Hans Kuhn (philologist, 1899)

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Hans Kuhn (born July 13, 1899 in Minden , † October 8, 1988 in Kiel ) was a German Scandinavian and Germanic Medievalist . He was Emeritus Professor and professor of Nordic Philology of the University of Kiel .

Life

After studying and doing his doctorate , Kuhn was initially a high school teacher. In 1931 he completed his habilitation in Marburg under Karl Helm and stayed at the university. After the seizure of power by Hitler signed Kuhn 11 November 1933, the commitment of the professors at German universities and colleges to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi state .

In 1938 he received a professorship in Leipzig and in 1941 at the University of Berlin . From 1946 to 1964 he was a full professor of Nordic philology in Kiel.

Kuhn's scientific work is broad in the field of Germanic philology and the so-called Germanic antiquity. Particularly noteworthy is the hypothesis on the existence of a north-west bloc ("peoples between Teutons and Celts"), which he first established in 1959 on the basis of an evaluation of place names and personal names and other linguistic evidence and which was further expanded in the following years , which triggered a broad technical discussion. In addition, Kuhn published works and articles accessible to a wider audience, such as the 1966 new edition of the series in the Eugen Diederichs publishing house Thule - Nordic Saga Library . This included the volume he wrote anew in 1971, The Old Island, and adaptations of the Edda . In the post-war period, Hans Kuhn was a critic of a romanticizing image of the Germanic peoples, which had led to ideological instrumentalization, especially during the National Socialist era . In this context, there was also a heated academic debate about Otto Höfler's counterpart .

Important students of Kuhn are Klaus von See and Dietrich Hofmann .

Hans Kuhn had been a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin since 1943 .

Fonts (selection)

  • The filler word of-um in Old West Norse. An investigation into the history of Germanic prefixes; a contribution to the old Germanic metric , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1929.
  • Iceland. The homeland of the sagas , Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1935.
  • First and early Germanic place names in northern Germany and the Netherlands . In: Westphalian research . Volume 12, 1959, pp. 5-44.
  • with Rolf Hachmann , Georg Kossack : Peoples between Teutons and Celts . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1962, DNB 451751035 .
  • Gustav Neckel (ed.): Edda. The songs of the Codex Regius and related monuments.
    • Volume I: Text. Fourth, revised edition. edited by Hans Kuhn. Winter, Heidelberg 1962, DNB 456507515 .
    • Volume II: Hans Kuhn: Short Dictionary. Third revised edition of the commentary glossary. Winter, Heidelberg 1968, DNB 456507523 .
  • Limits of prehistoric and early historical types of place names (= treatises of the humanities and social sciences class of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz. Born in 1963, No. 4).
  • Small fonts. Essays and reviews from the areas of Germanic and Nordic language, literary and cultural history , four volumes, de Gruyter, Berlin 1969–1978.
  • Old Iceland. Diederichs, Düsseldorf / Cologne 1971, ISBN 3-424-00403-0 .
  • Das Dróttkvætt , Winter, Heidelberg 1983, ISBN 3-533-03204-3 .
  • The Old Norse Naval Warfare , Winter, Heidelberg 1991, ISBN 3-533-04359-2 .

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Kuhn, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 13, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Minden
DATE OF DEATH October 8, 1988
Place of death Kiel