Hermann Buddensieg

Hermann Buddensieg 1964

Hermann Karl Robert Buddensieg (born June 3, 1893 in Eisenach ; † December 12, 1976 in Heidelberg ) was a German writer , editor and translator. He is best known for his copying of Polish and Lithuanian works and by publishing the Mickiewicz papers from 1956 to 1976 he made a name for himself in the German-Polish cultural exchange, for which he was honored many times. In addition to his literary work, his life was mainly determined by the consequences of a serious head injury in World War I, which he dealt with philosophically in his autobiographical book Morbus Sacer ( Morbus sacer ), published in 1946.

Life

Buddensieg is the son of a pharmacist from Eisenach. In his youth he was a supporter of the Wandervogel movement . Buddensieg began studying law and political science in Jena . His studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. He received a presentation order which initially took him to Russia and Lithuania, which was part of the Empire. In the spring of 1918 he was deployed on the Western Front and was seriously wounded by a shot in the head on May 28 near Chemin des Dames .

The wound led to epileptic seizures , which continued as a long-term consequence even after his return to Eisenach, which is why he had to be temporarily admitted to the local mental hospital . Despite his severe physical impairments, Buddensieg resumed his studies in law and political science in Jena, moved to the University of Munich and finally to the University of Heidelberg , where he completed his studies in 1920 and received his doctorate with Eberhard Gothein with a thesis on Wilhelm Weitling .

Now living in Binau , he prepared a habilitation thesis on Goethe after completing his studies , but had to drop it off due to illness. Instead of an academic career, he took the path of a publicist and devoted himself to historical studies, including once again on Goethe and Marx . From 1924 to 1926 he was editor of the magazine Der Rufer zur Wende . From 1931 he was editor-in-chief of Jakob Wilhelm Hauer's magazine Kommende Gemeinde . Even in Binau he was after 1933 by the Nazis with disbarment occupied. He moved to Hamburg , where he hired himself as a stamp dealer, while his autobiographical work Morbus Sacer was written from 1940 to 1943 , in which he primarily dealt with the consequences of his war injury and saw the disease as a qualification and opportunity.

During the Second World War he turned to poetry and in 1946 published the Ode Neckar , a praise for the Neckar Valley near Heidelberg, which had been written two years earlier in the destroyed Hamburg . The gods and the poet followed in 1948, followed by the nymphs in 1950 based on Ovid's Metamorphoses .

Through his preoccupation with Goethe, Buddensieg became aware of the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz , who met Goethe in 1829. From 1950 onwards, Buddensieg spent five years working on the German adaptation of Mickiewicz's epic Pan Tadeusz, which had not yet been published in German . Buddensieg decided to recast it instead of a translation because the Polish meter and some of the terms used could not have been translated adequately. In 1955, the year his adaptation was published, he traveled to Poland, where he took part in a working conference. From 1956 until his death, he published the so-called Mickiewicz papers three times a year with specialist essays and reading samples by German and Polish scholars, thereby making a significant contribution to the German-Polish cultural exchange. When there was a renaissance of the works of the Lithuanian poet Kristijonas Donelaitis in Poland around 1965, Buddensieg , who now lives in Baiertal near Wiesloch , wrote a German adaptation of his work Metai ( The Seasons ). In 1967 the work The Grove of Asykscias by Antanas Baranauskas was copied .

Buddensieg, who was described as a “little owl” and, according to his youngest daughter, was “not very realistic” and “little concerned with everyday things”, spent his last years in Baiertal, marked by new illnesses . Hermann Buddensieg was buried in the Heidelberg mountain cemetery.

family

From his first marriage in 1927, Buddensieg had a son, the later art historian Tilmann Buddensieg (1928–2013) and a daughter. After the death of his first wife, Buddensieg married Ilse Timm (1923-2010), 30 years his junior. In this marriage, their daughter Daniela was born in 1960, Buddensieg's third child.

Awards and honors

In 1958 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, First Class, and in 1968 the Grand Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1969 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Poznań and another honorary doctorate from the Polish Academy of Sciences . He was also awarded the Silver University Seal of Heidelberg University and the Polish Order of Merit. A street was named after him in his last place of residence in Wiesloch-Baiertal.

literature

• Adam Mickiewicz: "Pan Tadeusz or the last feud in Lithuania", adaptation by Hermann Buddensieg. Munich: Eidos Verlag 1963
• Grażyna Szewczyk: A friend of Poland: Hermann Buddensieg, translator and editor of "Mickiewicz-Blätter" , German-Polish Yearbook of German Studies, German Academic Exchange Service, Bonn 1993
• Karin Hirn: "The Power of Suffering" - Dr. Dr. hc Hermann Buddensieg: poet, philosopher and pacifist , in: Kurpfälzer Winzerfestanzeiger, 2010 edition, pp. 60–71.

Web links

• Literature by and about Hermann Buddensieg in the catalog of the German National Library