Jonas Frankel

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Jonas Fränkel (born August 12, 1879 in Krakow , Austria-Hungary ; died June 4, 1965 in Riedegg near Thun , from 1919 resident in Bern ) was a Swiss German studies scholar , university professor and editor of Gottfried Keller's works .

life and work

Fränkel, the son of Jewish parents, first prepared himself for a career as a rabbi . After his break with Judaism in 1897 he turned to philosophy, literature and art. In a later phase of life, however, he approached Judaism again. In 1898 he began studying art history, literary history and philosophy at the University of Vienna , where he had been hard of hearing since he was at school and was unable to attend lectures because of the large auditoriums. He found better conditions at the University of Bern , where Oskar Walzel discovered his gift for philology . Fränkel received his doctorate in 1902 with a dissertation on Zacharias Werner . After the failure of a first habilitation application in 1908 , he completed his habilitation in 1909 with a study of Goethe's letters to Charlotte von Stein and received the venia legendi for modern German literary history. Subsequently, Fränkel worked as a private lecturer for German literary history at the University of Bern until 1921. An attempt to rehabilitate in Zurich in 1918 failed due to resistance by Emil Ermatinger , whose biography in the basement had been criticized by Fränkel. From 1921 to 1949, Fränkel taught in the successor to Ferdinand Vetter as an associate professor for modern German literature and comparative literary history at the University of Bern. Fränkel did not respond to tentative inquiries from German universities with regard to possible calls, including from Jena.

Jonas Fränkel distinguished himself above all as the editor of works and letters by German and Swiss poets. In the years from 1923 to 1939, he promoted 17 of 22 volumes of the first text-critical edition of Keller works to print, solely through his own work . When he settled Gottfried Keller's political mission with National Socialism in his 1939 work , Nazi sympathizers among his academic opponents seized the opportunity to make it impossible for him to continue working on the Keller edition. In 1942 the Zurich government withdrew all job opportunities under pretexts and denied him access to the archives.

The Swiss poet and journalist Carl Spitteler had appointed his friend Fränkel to be the biographer, estate administrator and editor of his works. Here, too, Frankel's opponents succeeded in preventing them from carrying out their task after years of trials and journalistic struggles.

The works of Goethe, Heine and CF Meyers also belonged to the other main research areas of Fränkel .

In 1964 Fränkel was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Jena . In the same year he was also appointed a Fellow of the Leo-Baeck Institute in New York.

Some of Frankel's writings

  • Joseph Viktor Widmann . Three studies . Zurich u. a. 1919.
  • Gottfried Keller's political mission . Zurich 1939.
  • The Gottfried Keller Edition and the Zurich Government. A defense . Zurich no year [1942].
  • Spitteler . Tributes and encounters . St. Gallen 1945.
  • Spitteler's right. Documents of a fight . Winterthur 1966.
  • Poetry and science . Heidelberg 1954.

literature

  • Charles Linsmayer : Jonas Fränkel. In: Swiss literature scene. 157 short portraits from Rousseau to Gertrud Leutenegger . Zurich 1989, p. 118 f.
  • Rätus Luck: Frankel, Jonas. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  • Rätus Luck: Carl Spitteler and Jonas Fränkel. A case and a plea. In: Quarto. Journal of the Swiss Literary Archives . 4/5 (1995), pp. 150-161.
  • Charles Linsmayer: «A Jew teach us our great poets! Thanks a lot!" Comments on the Spitteler reception and the Fränkel case. In: Quarto. Journal of the Swiss Literary Archives . 4/5 (1995), pp. 162-68.
  • Julian Schütt: "The emigrant blocks our national poets." On the Jonas Fränkel case. In: German Studies and Politics. Swiss literary studies in the time of National Socialism . Zurich 1996, ISBN 3-905312-04-2 , pp. 177-204.
  • Konrad Feilchenfeldt : Jonas Fränkel. A "Jewish philologist" and secular science. In: Jewish intellectuals and the philologies in Germany 1871–1933 . Edited by Wilfried Barner and Christoph König. Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-89244-457-9 , pp. 147–152.
  • Michael Hagemeister : The "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in court. The Bern Trial 1933–1937 and the «Anti-Semitic International». Chronos, Zurich 2017, ISBN 978-3-0340-1385-7 , short biography p. 530.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Rätus Luck: Frankel, Jonas. In: Christoph König (Ed.): Internationales Germanistenlexikon 1800–1950. Edited by Birgit Wägenbaur et al., Verlag Walter de Gruyter , Berlin and New York 2003, Reprint 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-090805-3 , Volume 1, pp. 510-513, here p. 511. Paid access online [1] .
  2. ↑ Cf. Rätus Luck: Frankel, Jonas. In: Christoph König (Ed.): Internationales Germanistenlexikon 1800-1950. Edited by Birgit Wägenbaur et al., Verlag Walter de Gruyter , Berlin and New York 2003, Reprint 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-090805-3 , Volume 1, pp. 510-513, here p. 511. Paid access online [2] .
  3. ↑ Cf. Rätus Luck: Frankel, Jonas. In: Christoph König (Ed.): Internationales Germanistenlexikon 1800-1950. Edited by Birgit Wägenbaur et al., Verlag Walter de Gruyter , Berlin and New York 2003, Reprint 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-090805-3 , Volume 1, pp. 510-513, here p. 511. Paid access online [3] .
personal data
SURNAME Frankel, Jonas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss university professor and author
DATE OF BIRTH August 12, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Krakow
DATE OF DEATH June 4, 1965
Place of death Riedegg near Thun