Karl Justus Obenauer

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Karl Justus Obenauer (born February 29, 1888 in Darmstadt ; † July 7, 1973 in Wittlensweiler near Freudenstadt ) was a German specialist in German, professor at the University of Bonn and SS-Hauptsturmführer .

Life

After studying German, philosophy and history with a doctorate in 1910 at the University of Munich , Obenauer worked in Grenoble and at the Sorbonne in Paris as a lecturer for German literature. Then he did military service as a soldier and interpreter from 1915 to 1918 during the First World War . In Darmstadt and Heppenheim he made contact with Hermann Keyserling ("School of Wisdom") and Martin Buber as a private scholar . After his habilitation , Obenauer was a private lecturer from 1926 to 1932, then a non-civil servant associate professor at the University of Leipzig . In 1933 he became a member of the NSDAP , where he worked as a block warden . In November 1933 he signed the German professors' confession of Adolf Hitler . In 1934 he joined the SS and became a volunteer employee of the SD . In 1935, Obenauer was appointed full professor of modern German literary history at the University of Bonn against the will of the faculty. He gave his inaugural lecture in SS uniform. As dean of the Philosophical Faculty, he was responsible for the revocation of Thomas Mann's honorary doctorate in 1936 . Obenauer was also involved in Heinrich Himmler's special commission on witch research . In 1941 he was promoted to Hauptsturmführer .

Released after the end of the Second World War , he remained interned until 1948. While in detention, he converted to Catholicism. In 1949 he lost his chair in Bonn and the internment period was recognized as pensionable. Then he worked again as a Goethe researcher.

Obenauer and the insult to Thomas Mann

Obenauer's action against Thomas Mann in 1936 was no accident. He alone made his decision to inform Mann that he was "deleted from the list of honorary doctorates "; because Hans Naumann , the only colleague with whom he even consulted about it, could (according to his own statements) not approve of Obenauer's intention. In a later interview with the 'Ekstrabladet' newspaper in Copenhagen, Naumann called the move 'embarrassing' and doubted that it was necessary. Paul Kahle assessed Obenauer in 1945 as follows: Obenauer was much more of an SS man than a scientist or professor . Obenauer took part in the Jewish pogrom on November 10, 1938 and publicly boasted of it. Oellers thinks that Obenauer was initially a "subtle, brooding scientist on a metaphysical basis, an anthroposophical Goethe researcher who succeeded and in the spirit of Rudolf Steiner ". More precisely, he was a supporter of the 'Christian' branch of anthroposophy , the Christian community . He later became an "SS and SD man". For the winter semester of 1935/1936, Obenauer was delegated to what was called the 'sensitive' University of Bonn in Berlin; it was not wanted by the Bonn philosophical faculty. In addition, he was appointed dean by the rector without any election or suggestion

“So it is by no means schizophrenic when Himmler's husband in Bonn at the end of 1936 injured Thomas Mann as deeply as he could, that of the dean, who acted according to the Führer principle; the same Thomas Mann whom he had honored in detail in one of the last chapters of his last book, "The Problem of Aesthetic Man in German Literature", published in 1933. "

- Oellers 1983, p. 243

Fonts

  • The Faustian man. Fourteen reflections on the second part of Goethe's "Faust" , Jena 1922.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, the ecstatic nihilist. A study on the crisis of religious consciousness , Jena 1924.
  • The problem of the aesthetic man in German literature. Munich 1933.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche and the German Present. War lectures. Scheur, Bonn 1940.
  • Ernst Moritz Arndt and the Rhine. War Lectures University of Bonn : "The Battle for the Rhine". Scheur, Bonn 1942.
  • Goethe-Taschenlexikon v. Heinrich Schmidt . Edit again by Karl Justus Obenauer, Kröner, Stuttgart 1955.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paul Egon Huebinger : Thomas Mann, the University of Bonn and contemporary history. Three chapters of the German past from the life of the poet 1905 - 1955. Munich 1974.
  2. ↑ Norbert Oellers, "Poetry and Volkstum: Der Fall der Literaturwissenschaft", pp. 232-254 in: Beda Allemann (Ed.): Literature and German studies after the " takeover of power ". Colloquium on the 50th anniversary of January 20, 1933. Bouvier, Bonn 1983. pp. 243f
  3. ^ Kahle: Bonn University in Pre-Nazi and Nazi Times 1923-1939: The Experience of a German Professor. Private Printing, London 1945, p. 15.
  4. ^ Kahle: Bonn University in Pre-Nazi and Nazi Times 1923-1939: The Experience of a German Professor. Private Printing, London 1945, pp. 10, 15.
  5. ↑ a b Norbert Oellers, "Poetry and Volkstum: Der Fall der Literaturwissenschaft", pp. 232-254 in: Beda Allemann (Hrsg.): Literature and German studies after the " takeover of power ". Colloquium on the 50th anniversary of January 20, 1933. Bouvier, Bonn 1983. p. 241.
  6. ^ Paul Egon Huebinger: Thomas Mann, the University of Bonn and contemporary history. Three chapters of the German past from the life of the poet 1905 - 1955. Munich 1974, p. 208.
  7. ↑ Norbert Oellers, "Poetry and Volkstum: Der Fall der Literaturwissenschaft", pp. 232-254 in: Beda Allemann (Ed.): Literature and German studies after the " takeover of power ". Colloquium on the 50th anniversary of January 20, 1933. Bouvier, Bonn 1983. p. 242.
  8. ^ Paul Egon Huebinger: Thomas Mann, the University of Bonn and contemporary history. Three chapters of the German past from the life of the poet 1905-1955. Munich 1974, pp. 219f; 311.
personal data
SURNAME Obenauer, Karl Justus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philologist, SS-Hauptsturmführer
DATE OF BIRTH February 29, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Darmstadt
DATE OF DEATH 7th July 1973
Place of death Wittlensweiler