Republic . In: Die Gesellschaft 6 (1929), pp. 119 ff.
  • Jörn Rüsen : The historian as a "party man of fate". Georg Gottfried Gervinus and the concept of objective partisanship in German historicism . In: Theory of History , ed. v. Reinhart Koselleck, Munich: dtv 1977.
  • Max Rychner : GG Gervinus. A chapter on literary history. Bern: Seldwyla 1922.
  • Gerhard Schilfert u. Hans Schleier : Georg Gottfried Gervinus as a historian. In: Studies on German History from the Beginning of the 19th Century to the Founding of the Empire from Above , ed. v. Joachim Streisand , Berlin 1969, p. 148 ff.
  • Eduard Schulze: Gervinus as a political journalist. A contribution to the journalism of the German unity movement. Leipzig: Univ. Diss. 1930.
  • August Thorbecke:  Gervinus, Georg . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1879, pp. 77-86.
  • Gert Ueding : History of literature as a rhetorical task. In: Suevica . Contributions to Swabian literary and intellectual history 9 (2001/2002), Stuttgart 2004, pp. 357–373, ISBN 3-88099-428-5 .
  • Jonathan F. Wagner: Germany's 19th century Cassandra. The liberal federalist Georg Gottfried Gervinus. New York et al. a .: Lang 1995 (= American university studies ; Series 9: History ; 175), ISBN 0-8204-2701-2 .

Web links

Wikisource: Georg Gottfried Gervinus  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Georg Gottfried Gervinus  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Gervinus, Victoria in the German Biography
  2. ^ University of Heidelberg Gervinus-Franz Schelver
  3. ↑ See Marion Kreis: Karl Hegel. Historical significance and scientific history location (= series of publications of the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Vol. 84). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen u. a. 2012, especially p. 28ff., ISBN 978-3-525-36077-4 .
personal data
SURNAME Gervinus, Georg Gottfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Historian and national liberal politician
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1805
PLACE OF BIRTH Darmstadt
DATE OF DEATH March 18, 1871
Place of death Heidelberg