Gerhard Gesemann

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Gerhard Gesemann ( Gerhard Friedrich Franz Gesemann ; born December 16, 1888 in Lichtenberg ; † March 31, 1948 in Bad Tölz ) was a German Slavic scholar , folklorist , literary scholar and university professor .

Life

Gerhard Gesemann was the son of a Braunschweig teacher. After completing his school career, he studied German , Slavic and comparative linguistics at the universities of Munich, Berlin and Kiel. After obtaining his doctorate in German studies in 1913, he abandoned the idea of studying Slavic Studies with August Leskien in Leipzig and instead went to Belgrade in 1914 to teach German at the Belgrade grammar school . After the outbreak of World War I , he accompanied the Serbian army as a nurse on their retreatAlbania and was released to Germany via neutral territory. He held this experience in 1935 in his book Die Flucht. From a Serbian diary .

Gesemann taught Slavic Philology and Balkanology at the Slavic Seminar of the German University in Prague from 1922 to 1944 , initially as an associate professor and from 1924 as a full professor. From 1933 to 1934 he was rector of the Karl Ferdinand University in Prague. Besides Franz Spina, he was the second professor of the seminar. In 1930 he founded the German Society for Slavic Research together with Spina , which published the Slavische Rundschau . He was particularly interested in the southern Slavs , about whom he published numerous works. Along with Hermann Wendel , Josef Matl and Alois Schmaus, he is one of the most important representatives of German Serbo-Croatian studies .

For the SdP he ran for election in 1935 as a top candidate in Prague. In 1940 he was sent to Yugoslavia by the Foreign Office to set up a German Scientific Institute in Belgrade . After the German invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, he left Belgrade in August and resumed teaching at the University of Prague. In 1941 he became director of the Slavic Institute , which in February 1943 became part of the Reinhard Heydrich Foundation . Due to a heart disease, Gesemann, who no longer felt comfortable at the University of Prague and was described by the security service SD as a political opportunist, retired early in 1944.

During the Second World War , Gesemann lost large parts of his academic library and many manuscripts, so that he finally limited himself to writing novels . Part of the estate is in the Munich Monacensia .

His son Wolfgang Gesemann (1925-2014) also studied Slavic Studies and from 1972 to 1987 was Professor of Slavic Studies at Saarland University.

Honors

Works (selection)

  • Rain magic in Germany. Kiel, Phil. Diss., 1913. Braunschweig, 1913.
  • Twenty-five years of Slavic Studies at the German University in Prague (1903–1928): A memorandum. (By Franz Spina and Gerhard Gesemann.) Prague, JG Calve 1928.
  • Serbo-Croatian literature. Wildpark-Potsdam, Academic Publishing Company. Athenaion 1930.
  • The Montenegrin Man: On the History of Literature and Characterology of Patriarchality. Prague, Calve 1934.
  • The Kingdom of South Slavia (by Gerhard Gesemann and others) Leipzig, Univ. Ed. Noske 1935.
  • Escape: From a Serbian diary 1915 and 1916. Munich, Albert Langen / Georg Müller 1935.
  • Culture of the Slavic peoples. (By Gerhard Gesemann, Michael Antonowytsch and others) Potsdam, Academic Publishing Society Athenaion 1936.
  • New Bulgarian storytellers. (By Ziwka Dragnewa and Gerhard Gesemann.) Munich, Albert Langen / Georg Müller 1936.
  • Heroes, Shepherds and Hajduken: Montenegrin; Folk stories. Munich, Albert Langen / Georg Müller 1935.
  • Heroic way of life: On the literature and essence of the Balkan patriarchality. Berlin, Wiking-Verlag 1943. In Serbian 1968. Unchanged reprint 1980.
  • Seventy-Two Songs of the Bulgarian People: Translated and Retouched. Berlin, Wiking-Verlag 1944.
  • Germanoslavica, "Tales from Ambush": 5 Balkans. u. 1 Prague novella from the estate. Commentary, summary of life and list of publications, created by Wolfgang Gesemann. Frankfurt am Main, Bern, Cirencester / UK, Lang 1979.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Andreas Wiedemann: The Reinhard Heydrich Foundation in Prague (1942–1945) , Dresden 2000, p. 67ff.
  2. Professor Dr. Dr. hc Wolfgang Gesemann is 85 years old , in: Informationsdienst Wissenschaft from July 22, 2010, accessed on August 2, 2010