Hermann Usener

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Photography by Hermann Usener (1901)

Hermann Carl Usener (born October 23, 1834 in Weilburg ; † October 21, 1905 in Bonn ) was a German classical philologist and religious scholar.

Usener studied since 1853 in Heidelberg, Munich, Göttingen and Bonn, where he received his doctorate in 1857/58 with a dissertation Analecta Theophrastea . From 1858 to 1861 he was a teacher at the Joachimsthal School in Berlin. On May 7, 1861 Usener became an associate professor at the university and the cantonal school in Bern, and for the summer semester of 1863 he became a full professor in Greifswald . In the summer semester of 1866 he moved to the University of Bonn as Friedrich Ritschl's successor , where he stayed until his retirement on June 13, 1902. Together with Franz Bücheler , he made the University of Bonn a center of classical philology at the time. In 1874/75 he was dean and in 1882/83 rector.

Career

Hermann Usener's parents were Georg Friedrich Usener (* August 20, 1789, † April 15, 1854) Landesoberschultheiß in Weilburg and his wife Charlotte Henriette Caroline Vogler (* 1798, † 1855), the daughter of the ducal-Nassau chief medical officer and personal physician Georg Vogeler . Usener married Caroline (Lily) Dilthey on September 4, 1866 in Marburg (* February 25, 1846 - † March 14, 1920). She was the sister of the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey and the archaeologist Karl Dilthey . His daughter Maria married the classical philologist Albrecht Dieterich in 1899 . His son Karl Albert Hermann (1876–1928) became first lieutenant.

Usener attended the grammar school in his hometown, which had first-class grammar school teachers, including Alfred Fleckeisen , whose type of teaching made a great impression on Usener, and Rudolf Krebs . Between 1853 and 1857 he studied Classical Philology at the Universities of Heidelberg , Munich , Göttingen and Bonn , that is, with Göttingen and Bonn at the most important German and thus at the same time most important international universities in this field alongside Berlin. One of his teachers in Heidelberg was Karl Ludwig Kayser , who at that time was the only well-known classical philologist at the university, whom Usener therefore closely followed and with whom he later became lifelong friends. Kayser introduced him primarily to rhetoric and referred him to Munich, where he heard from Kayser's friend Leonhard Spengel , but did not make any personal contact with him. Nevertheless, Munich was so important for Usener's development that he first came into contact with manuscripts in the library.

Usener's doctoral supervisor and predecessor to the Bonn professorship, Friedrich Ritschl

He spent the winter semester of 1854/55 in the house of his father, who had recently died, with private studies, which were, however, clouded by the death of his mother. From the summer semester he studied in Göttingen with Ernst von Leutsch , Karl Friedrich Hermann and Friedrich Wilhelm Schneidewin , although the latter two died within a few days in late 1855 and early 1856. A book by Usener on Anaximenes was dedicated to them. After the deaths of Hermann and Schneidewins nothing kept him in Göttingen and he moved to Bonn for the winter semester of 1857. In doing so, however, he missed their successors in Göttingen, Ernst Curtius and Hermann Sauppe . In Bonn, the captivating Friedrich Ritschl from Usen became the most important teacher, and he also heard from Otto Jahn, who was less impressive to him, and from the old man Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker . In addition to the encounter with Ritschl, the friendship with Franz Bücheler that began here was the defining event of the Bonn student days. Together with other students, they published the handwriting of Granius Licinianus , which had just been discovered in a manuscript , and dedicated this work, which was regarded as excellent, to their teacher Ritschl. He completed his studies in 1858 with a doctorate under Wilhelm Ritschl and Christian August Brandis with a thesis on Theophrast , in order to begin a career as a high school teacher after passing the state examination . From 1858 to 1861 he taught as an adjunct at the renowned Joachimsthal School in Berlin , the director of which Gustav Kiessling became a fatherly friend. In 1861 he succeeded Otto Ribbeck as associate professor at the University of Bern , where he also had to teach at the cantonal school. In Bern he had almost no students, but he still gave ten lessons a week. He also took the teaching obligation at the canton school very seriously and later credited him with being able to speak the ancient Greek language fluently.

In 1863 Usener succeeded Martin Hertz as professor in Greifswald , a university that mostly acted as a springboard for more important positions. Here he taught alongside Georg Friedrich Schömann and Franz Susemihl , who made the move to Greifswald easy for him. In contrast to usual, he devoted himself to Latin studies in the three years at the university there, following the customs of Greifswald University . The expected move to a more important university was due to the vacancies that the Bonn philologists' dispute had torn in 1866. His friend Franz Bücheler followed him in Greifswald, previously in Bern, Johann Melchior Knaus . In December 1873 he traveled to Rome . He taught in Bonn until his retirement on June 13, 1902. Being physically strong, he survived several serious illnesses, but in 1896 lost sight in one eye due to an eye disease. He died after a heart attack two days before his 71st birthday . He was buried in the Old Cemetery , his library went to the Academic Art Museum , and later part of it was transferred to the Classical Philological Seminar.

Usener's long-time colleague and friend Franz Bücheler

Usener took up his position at an insecure seminar in Bonn. After an internal dispute between Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker and, above all, Usener's teachers Ritschl and Otto Jahn, which ended with Ritschl's departure and Jahn's death, Wilhelm Brambach , for example, put an end to the famous Bonn School of Classical Philology, which Bonn University established in the mid-19th century. Century made the center of this science, evoked. Usener followed his teacher Friedrich Ritschl due to a special vote by Otto Jahn. Here, as in Greifswald and as a successor to Ritschl, who was mainly active as a Latinist, he was supposed to teach Latin studies. His successor in Greifswald, Franz Bücheler, followed Otto Jahn in Bonn four years later in the summer semester of 1870 due to Usener's vehement efforts against various opposition. With the appearance of Bücheler, Usener was finally able to turn to Greek studies again. Usener and Bücheler were supposed to counter these prophecies of doom and lead the Bonn school to a new and initially unexpected height, until in the first half of the 20th century the Berlin University with personalities such as Usener's pupil Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and Werner Jaeger became the center of ancient studies. Adolf Dyroff attested that the Bonn school was internationally recognized thanks to the two dioscuri Usener and the congenial Bücheler.

Although Jahn stood up for Usener's vocation, his attitude towards Usener (as a student of his opponent Ritschl) turned negative as his illness progressed, which led to his death in 1869. A part of the Philological Seminar (including Wilamowitz) initially shared this antipathy. Although Usener published a large number of publications at this time, he was accused of "literary sterility", to which Usener reacted apologetically in a speech on his 70th birthday by pointing out that he preferred teaching. It was not until the Wiesbaden philologists' meeting in 1877 that Usener and Wilamowitz reconciled and maintained productive contact through the mediation of Friedrich Leo. In his late work History of Philology, Wilamowitz finally attested that it was not until the time of Usener and Bücheler that Bonn's classical philology was at its heyday. In his first years in Bonn, Usener had to assert himself for a long time against the prejudices that existed against him as Ritschl's student, especially on the part of the holder of the first professorship, Friedrich Heimsoeth , who was supported by the historian and Jahn advocate Heinrich von Sybel . By 1872 at the latest, Usener's position was finally consolidated.

As an author, Usener was considered a master of an artistic style of language. He was less good as a speaker and could not captivate his audience as much as Bücheler did. He himself admitted that he had probably not always made a meaningful distinction between what was important to him and what was important to his listeners. With his curly hair he made an impressive appearance and could also look terrifying on his students. The lingua franca in the exercises and seminars was Latin. Only a comparatively small number of students were admitted to the seminar, who had to write a letter of application in Latin, which was then decided by the three chair holders who jointly chaired the seminar. Insincerity, negligence, and insufficient effort could lead to great anger, although the reprimand never became irrelevant. Ultimately, Usener and Bücheler were not designed to create their own school, but rather to shape their students into independent scientists. Usener was very religious, but not dogmatic and prepared to prohibit thinking, which led, for example, to Adolf von Harnack's criticism of various findings in the field of religious studies.

Services

Usener was able to bring together conflicting tendencies and methods in his work and thus achieve a synthesis of the predominant currents of the classical but also modern philologies. “In principle, Usener's antiquity research knew no boundaries; he tried to grasp the ancient life in absolutely all its expressions, of which faith, poetry and art are only a part. ”The approach to interdisciplinarity came from his studies in Bonn, where Welcker introduced him to the important questions of the doctrine of gods . Jacob Grimm influenced him in the application of the methods of comparative linguistics in the field of religious history , he owed August Boeckh the understanding of philology as a historical science, and Ritschl the understanding that not only the great and important, but also the smallest testimonies of the past are noteworthy and are important. Gottfried Hermann influenced Usener in applying the Kantian categories to philology. Usener thus became one of the most important protagonists in the development of the history of religion from philology. His main interest was the study of the divine in the ancient Greek language . He suspected that the names of the gods contained fundamental principles and therefore carefully examined the names of the gods of the Greek pantheon . In the course of his research he was able to refute many of the symbolist explanations of the Greek religion made by Friedrich Creuzer's romanticism, for example to a primordial monotheism . The fact that both Usener and Bücheler gave their lectures in the Academic Art Museum also stood for the interdisciplinary orientation of Bonn classical philology. Despite the specialization of ancient studies and the associated drifting apart of ancient studies in special disciplines - Bücheler, for example, unlike Otto Jahn, could no longer also represent archeology - Usener and Bücheler worked closely with other representatives of ancient studies and linguistics, such as the archaeologist Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz , who was Jahn's successor in the field of archeology, and Georg Loeschcke , the ancient historians Arnold Dietrich Schaefer and Heinrich Nissen and the linguist Felix Solmsen .

Other research was the rite and the myth , in which Usener came to his findings independently of the Cambridge rituals . Usener assumed an interaction between the two areas, whereby the rite was the institutionalized form, the practice, of the myth. Here, too, he showed himself to be open to new research areas and also relied on ethnological evidence and results from the scientific folklore that was still emerging. Usener took the view of strong continuities in rituals. He said that Christmas was transformed from antiquity to the Christian Middle Ages.

Usener's grave at the old cemetery in Bonn

The main work is Usener's doctrine of the gods , dedicated to Wilhelm Dilthey , which he also regarded as a scientific testament. It was nothing less than a story of the human mind. He divided the Greek gods into phenomenological categories: gods of the moment, special gods and main gods. The doctrine of the gods is Usener's most widely received and most influential work. It had a great influence on the emerging sociology , Émile Durkheim immediately accepted the findings for his research, and they were also important for Ernst Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms. In addition to the Greek, Usener also examined the Lithuanian and Latvian gods using the same methods. In doing so, he assumed that cultures could be compared, even if they were not in contact with one another, which was also represented by his student Aby Warburg in Usener's successor . The Heidelberg Eranso group around Adolf Deißmann and Albrecht Dieterich also called on the Usener school . His students also included Ludwig Deubner , Hermann Diels , Georg Ferdinand Dümmler , Richard Heinze , Friedrich Leo and Eduard Schwartz , who he did his doctorate, as well as Paul Friedländer , Emil Hermes , Hans Lietzmann , Friedrich Marx , Eduard Norden , Ludwig Radermacher , Max Siebourg and Richard Wünsch . From 1899 to 1905 he co- edited the Rheinisches Museum für Philologie .

Usener received many high honors. In 1874/75 he was dean of the philosophical faculty and in 1882/83 he was rector of Bonn University. He was a knight of the order Pour le Mérite and a member of various learned societies at home and abroad. The Philological Association, a group of students, gave him and Bücheler a joint commemorative publication in 1873 after they both rejected calls for other chairs. For Usener's 70th birthday and Bücheler's golden jubilee in 1904, two bronze busts were donated by Hans Everding and Walter Lobach , which are now in the premises of the Bonn Classics Department. A festive ceremony was celebrated in the Academic Art Museum. With the money collected, a Usener Foundation for Classical Philologists was set up. He also presided over the philologists' assembly. On February 13, 1902, the Evangelical Theological Faculty of the University of Bonn honored him with an honorary doctorate .

Although Usener's achievements have never been forgotten, the reception of his work has become one of the central points in the history of classical studies, especially since a seminar on Usener held by Arnaldo Momigliano in 1983 at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa . Reception, effect and individual works have been researched intensively over the past 35 years.

Fonts

  • Alexandri Aphrodisiensis problematorum lib. III. et IV. Berlin 1859.
  • Scholia in Lucani bellum civile. Leipzig. 1869, volume 1.
  • Anecdoton Holderi. Bonn 1877.
  • Legends of Pelagia. Bonn 1879.
  • De Stephano Alexandrino. Bonn 1880.
  • Acta S. Marinae and S. Christophori. Bonn 1886.
  • Ancient Greek verse. Bonn 1887.
  • Epicurea. Leipzig 1887; numerous contributions to the Rheinisches Museum .
  • Names of gods: attempt of a doctrine of the religious concept formation. Bonn 1896.
  • Christmas. Studies in the history of religion. First part. Chapters I to III. 3rd edition, Bouvier Bonn 1969.

He also edited Karl Ludwig Kayser's Homeric Treatises (Leipzig 1881) and Jacob Bernays ' Gesammelte Abhandlungen .

literature

Web links

Commons : Hermann Usener  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Hermann Usener  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Herter: The classical philology since Usener and Bücheler. In: Bonn scholars. Philosophy and Classical Studies. Bonn 1968, pp. 165-211.
personal data
SURNAME Usener, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Usener, Hermann Carl (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German classical philologist and religious scholar
DATE OF BIRTH October 23, 1834
PLACE OF BIRTH Weilburg
DATE OF DEATH October 21, 1905
Place of death Bonn