Hans Grunsky

Hans Alfred Grunsky (born July 31, 1902 in Stuttgart , † May 20, 1988 in Sibichhausen ) was a National Socialist German philosopher who a. a. worked on Jakob Böhme .

biography

Hans Grunsky was the son of the Stuttgart historian and music writer Karl Grunsky , who worked on Martin Luther , Richard Wagner and Anton Bruckner . The father joined the National Socialist movement in 1930 and also strongly agitated in their favor.

Hans Alfred Grunsky attended the Karls-Gymnasium in Stuttgart, had to give up school attendance in 1917 due to spinal polio . From then on he was a wheelchair user. The NSDAP he resigned on June 1, 1930 at (Membership no. 264685). He was a fanatical National Socialist and taught anti-Semitic , racist and anti-Catholic philosophy. His goal was to establish a philosophy in the National Socialist sense. He gave a lecture on "Blood World and Freedom" and a "Seminar of the Philosophizing Team". He was also the author and editor of the Nazi training letters .

Walter Frank brought Grunsky to his Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany in 1935 . From 1937 to 1940 Grunsky was the main lecturer for philosophy in the Rosenberg office , from 1938 "main advisor for denominational questions and questions of political Catholicism" at the Reich Institute for the History of New Germany .

In September 1935 he was appointed substitute professor for Alexander Pfänder at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, and on May 26, 1937 he was ordained to this chair for philosophy and psychology. The philosophical faculty of the LMU had refused to appoint him as a university professor because Grunsky seemed to them professionally unsuitable. But Adolf Hitler personally appointed him professor of philosophy, a process that was unheard of in German university history even then.

Grunsky's first action was - “in a manner that is unparalleled even in the 3rd Reich” - an expert opinion on his specialist colleagues. In it he informed the Minister of Education, Bernhard Rust , which colleagues were Jews. These were immediately released from university service. "To prevent H. Cysarz from being appointed, Grunsky sent minutes of the philosophical faculty meeting to Winifred Wagner and added that Cysarz had made condescending statements about Wagner in his writings."

Grunsky's style included characterizing Jewish philosophy as the “Talmudization” of philosophy and of Baruch Spinoza as “ Talmud Jews ”, which is also the subject of his lecture at the Berlin exhibition The Eternal Jew: Baruch Spinoza. His life and work in the light of the Jewish question .

One of Grunsky's doctoral students was the journalist Max Nitzsche , who later took part in Konrad Adenauer's confidential “tea talks” .

On November 15, 1941, he was removed from service for defamation and violation of official secrecy. The leave of absence was lifted after a reprimand on May 10, 1943.

The report of the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and National Education called him a "complete failure ... in human and scientific terms". On July 12, 1945, he was released on orders from the US military government. In the denazification process, he was initially classified as a “minor offender” and then as a “fellow traveler”.

After 1945 Grunsky lived as a private scholar in Sibichhausen on Lake Starnberg. He continued his work within the Free Academy , which he founded together with Jakob Wilhelm Hauer . The academy's meetings have been held at Ludwigstein Castle near Kassel since 1952 .

Publications (selection)

• The problem of simultaneity in the theory of relativity . Tubingen, 1923.
• Soul and state. The psychological foundations of the National Socialist victory over the bourgeois and Bolshevik people . Junker and Dünnhaupt , Berlin 1935.
• Wilhelm von Humboldt and the problem of the Jews . In: Bücherkunde , Volume 4, 1935.
• The freedom of the mind . Hanseatische Verlags-Anstalt, Hamburg 1936.
• Wilhelm von Humboldt and the Jews . In: National Socialist monthly books , Volume 7, 1936, pp. 555f.
• The invasion of philosophy by Judaism . Junker u. Dünnhaupt, Berlin 1937. Writings of the German University of Politics , Volume 1, Issue 14.
• Baruch Spinoza . In: Research on the Jewish question , Volume 2, 1937, pp. 88–115.
• Plato's concept of the statesman and the German present . In: MDAk, Volume 13, pp. 332-341.
• Jakob Böhme as the creator of a Germanic philosophy of the will . Hanseatische Verlags-Anstalt, Hamburg 1940.
• Today's knowledge of the Jewish nature and its anticipation through the young Hegel . In: Research on the Jewish question (= writings of the Reich Institute for the History of New Germany ), Volume 4, 1940, pp. 68–94.
• Henri Bergson . In: Das Reich , No. 21, May 25, 1941
• Bergson and the Jewish Question . In: BrZ , No. 254, September 13, 1941
• Fate, freedom and self-world . In: Deutscher Glaube , Volume 10, 1943, pp. 62–67
• The Jew Spinoza. Creator of a new Talmud . In: BrZ, No. 312, Nov. 11, 1943
• Force and counterforce. About Jakob Boehme's philosophy . In: Völkischer Beobachter , No. 252, Sept. 8, 1944.
• Jakob Boehme . Frommann, Stuttgart 1956. 2nd edition, Frommann-Holzboog Stuttgart 1984
• They let themselves be radiated. A report from 32023 . Arno Balzer, Stuttgart 1964. Novel
• Lonely and common conscience . Studies on the work of the free academy . No. 12, 1972.
• The emancipation of women under moral auspices . Studies on the Work of the Free Academy , No. 18, 1975

After the end of World War II, Grunsky's books published during the Nazi era were placed on the list of literature to be segregated in the Soviet occupation zone and in the German Democratic Republic .

literature

• Michael Grüttner : Biographical Lexicon on National Socialist Science Policy (Studies on Science and University History; Volume 6), 2004, p. 66.
• Helmut Heiber : Walter Frank and his Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1966, pp. 483–492.
• Claudia Schorcht: Philosophy at the Bavarian Universities 1933-1945 , Erlangen 1990, pp. 141–152.
• Christian Tilitzki : The German university philosophy in the Weimar Republic and in the Third Reich , Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2002, pp. 688–692.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ As early as 1924 he welcomed in the Bayreuth Festival Guide the "intellectual protection that Adolf Hitler allowed Bayreuth to enjoy". See also his writings Richard Wagner und die Juden (Munich 1920); The struggle for German music and why Hitler? An answer based on his combat book (both: Walther, Stuttgart 1933). Karl Grunsky published the magazine Der Aufschwung , which was published by the National Socialist Literature Publishing House . About him: Fred K. Prieberg: Music in the Nazi State . Frankfurt am Main: Fischer 1982, p. 58.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , 207.
3. ↑ George Leaman: Heidegger in context . Complete overview of the Nazi involvement of university philosophers. From the American by Rainer Alisch and Thomas Laugstien. Argument, special volume AS 205, Hamburg and Berlin 1993. ISBN 3-88619-205-9 , 44f. (For further sources see there).
4. ↑ Wolfgang Huber: History of a friendship: The White Rose and its political environment at the University of Munich . Lecture at the opening of the exhibition "The White Rose and the Christopher Group", Bruchsal Castle on April 22, 2006
5. ↑ Gerd Simon: German Structuralism 1933–1945 (PDF; 180 kB), Tübingen 2000, Chapter 9.
6. ↑ ^{a b c d} Leaman, lc
7. ↑ BDC Act FJvRintelen, S. 3856, here n. Leaman, lc
8. ↑ Discussed in detail by RF Alfred Hoernle in: Mind , NS 47/185 (1938), 93-97: “This ... large pamphlet ... deserves the attention of all who desire to understand the self-interpretation of National-Socialism ".
9. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-g.html
10. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1953-nslit-g.html

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans Grunsky in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature list in the online catalog of the Berlin State Library