Heinrich Dörrie

This article deals with the classical philologist, for the mathematician see Heinrich Dörrie (mathematician)

Heinrich Dörrie (born November 27, 1911 in Hanover ; † March 16, 1983 in Münster in Westphalia ) was a German classical philologist who worked as a professor at the universities in Saarbrücken (1957-1961) and Münster (1961-1980). He is particularly known for his contributions to the study of Platonism and founded the series The Platonism of Antiquity , which appeared only after his death.

Life

Heinrich Dörrie was born in Hanover in 1911 as the son of the doctor of the same name. From 1921 he attended the Ratsgymnasium , where his teachers encouraged him to study ancient literature. That is why Dörrie began studying Classical Philology and Romance Studies in Tübingen in the 1930 summer semester . He later moved to Lausanne for a semester , then to Leipzig , where he was influenced by the Graecists Erich Bethe and Alfred Körte . Finally he went to the University of Göttingen . In addition to Hermann Fränkel and Max Pohlenz , he was particularly influenced by Kurt Latte , who also gave him the topic of his doctoral thesis: Dörrie was supposed to deal with the handwritten tradition of the Greek novelists, which at that time was still largely unexplained. For this purpose, Dörrie traveled to Florence in the winter semester of 1933/1934 , examined the manuscripts in the Bibliotheca Laurentiana and trained with the papyrologists Girolamo Vitelli , Medea Norsa and Giorgio Pasquali . At the beginning of 1935 Dörrie received his doctorate and passed the first state examination. His dissertation (on the tradition of the Greek Roman authors Longos , Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus ) was the last Latin drafted doctoral thesis at the University of Goettingen.

Dörrie got his first job as a research assistant at the Septuagint company of the Society of Sciences in Göttingen . Here he refined his editorial skills and collected material for his edition of the Passio Sanctorum Maccabaeorum , which appeared in 1938 in the treatises of the Society of Sciences. Even then, Dörrie saw his real task in the systematic research of Platonism . However, the execution of these plans was delayed with the outbreak of World War II .

The director Doris Dörrie is his niece.

Frontline deployment and captivity

In October 1939 Dörrie was drafted into the Wehrmacht as a soldier. During a vacation in February 1940 he married Annemarie Lueder, whom he had met in Göttingen in 1937; she had received her doctorate the year before with Ulrich Knoche and Karl Deichgräber with the dissertation The Philosophical Personality of Antiochus of Askalon .

Despite his military service, Dörrie continued to pursue his academic career. During an eight-week leave from the front (1943) he completed the entire habilitation process in Göttingen, including the trial lecture. In the following year the Göttingen Institute for Classical Studies appointed him as senior assistant. During his deployment to the front, Dörrie was unable to take up the position immediately. Shortly before the end of the war (1945) he was taken prisoner by the Soviets and deported to the Plawsk labor camp . During his long imprisonment, he continued to study ancient literature and the spiritual world, although he had no books and was almost cut off from the outside world: a postcard from the camp was limited to about 25 words. His wife could insert a page of text from an ancient author into every letter. Together with like-minded people, Dörrie cultivated classical studies in small lectures and discussions so as not to dull them. He was only released from captivity in 1953 and was able to return to Germany.

Senior assistant in Göttingen

In the summer semester of 1954, he took up the position as senior assistant in Göttingen, which had been offered to him ten years earlier and which in the meantime had represented Werner Hartke (1945–1946) and Albrecht Dihle (1946–1954). In Göttingen, Dörrie first had to familiarize himself with broad areas of ancient literature. He openly admitted his need to catch up with the students and thus opened a kind of learning competition with them. His lectures and exercises covered Aristotle and the Platonic Academy , the philosophical writings of Cicero , Attic Comedy , Catullus , Neoplatonism and Roman satire . He also gave Greek and Latin style exercises.

Professor in Saarbrücken and Münster

Due to his teaching success, he received a call from Saarland University in 1957 , where he was professor of classical philology. In 1961 he moved to the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster, where he held the chair of Greek studies until his retirement (1980) . In the academic year 1968/1969 he was Dean of the Philosophical Faculty. The general student protest movement of the 1968 , which hit him particularly because of his exposed position, was a personal affront. For this reason he withdrew from academic life for many years. Nonetheless, he received academic honors in the following years: the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences accepted him as a full member when it was founded (1970). On the occasion of his 70th birthday, his students Horst-Dieter Blume and Friedhelm Mann published the commemorative publication Platonism and Christianity (Münster 1983) in his honor . Also in 1983, the theological faculty of Heidelberg University decided to award Dörrie an honorary doctorate; however, due to his death in the spring it did not come to that.

Services

Dörries scientific work is wide-ranging: he published on ancient philosophy, mythology, the history of religion, the poetry of Ovid , the history of the impact of ancient themes and motifs ( Galateia , Pygmalion ) and early Christianity (especially Gregor von Nyssa ; he also directed the at the Westphalian Wilhelm University-based research center Gregor von Nyssa ). His lectures in Münster also spanned all authors and epochs of Greek and Latin literature of antiquity, although his chair was traditionally devoted to Greek studies. His multifaceted erudition found expression in numerous lexicon articles that appeared as contributions to the real encyclopedia of classical antiquity , in the little Pauly , in the real encyclopedia for antiquity and Christianity and in the theological real encyclopedia . He only dealt with the ancient novel in its early days. In addition to his broad-based dissertation De Longi, Achillis Tatii, Heliodori memoria , which was printed in Göttingen in 1935, he also wrote a review of the new critical edition of Longos by Georges Dalmeyda (Paris 1934).

Major focal points in Dörrie's research work are ancient letter literature and especially Platonism. In decades of work, with the help of his wife, he sifted through most of the more than 200 manuscripts in which Ovid's Heroides have survived. Because of this work he was able to publish a critical edition of the Epistulae Heroidum in 1971 , which despite its great contribution to the history of tradition was not without controversy in the professional world. Four years later he published the Epistula Sapphus ( Zetemata 1975), the tradition of which poses a similarly big problem.

Dörrie undertook systematic research into Platonism after completing his studies. However, his work was slow. He has been publicizing his project since the 1950s and has also held several symposia, which produced numerous individual works. Dörrie put down his previously formulated results in the collection of essays Platonica Minora (Munich 1976). The large systematic under the title “The Platonism of Antiquity” did not come about because of his death. The project was continued by his widow Annemarie Dörrie, his student Friedhelm Mann and his assistant Matthias Baltes , and from 2003 by Christian Pietsch . From 1987 to 2008 a total of seven volumes were published in the series.

His estate is in the Bavarian State Library.

Fonts (selection)

• De Longi, Achillis Tatii, Heliodori memoria . Göttingen 1935 (dissertation)
• Passio SS Machabaeorum, the ancient Latin translation of the 4th Book of Maccabees. Göttingen 1938
• Suffering and experience. The word and meaning connection παθεῖν - μαθεῖν in Greek thought . Mainz 1956 (= treatises of the humanities and social sciences class of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz. Born 1956, No. 5).
• Porphyrios' Symmikta zetemata. Their position in the system and history of Neoplatonism, along with a commentary on the fragments . Munich 1959 (= Zetemata 20)
• Investigations into the transmission history of Ovid's Epistulae Heroidum . 3 parts, Göttingen 1960–1972
• The royal cult of Antiochus of Kommagene in the light of new inscriptions finds . Goettingen 1964
• The heroic letter. Inventory, history, criticism of a humanistic-baroque literary genre . Berlin 1968
• The beautiful Galatea. A figure on the edge of the Greek myth from an ancient and modern perspective . Munich 1968
• Epistulae Heroidum. P. Ovidius Naso . Ad fidem codicum edidit Henricus Dörrie. Berlin / New York 1971
• Pygmalion. An impulse from Ovid and its effects up to the present day . Opladen 1974
• P. Ovidius Naso, The letter of the Sappho to Phaon. With literary and critical commentary as part of a study on the history of the subject . Munich 1975 (= Zetemata 58)
• From Plato to Platonism. A break in tradition and its overcoming . Opladen 1976
• Platonica minora . Munich 1976
• Meaning and function of myth in Greek and Roman poetry . Opladen 1978
• The ancient platonism. Volume 1: The historical roots of Platonism. Building blocks 1–35. Text, translation, comment . Edited from the estate by Annemarie Dörrie. Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-7728-1153-1
• The ancient platonism. Volume 2: The Hellenistic Framework of Imperial Platonism. Building blocks 36–72. Text, translation, comment . Edited from the estate and edited by Matthias Baltes. Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-7728-1154-X
• The ancient platonism. Volume 3: Platonism in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. Building blocks 73–100 . Edited from the estate and edited by Matthias Baltes. Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-7728-1155-8

literature

• Horst-Dieter Blume, Friedhelm Mann (editor): Platonism and Christianity: Festschrift for Heinrich Dörrie , Münster 1983 (with list of publications).
• Horst-Dieter Blume: Heinrich Dörrie † . In: Gnomon 56 : 185-189 (1984).
• Cornelia Wegeler: "... let's say from the international scholarly republic" - classical studies and National Socialism. The Göttingen Institute for Classical Studies 1921–1962 . Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 1996, ISBN 3-205-05212-9 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Heinrich Dörrie in the catalog of the German National Library
• The estate in the Bavarian State Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Blume (1984) p. 186.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Blume (1984) p. 187.
3. ↑ Blume (1984) p. 189.
4. ^ Gregor von Nyssa Research Center
5. ↑ ^{a b} Blume (1984) p. 188.
6. ↑ Website of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek with information on bequests ( memento from September 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on August 1, 2010