Karl Georg Kuhn

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Karl Georg Kuhn (born March 6, 1906 in Thaleischweiler ; † September 15, 1976 in Heidelberg ) was a German Protestant theologian ( New Testament scholar ), religious scholar , orientalist and university professor. At the time of National Socialism , he was considered a specialist in " Jewish issues " and was actively anti-Semitic . After the end of the war he was an important Qumran researcher.

Life

First years and studies

Karl Georg Kuhn was the son of the pietistic preacher Georg Kuhn (1880-1941) and his wife Magdalene, née Theisohn (1875-1939). His younger brother was the Germanist Hugo Kuhn . From 1916 he attended grammar school in Landau in der Pfalz and, after his family had moved, from 1923 to Breslau . After passing high school , he first studied theology at the Bethel Church University from 1925 and after a semester moved to the University of Breslau , where he continued his studies with the subjects of Protestant theology and Semitic languages. There he also attended the rabbinical seminary in order to acquire fundamental knowledge of Talmudic literature from Israel Rabin . In 1928 he continued his studies at the University of Tübingen . In Tübingen the New Testament scholar and anti-Semite Gerhard Kittel became his academic teacher. From the beginning of August 1928 to autumn 1932 his studies were promoted by the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft at the suggestion of Kittel, for whom he translated and commented on a rabbinical text. In April 1931, Enno Littmann made him a doctorate in Oriental Studies in Tübingen. phil. PhD . From October 1, 1932 to September 30, 1934 he was a research assistant for the library scientist Georg Leyh in Tübingen. For Leyh, he was asked to evaluate a copy of the Arabicum- Latinum Lexicon from Theodor Nöldeke's estate , which was provided with notes. Kuhn made slow progress with this work.

Nazi era and anti-Semitism

Kuhn had already joined the NSDAP ( membership number 1.340.672) in March 1932 and the SA in April 1932 before the handover to the National Socialists . At the Tübingen NSDAP local group he worked as a group speaker and cultural warden. From 1938 he was also a member of the NS organizations NS-Reichskriegerbund and the NSV . During the Nazi era, Kuhn distinguished himself with anti-Semitic activities. In 1933 he was a member of the "Committee for Jewish Atrocity Propaganda", which was responsible for organizing the boycott of Jews in Tübingen . On April 1, 1933, Kuhn gave the boycott speech on the market square in Tübingen, in which he proclaimed, among other things: "International world Jewry has declared war on the new Germany, not with weapons but with words".

Kuhn completed his habilitation in Tübingen in 1934 with Littmann with a work on Semitic philology with special consideration of Judaism and received the license to teach oriental languages and history . In December 1934 he became a private lecturer in Oriental Studies in Tübingen and declared himself an anti-Semite at the end of his inaugural speech there. From 1936 Kuhn was a member of the advisory board of the "Research Department Jewish Question" in the Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany . After the November pogroms in 1938, he justified this first climax in the Nazi persecution of Jews in a speech published in 1939 under the title “The Jewish Question as a World History Problem”. In this anti-Semitic pamphlet , he described the Jews as a “parasitic trader people” who, in contrast to other Semitic peoples, had a special “racial substance”. After the attack on Poland in 1940, accompanied by an SS leader , he confiscated Jewish archives in the Warsaw ghetto . Together with Kittel, Kuhn was one of the most active Jewish researchers. The ancient orientalist Viktor Christian wanted to set up an extraordinary professorship for Knowledge of Judaism at the University of Vienna in 1940 and unsuccessfully recruited Kuhn for this position. From 1942 he was an associate professor for the study of the Jewish question in Tübingen. At the end of 1944, on the initiative of Reich Minister Bernhard Rust and the Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, Kuhn's appointment to a “Chair for Jewish Studies” in Frankfurt was probably no longer due to the war.

Post-war period and professorial activity

After the end of the war, Kuhn was dismissed from the university office on July 5, 1945, but was able to return to his chair on October 18, 1945. At the beginning of 1946, the French military administration finally ordered his removal from office and a temporary ban on residence in Tübingen. He then took up residence in Biberach an der Riss . From July 1946 until the end of that year he did his theological exam and some time later temporarily earned his living as a religion teacher in Tübingen. After two court proceedings in Stuttgart and Tübingen, he was denazified in 1948 as exonerated .

From 1949 he initially represented the chair for the New Testament at the University of Göttingen and was later appointed professor there. In addition, from October 1, 1950 to September 30, 1951, he represented the Chair of New Testament at the University of Mainz . From 1954 he was a full professor in Heidelberg , where he also headed the Qumran Research Center from 1957. From 1964 he was a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences . Kuhn retired in 1971 . In the same year, a “Festgabe” was published for his birthday with the title “Tradition and Faith. Early Christianity in its environment ”with contributions from his students and friends, including Hans Bardtke , Carsten Colpe , Lienhard Delekat , Martin Hengel , Joachim Jeremias , Heinz-Wolfgang Kuhn , Otto Michel , Eberhard Otto , Johannes van der Ploeg , Rudolf Schnackenburg , Eduard Schweizer , Hartmut Stegemann , Hartwig Thyen , Anton Vögtle and Claus Westermann .

Kuhn was the author of many articles in dictionaries on theology and in specialist journals. In 1951 he distanced himself from the text “The Jewish Question as a World History Problem” to justify the November pogroms, but in 1968 he was not prepared to do so in relation to his other anti-Semitic publications. In Kuhn's view, his work was based on scientific research. Some neo-Nazis refer to his work up to the present day . Gerd Theißen assessed Kuhn's research in 2011 as follows: “Indeed, he wanted to justify anti-Semitism [...] objectively and scientifically . For him, this also included the fact that he (not without courage) contradicted false prejudices against Jews in the Third Reich. His attitude is reminiscent of ancient hostility towards Jews: Jews in the diaspora had transferred their hostile attitude towards other peoples to their immediate neighbors and are therefore full of hostility towards others. My investigation makes it probable that KG Kuhn began as a philosemite in the Weimar Republic. He had studied the Talmud at the rabbinical seminary in Breslau. His first writings are free from anti-Semitism. [...] Karl Georg Kuhn is one of the few who expressed an open argument about their behavior during the Nazi era, but he should not have been honored with an honorary doctorate from the Göttingen Theological Faculty in 1955 or by admission to the Academy in 1964 ".

In the Soviet occupation zone , his writings Die Judenfrage als Weltgeschichtliches Problem (1939) and Der Talmud, the law book of the Jews (1941) were placed on the list of literature to be sorted out.

Fonts (selection)

  • The Tannaitic midrash Sifre zu Numbers under use. Translated by Prof. Dr. Jakob Winter u. with contributions from Prof. Dr. Gerhard Kittel, Prof. Dr. A. Marmorstein u. Prof. D. Hans Windisch arr. u. declared 1st half , Stuttgart / Berlin 1934 (also Phil. Dissertation at the University of Tübingen); fully Tannaitic Midrashim . Vol. 2 = Rabbinical texts . Row 2
  • The oldest text of the Psalms of Solomon, esp. Due to d. syr. Übers. , Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1937. In: Contributions to the science of the Old and New Testament ; H. 21 = (The whole collection H. 73)
  • The Jewish question as a problem of world history , Hanseatic. Verl. Anst., Hamburg 1939. In: Writings of the Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany
  • The Talmud - The Law Book of the Jews . In: Robert Wetzel / Hermann Hoffmann ( ed .): Wissenschaftliche Akademie Tübingen des NSD.-Dozentbundes, Volume 1: 1937, 1938, 1939, Tübingen: Mohr 1940, pp. 226–233.
  • Origin and essence of the Talmudic attitude to the Gentile . In: Research on the Jewish question , Vol. 3, 2nd edition, Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt 1943, pp. 211–246.
  • Eighteen prayers and our Father and the Reim , Mohr, Tübingen 1950. In: Scientific investigations on the New Testament; 1
  • Tannaitic Midrashim , Kohlhammer, Stuttgart. In: Rabbinic texts (various contributions to the multi-volume work between 1954 and 1959)
  • Phylacteries from Cave 4 of Qumran , Winter, Heidelberg 1957
  • Declining Hebrew dictionary , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1958. (Collaboration and editing)
  • Concordance with the Qumran texts , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1958. (Collaboration and editing)

literature

  • Mario Daniels: History of the 20th Century. Institutionalization processes and development of the association of persons at the University of Tübingen 1918–1964 , series: Contubernium. Tübingen contributions to the history of universities and science , Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3515092845 .
  • Horst Junginger : From philological to folk religious studies. The subject of religious studies at the University of Tübingen from the middle of the 19th century to the end of the Third Reich (= Contubernium . Volume 51). Steiner, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-515-07432-5 .
  • Gerd Theissen : New Testament Science before and after 1945: Karl Georg Kuhn and Günther Bornkamm , University Press C. Winter, Heidelberg 2009, ISBN 978-3825356309 .
  • Gerd Theißen: From Jesus to the early Christian world of signs: New Testament boundaries in dialogue. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 3525550235 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Norbert H. Ott:  Kuhn, Hugo. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , pp. 261-263 ( digitized version ).
  2. ↑ Gerd Theissen: New Testament Science before and after 1945: Karl Georg Kuhn and Günther Bornkamm , Heidelberg 2009, p. 17
  3. ↑ Manfred Ullmann: Dictionary of the Classical Arabic Language . Volume II. 40. Delivery. Wiesbaden 2009. p. 2478
  4. ↑ a b c d e Mario Daniels: History in the 20th century. Institutionalization processes and development of the association of persons at the University of Tübingen 1918-1964 , series: Contubernium. Tübingen contributions to the history of universities and science , Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2009, p. 170
  5. ↑ Gerd Theissen: New Testament Science before and after 1945: Karl Georg Kuhn and Günther Bornkamm , Heidelberg 2009, p. 19
  6. ↑ Quoted in: Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 350
  7. ↑ a b c d Gerd Theißen: From Jesus to the early Christian world of signs: New Testament border walks in dialogue , Göttingen 2011, p. 60
  8. ↑ a b c d Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 350
  9. ^ Dirk Rupnow: Breaks and Continuities - From Nazi Jewish Research to Post-War Judaism . In: Mitchell Ash , Wolfram Nieß, Ramon Pils (Eds.): Humanities in National Socialism. The example of the University of Vienna. Vienna University Press at V&R unipress, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-89971-568-2 , p. 89f.
  10. ↑ Gerd Theissen: New Testament Science before and after 1945: Karl Georg Kuhn and Günther Bornkamm , Heidelberg 2009, p. 45
  11. ^ Gerd Theissen: New Testament Science before and after 1945: Karl Georg Kuhn and Günther Bornkamm , Heidelberg 2009, p. 51
  12. ↑ Quoted in Gerd Theißen: From Jesus to the early Christian world of signs: New Testament border walks in dialogue , Göttingen 2011, pp. 60f.
  13. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet occupation zone, list of literature to be sorted out. 1946, pp. 230-239.
  14. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet occupation zone, list of literature to be sorted out. 1948, pp. 143-170.
personal data
SURNAME Kuhn, Karl Georg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kuhn, Karl-Georg; Kuhn, Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theologian, orientalist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Thaleischweiler
DATE OF DEATH September 15, 1976
Place of death Heidelberg