Heinrich Meyer-Benfey

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Heinrich Meyer-Benfey (born March 14, 1869 in Liebenburg , Harz foreland , † December 30, 1945 in Buxtehude ) was a German Germanist and taught at the University of Hamburg .

Life

Heinrich Meyer studied German literature and linguistics , English literature and Indology as well as Sanskrit at the University of Göttingen . He worked on the revision of the German dictionary of the Brothers Grimm . Meyer married Flora Benfey in 1895, whose family name he added to his name. In 1904 his wife died. On October 5, 1906, he married Helene Franck.

Meyer-Benfey got involved early on in the bourgeois women's movement and supported the Federation for Maternity Protection and Sexual Reform . During this time in 1910 the attempt at a habilitation at the conservative University of Göttingen on Heinrich von Kleist's drama failed . In 1919 he became a private lecturer at the newly founded University of Hamburg and in 1923 a non-civil servant associate professor, without ever having received a permanent position until his retirement in 1938. He also taught at the adult education center . What was unusual was “the extraordinary breadth of his interests and knowledge. He wrote texts about mysticism, about the ancient Indian poet Kalidasa, about Hamlet, Martin Luther, Heinrich Heine, Henrik Ibsen, Leo Tolstoy, about Finnish literature, Nietzsche and Tagore. ”He has extensive correspondence with numerous writers and women's rights activists .

Together with his second wife, Helene Meyer-Franck, he published Rabindranath Tagore's work in Germany . Meyer-Benfey accompanied Tagore on his reading and lecture tours through Germany and interpreted for him. Since the then available English translations of Tagore's texts were unsatisfactory, Meyer-Benfey began to learn Bengali in order to read it in the original. During the Weimar Republic he was an important mediator for Indian culture and religion.

Meyer-Benfey supported Friedrich Naumann and was a member of the German Democratic Party until 1933. In November 1933 he signed the confession of German professors and university lecturers to Adolf Hitler . He fought anti-Semitism and carried the name of his first, Jewish wife with him until 1936. He was no longer allowed to publish in the Nazi state. Some of his literary history studies, which he was not allowed to publish during the Nazi era, appeared posthumously .

Fonts

  • The language of the Boers. Introduction, language teaching and language samples . Ms. Wunder, Göttingen 1901.
  • The moral foundations of marriage: A contribution to the establishment of a sexual ethic , Jena 1909.
  • The drama Heinrich v. Kleists . Hapke, Göttingen 1911–1913.
    • Vol. 1: Kleist's struggle for a new form of drama . 1911.
    • Vol. 2: Kleist as a fatherland poet . 1913.
  • Rabindranath Tagore . Brandussche Verlagshandlung, Berlin 1921.
  • Kleist . Teubner, Leipzig 1923.
  • Lessing and Hamburg . W. Mauke Sons, Hamburg 1929.
  • Heinrich Heine and his time in Hamburg . German literature publisher, Hamburg-Wandsbek 1946.
  • Tolstoy's worldview . German literature publisher, Hamburg-Wandsbek 1946.
  • World of poetry. Selected writings . Edited by Fritz Collatz. German Literature Publishing House, Hamburg-Wandsbek 1963.
  • My dear master. Correspondence 1920–1938 / Rabindranath Tagore, Helene Meyer-Franck and Heinrich Meyer-Benfey . Edited by Martin Kämchen and Prasanta Kumar Paul. Translated from English by Ingrid von Heiseler. Draupadi-Verlag, Heidelberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-937603-44-5 .

literature

  • Helene Meyer-Franck: Heinrich Meyer-Benfey . Buxtehude 1946.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Dirk Hempel: Heinrich Meyer-Benfey (1869-1945). Research, teaching and commitment on the verge of subsistence . In: History of German Studies. Historical magazine for the philologies , No. 25/26 (2004), pp. 87–88, here p. 87.
  2. ↑ Martin Kämchen: Introduction . In: My dear master. Correspondence 1920–1938 / Rabindranath Tagore, Helene Meyer-Franck and Heinrich Meyer-Benfey . Draupadi-Verlag, Heidelberg 2011, pp. 9–22, here p. 17.
  3. ↑ Martin Kämchen: Introduction . In: My dear master. Correspondence 1920–1938 / Rabindranath Tagore, Helene Meyer-Franck and Heinrich Meyer-Benfey . Draupadi-Verlag, Heidelberg 2011, pp. 9–22, here p. 11.
  4. ↑ Alphabetical list of the signatories. Retrieved September 30, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Meyer-Benfey, Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Benfey
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 14, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Liebenburg
DATE OF DEATH December 30, 1945
Place of death Buxtehude