John Meier

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Meier (* 14. June 1864 in Horn-Lehe , † 3. May 1953 in Freiburg ) was a German germanistischer medievalist and folklorist . He founded both the Swiss and the German folk song archive .

Career

He was the ninth child of the Mayor of Bremen, Johann Daniel Meier . He studied German , Romance , English , history and anthropology at the universities in Freiburg im Breisgau and Tübingen . In 1888 he received his doctorate in Freiburg with a dissertation on the poet and the language of the 'Jolande'; In 1891 the habilitation followed at the University of Halle with the thesis Studies on the language and literary history of the Rhineland in the Middle Ages . In the following years he dealt intensively with folk song research and postulated his thesis of the sunken cultural asset . In 1899 he became full professor of German philology at the University of Basel and from then on endeavored to compile a systematic collection of folk songs. Between 1905 and 1912 he was chairman of the Swiss Society for Folklore . In 1906 he founded the Swiss Folk Song Archive . From 1911 he headed the Association of German Folklore Associations . In 1912 he became professor for folklore in Freiburg. In 1914 he founded the German Folk Song Archive there . From 1935 he published a critically commented collection of German folk songs: the Edition Deutsche Volkslieder with their melodies . In addition, he founded the magazine Jahrbuch für Volksliedforschung, now under the title "Song and Popular Culture / Song and Popular Culture". As to the extent to which he sympathized with National Socialist ideology from 1933 to 1945, there is no certainty. During the Nazi era , he received the Goethe Medal for Art and Science in 1934 . He advocated scientific standards in folklore. At the 5th German Folklore Day in 1938 , he appealed to the delegates in this and in the interests of international understanding. In his function as the chairman of the association, he cooperated with the Research Association of German Ahnenerbe of the SS .

In 1948 he said goodbye to the role of association manager. He transferred the patronage of the German Folk Song Archive to the state of Baden-Württemberg, which was continued as a state authority after Meier's death. As a center for popular culture and music, it has been part of the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg since 2014 .

John Meier's characteristics of the folk song and the folk ballad 1935

The two-volume text anthology ballads , part 1 and 2, edited by John Meier in the series Das deutsche Volkslied as volume 1 and 2 and in the Germanistic complete series German literature ... in development series in Stuttgart near Reclam, 1935–1936 (reprinted in Darmstadt by the Wissenschaftlichen Buchgesellschaft, 1964) is a brief overview of the planned large-scale edition of German folk songs with their melodies: Ballads , of which the first half-volume was also published in 1935. The introduction (pp. 7–34) still reads today (despite the sometimes time-related choice of words) very “modern” and balanced. The songs are not “made among the people”, but rather a folk song , regardless of origin, is what “popularly”, i.e. H. remained popular for a long period of time] ". There is indeed a creator of the text [and the melody, the conditions of which are excluded here; for the large edition, from 1935, own comments are also being made on the melodies], but here it is about “collective song and common property”. Folksong is an "instant form" (p. 7). This is followed by an outline of the history of the folk song from the heroic songs and early historical songs, from early Latin sources and the "Wineliet" at the time of Charlemagne to the first evidence of a folk ballad , of which one can only be certain with the Kölbigk dance in the 11th century, which in Low German is “a German ballad” (p. 12 f.). There are other sources in abundance from the 12th to the 14th centuries, u. a. with the song of Kriemhilds Rache bei Saxo, with the Tagelied, with the younger Hildebrandslied and then the early folk ballads, e.g. B. that of the 'Frau von Weißenburg'. Important for this and later periods, the minstrel ; Meier refers to the negative attitude of Hans Naumann towards the minstrel, whose role Meier emphasizes "energetically" (p. 19). In the song, too, in the second half of the 14th to the 16th century, a “bourgeoisisation” occurs (p. 21). The folk ballads “Bauer ins Holz”, “Poor Judas”, parallel references in Wittenweiler's ( Heinrich Wittenwiler ) “Ring” (p. 22 f.), The early bench song and the newspaper song - the latter spread with the new medium of the “Flying leaves” ( pamphlets ), which played an important role in the 16th and 17th centuries (p. 25).

The style of the folk song is based on the fact that "the songs may indeed be partly improvised ( oral tradition ) and not already performed in a fixed form" (p. 27). The “oral style” of the folk song has been adopted from the musician's poetry ; Even the minstrel was partly improvised. This is a "characteristic of the folk song" and artistic poems that have passed into the vernacular that they are "impregnated with these forms of the oral style". “They are a sign of the popularity of the songs” (p. 27 f.). In the text there are features of repetition and resumption, "fixed stanzas that occur in similar situations in the same way" (p. 28; compare epic formula ), "the formulaic solidified" and "wandering stanzas " (p. 28), "the same decorative epithets "(brown Mägdelein etc., loyal, snow-white etc.), as well as the" improvisation facilitating "rhyme ties, assonances, the same structure of lines of verse, paired rhymes, amalgamation of song parts from different songs and so on (p. 29) . There are attention formulas with which the singer addresses the audience with questions, there are rhetorical questions in the text (what ...?) And short forms are created in popular circulation ( Graf und Nun , Frau von Weißenburg, Graf von Rom). Sometimes the tragic ending is changed to a sentimental one, the town house is inserted instead of the castle, texts are 'sung' about rural conditions. The tradition of folk ballads requires that forms and contents are changed, fabrics are selected, but also changed. “In this way the former individual form becomes a community form” (p. 33). “With each repeated singing, the song is created anew by the singer, as it were. The reproduction here approaches the production up to complete coverage ”(p. 33 f.).

Prizes and awards

Works (selection)

Johannes Künzig (editor): Directory of the writings published by John Meier 1886–1934 . In: Folklore gifts. John Meier offered on his seventieth birthday , Berlin: de Gruyter 1934, pp. 307–314.

  • The German soldiers' song in the field. Strasbourg 1916 (Trübner's library, vol. 4).
  • Folk song studies. Strasbourg 1917 (Trübner's library, vol. 8).
  • German soldier language. Karlsruhe 1917.
  • Goethe, Freiherr vom Stein and German folklore. Past present Future. 1926.
  • Ballads, Volume 1–2, Reclam, Stuttgart 1935–1936 (German literature […] in development series). Reprint Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1964 (anthology of folk ballad texts with short comments).
  • German folk song archive and individual publisher [volumes 1–4 under the direction of John Meier]: German folk songs with their melodies. Ballads [DVldr; critical edition of the entire repertoire of the German folk ballad ], Volume 1 ff., Berlin 1935 ff. - Otto Holzapfel u. a .: German folk songs with their melodies. Ballads , Volume 10, Peter Lang, Bern 1996 (with Volksballaden-Index, complete list of all German-language popular ballad types; Volume 10 closes with Volksballad No. 168 out of a total of around 300 popular ballad types; this edition was not continued).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.catalogus-professorum-halensis.de/meierjohn.html
personal data
SURNAME Meier, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philologist and folklorist
DATE OF BIRTH June 14, 1864
PLACE OF BIRTH Horn Lehe
DATE OF DEATH May 3, 1953
Place of death Freiburg in Breisgau