Hans Knudsen

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Hans Knudsen (born December 2, 1886 in Posen , † February 4, 1971 in West Berlin ) was a German theater scholar .

Life

His father, a native Dane, was a city civil servant. After attending grammar school in Poznan, Knudsen studied philosophy and literature at the universities of Greifswald and Berlin. In 1908 he received his doctorate in Greifswald with a thesis on Schiller and the music for Dr. phil. After he settled in Berlin, he joined the board of the Association of Artistic Stage Directors and took over the editing of the magazine Die Scene . From 1920 he worked as a theater critic for the Prussian year books , the Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung , the Deutsche Zeitung and other magazines and newspapers.

In 1923, Hans Knudsen became Max Herrmann's assistant at the newly founded Theater Studies Institute at Berlin's Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, today's Humboldt-Universität . At the suggestion of Max Herrmann, Knudsen became General Secretary of the Society for Theater History and in this role was primarily responsible for the Society's publications. Also in 1923 he was appointed to the Volksbühne's artistic committee by Julius Bab .

During the Nazi era , Knudsen supported the prevailing ideology. He was one of the 88 writers who signed the pledge of loyal allegiance to Adolf Hitler in October 1933 . Between 1933 and 1934 he was responsible for the “Kampfbund” magazine “ Baussteine zum Deutschen Nationaltheater” , which only appeared in two editions and was edited by Walter Stang . For the Reichstheaterkammer Knudsen acted as editor of the official journal under the title Die Bühne - magazine for the design of German theater published by Wilhelm Limpert Verlag. In 1938 Knudsen was given a teaching position at the Theater Studies Institute of the Friedrich Wilhelms University. Knudsen, who had been a member of the NSDAP since 1940 , received in 1944, although doubts about Knudsen's academic qualifications existed at the university, the extraordinary professorship for theater studies with simultaneous takeover of the direction of the theater studies institute.

After the end of the Second World War , Hans Knudsen was appointed full professor of theater studies at the newly founded Free University of Berlin in 1948 , where he also took over the management of the theater studies institute; In the same year his work Essence and Basics of Theater Criticism (1935) was placed on the list of literature to be segregated in the Soviet zone of occupation . Knudsen also remained on the board of the Freie Volksbühne Berlin . In protest against the dismissal of the Volksbühne manager Rudolf Noelte , whom he had recommended for this post, Knudsen resigned from his offices in the management of the Volksbühne in 1960.

Hans Knudsen died in Berlin in 1971 at the age of 84. His grave is in the forest cemetery in Zehlendorf .

His son, Knud Christian Knudsen (born 1916, died 1998), was a sculptor (including a Ferdinand Porsche bust in Schillerpark in Wolfsburg ), writer and publisher (Christian-Verlag: first Berlin-Wilmersdorf, "artist colony" Laubenheimerstraße 19 , from approx. 1949 Bad Nauheim) and first employee of the German Coordination Council of Societies for Christian-Jewish Cooperation (Bad Nauheim) founded on American initiative (Reeducation) (1949 ).

Works

  • Heinrich Beck , an actor from the heyday of Mannheim theater in the 18th century . Voss, Leipzig, Hamburg 1912
  • The poet Hermann Burte . Reuss & Itaa, Constance 1918
  • Nature and basics of theater criticism . Theater Verlag Albert Langen / Georg Müller, Berlin 1935
  • Goethe's world of theater. Weimar stage management for a quarter of a century . Tempelhof printing house, Berlin 1949
  • Theater studies. Becoming and evaluating a university discipline . Christian-Verlag, Berlin 1950
  • Theater studies and living theater . Christian-Verlag, Berlin 1951
  • German theater history (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 270). Kröner, Stuttgart 1959, DNB 452475368 .
  • OE Hasse . Rembrandt publishing house, Berlin 1960
  • German Theater in Poznan. Memories and contributions to its history . Christian-Verlag, Bad Nauheim 1961
  • Methodology of Theater Studies . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1971

literature

  • Bibliography Hans Knudsen . On December 2, 1951. Presented as a private print by the Gesellschaft für Theatergeschichte eV Berlin. Foreword by Kurt Raeck. Berlin 1951
  • Theater studies in Berlin. Descriptive bibliography of the dissertations developed at the Theater Studies Institute under Hans Knudsen (Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität 1945 and Freie Universität Berlin 1949 - 1966) . Colloquium, Berlin 1966
  • Twenty years of theater studies at the Free University of Berlin with Professor Dr. Hans Knudsen (1948-1968) . Edited by his students. Berlin 1968
  • Rolf Badenhausen :  Knudsen, Hans. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , p. 228 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Ulrich Goerdten (editor): Theater Studies Library Hans Knudsen, catalog . University Library of the Free University of Berlin , Berlin 1981
  • Joseph Wulf : Theater and Film in the Third Reich . A documentation. Ullstein, Berlin 1989. ISBN 3-550-07060-8 (here especially pages 228-236)
  • Andreas Englhart: Theater Studies and National Socialism. In: Cultural Studies and National Socialism. A manual, ed. v. Jürgen Elvert and Jürgen Nielsen-Sikora, Steiner, Stuttgart 2008, pp. 863–898

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. 319.
  2. ↑ Building blocks for the German national theater . Organ of the theater group in the Kampfbund for German culture . Edited by Walter Stang (Responsible: Hans Knudsen) 1 (1933) II (1934). Berlin. Quoted in: Reinhard Bollmus: The Office Rosenberg and his opponents. Studies on the power struggle in the National Socialist system of rule. Stuttgart 1970, p. 340.
  3. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1948-nslit-k.html
  4. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende: Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 635.
personal data
SURNAME Knudsen, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theater scholar
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Poses
DATE OF DEATH 4th February 1971
Place of death West Berlin