Karl Bertau

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Karl Bertau (born November 1, 1927 in Neustettin , Pomerania ; † October 24, 2015 ) was a German philologist . The focus of his work was the literature of the European Middle Ages .

Life

Karl Bertau served in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War and was taken prisoner of war. After his return he studied German, art history, philosophy and geography at the universities in Bamberg and Göttingen from 1946 . In 1954 he received his doctorate with investigations into the spiritual poetry of Frauenlobs . He then worked from 1956 to 1959 as a lecturer at the University of Aix-en-Provence , but then returned to Göttingen, where he worked as a research assistant and finally completed his habilitation in 1964. In 1964 he was appointed full professor for German philology at the University of Göttingen. In 1965 he followed a call to the Chair of German Philology at the University of Geneva . From 1972 until his retirement in 1993 he was Professor of Germanic and German Philology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg . Karl Bertau was considered a "philological polyhistor ". The colleagues praised u. a. his edition, translation and commentary on the Ackermann from Böhmen .

From 1989 until his death Bertau was a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

Fonts (selection)

  • German literature in the European Middle Ages . CH Beck, Munich
  • About literary history. Literary art character and history in the courtly epic around 1200 . CH Beck, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-406-09568-2 .
  • Johannes de Tepla, civis Zacensis, Epistola cum Libello Ackerman and Das Büchlein Ackerman. After the Freiburg Hs. 163 and after the Stuttgart Hs. HB X 23, edited and translated by Karl Bertau . De Gruyter, Berlin 1994.
    • Vol. 1: Text and translation. ISBN 3-11-014019-5 .
    • Vol. 2: Investigations. Introduction, studies on the cover letter and on chapters 1 to 34 of the text and vocabulary with excursions . ISBN 3-11-014634-7 .
  • Scripture - Power - Holiness in the literatures of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim Middle Ages . De Gruyter, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-11-017468-5 .

literature

  • Adolf Muschg : Culture of Understanding. On the death of the Germanist Karl Bertau . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, November 3, 2015, p. 41 (obituary).

Footnotes

  1. ^ Adolf Muschg: Culture of Understanding. On the death of the Germanist Karl Bertau . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, November 3, 2015, p. 41.
  2. ^ Karl Stackmann : Author - Tradition - Editor . In: Eckart Conrad Lutz (ed.): The Middle Ages and the Germanists. To the more recent history of methods of Germanic philology . Universitätsverlag Freiburg Schweiz, Friborg 1998, ISBN 3-7278-1184-6 , pp. 11–32, here pp. 21–22.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Bertau, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philologist
DATE OF BIRTH November 1, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Neustettin
DATE OF DEATH October 24, 2015