Herbert Dieckmann

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Herbert Dieckmann (born May 22, 1906 in Duisburg , † December 16, 1986 in Ithaca , NY) was a German-American Romance studies and literary scholar.

life and work

Dieckmann received his doctorate in Bonn in 1930 with Ernst Robert Curtius on Paul Claudel's view of art . In 1933 he emigrated with his wife, the Germanist Liselotte Dieckmann, first to Rome, then in 1934 to Istanbul , Turkey , where he was a lecturer in Italian and Latin at the university's foreign language school ( Yabancı Diller Okulu ) . In 1938 the couple went to the United States and were naturalized in 1945. There Dieckmann taught until 1949 at Washington University in St. Louis , then until 1966 at Harvard and finally until 1974 at Cornell University . In 1956 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

After the war, Dieckmann made the sensational find of Denis Diderot's estate ( Fonds Vandeul ). He discovered this previously unknown material in 1948 and published it under the title Inventaire du fonds Vandeul et inédits de Diderot , 1951. In 1911, the material was bequeathed by Denis Diderot to his daughter Angélique Caroillon Vandeul (1753-1824) during his lifetime had passed into the hands of the Le Vavasseur family after the death of the last descendant of the Vandeul family. Dieckmann found this estate in the possession of Baron Jacques Le Vavasseur at the Château des Ifs . The Inventaire du fonds Vandeul et inédits de Diderot created the basis for the Diderot Complete Edition, Œuvres complètes , published from 1975 onwards , which Dieckmann edited together with Jean Varloot and Jacques Proust . It is the authoritative critical edition of Diderot's works, known as DPV - Dieckmann / Varloot / Proust (Paris 1975 ff.).

Other works

  • Status and problems of Diderot research. A contribution to the Diderot criticism , Bonn 1931
  • Diderot's feeling for nature and life , Istanbul 1937
  • (Ed. Together with Otto J. Brendel ) Studies in honor of Frederick W. Shipley , St. Louis 1942
  • Le philosophe. Texts and interpretation , St. Louis 1942
  • Inventaire du fonds Vandeul et inédits de Diderot. Droz, Genève 1951
  • Essays in Comparative Literature , St. Louis 1951
  • (Ed. Together with Jean Seznec) Diderot et Falconet  : Correspondance. Les 6 premières lettres , Frankfurt 1959
  • Cinq leçons sur Diderot , Genève 1959
  • Diderot and Goldoni , Krefeld 1961
  • (Together with Harry Levin and Helmut Motekat) Essays in Comparative Literature , St. Louis 1961
  • Epilogue to Lettres persanes , German transl. Adolf Strodtmann , biographical introduction Adolf Stern, series: Exempla classica , 94. Fischer TB, Frankfurt 1964
  • The artistic form of the Rêve de d'Alembert , Cologne 1966
  • Diderot and the Enlightenment. Essays on European literature of the 18th century , Stuttgart 1972
  • Studies on the European Enlightenment , Munich 1974
  • Diderot, Œuvres complètes . Edition critique et annotée, publiée sous la direction de Herbert Dieckmann, Jean Fabre et Jacques Proust; avec les soins de Jean Varloot, Paris 1975ff
  • (Ed. Together with Jane M. Dieckmann) German-French talks 1920 - 1950. La correspondance de Ernst Robert Curtius avec André Gide , Charles Du Bos et Valéry Larbaud , Frankfurt 1980
  • (Ed.) Diderot and the Enlightenment. Lectures given on the occasion of a working discussion from June 4 to 6, 1978 in the Herzog August Library . Munich 1981
  • Herbert Dieckmann: The Importance of the "Fonds Vandeul" Manuscripts for Studies of Diderot and the Eighteenth Century. Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Vol. 3, No. 8 (May, 1950), pp. 2-4

literature

  • Hugo Friedrich , Fritz Schalk (ed.): European enlightenment. Herbert Dieckmann on his 60th birthday. Munich 1967.
  • Erich Loos in: Romanesque research. 98, 1986, pp. 389-391.
  • Jochen Schlobach in: Lendemains. 46, 1987, pp. 149-150.
  • Jacques Chouillet: Herbert Dieckmann. Historien et philosophe des Lumières. In: Recherches sur Diderot et sur l'Encyclopédie. 1989, pp. 53-61.
  • Jochen Schlobach: Enlightenment in dark times. Werner Krauss and Herbert Dieckmann. In: Hans Helmut Christmann , Frank-Rutger Hausmann (ed.): German and Austrian Romanists as persecuted by National Socialism. Tübingen 1989, pp. 115-144.
  • Frank-Rutger Hausmann : Also a national science? German Romance Studies under National Socialism. In: Romance journal for the history of literature. 22, 1998, p. 37 ( online ; PDF; 10.7 MB).
  • Werner Krauss : Letters 1922–1976. Edited by Peter Jehle. With the collaboration of Elisabeth Fillmann and Peter-Volker Springborn. Frankfurt 2002, p. 974.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Liselotte was of Jewish origin according to the Nazi terms of Hans Globke ; she herself emphasized that the family had been Protestant for two generations . Herbert Dieckmann took the early anti-Jewish statements of the Nazis in 1933 very seriously because a schoolmate, SA man in Duisburg, had confirmed to him that the militant anti-Semitism of his people was meant seriously and would lead to further deeds. Thereupon Herbert and Liselotte Dieckmann no academic future in the calculated realm of
  2. ^ Jacques Chouillet: Herbert Dieckmann, historien et philosophe des Lumières. Recherches sur Diderot et sur l'Encyclopédie Année 1989 Volume 6 Numéro 6 pp. 7-52, online
  3. ^ Frank-Rutger Hausmann: Devoured by the vortex of events: German Romance studies in the "Third Reich". Klostermann, 2nd edition 2008 ISBN 3-4650-3584-4 p. 268
personal data
SURNAME Dieckmann, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American Romance philologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 22, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Duisburg
DATE OF DEATH December 16, 1986
Place of death Ithaca