Kuno Francke

Kuno Francke (1917)

Kuno Francke (born September 27, 1855 in Kiel , † June 25, 1930 in Cambridge, USA ) was a German-American German studies scholar .

ancestors

Kuno Franke was a son of the lawyer August Wilhelm Francke (1805–1864) and his wife Catharina Maria, née Jensen (1815–1874). The maternal grandfather was the Flensburg merchant Heinrich Carstensen Jensen , the paternal grandfather Georg Samuel Francke . His older brother Alexander Francke worked as a bookseller and publisher. His uncles included the classical philologist Johann Valentin Francke and the writer Georg Karl Theodor Francke .

Youth, studies and brief teaching activities

Francke's father moved to Kiel shortly before the birth of his son Kuno, where he spent his childhood. From 1863 he attended the Kiel School of Academics . His father died a year later; his eldest brother Hugo took over the role of father instead. At Easter 1873 he passed the Abitur examination and immediately afterwards began studying classical and German philology, history and archeology at the University of Kiel . In the summer semester of 1874 he moved to Berlin , from the summer semester of 1876 to the winter semester of 1876/77 to Jena and in 1878 to Munich . He took many subjects and heard from an exceptionally large number of eminent scholars. This included in particular Friedrich Paulsen , through whom he made the acquaintance of Ferdinand Tönnies , whom Francke admired and with whom he had a lifelong friendship.

At the University of Jena, Francke learned from Rudolf Eucken , who impressed him. He was supported by Wilhelm von Giesebrecht , Heinrich von Brunn and Michael Bernays at the University of Munich . Because of his diverse interests and talents, Francke did not always concentrate on one major. For some time he devoted himself to writing rather than scientific work. Heinrich von Brunn advised him to give science more space. Francke then increasingly studied philology. However, he wrote poetry for life, especially experiential poetry . Some of these texts appeared in magazines and in 1923 as an anthology with the title “German Destiny”. The occasional poem "Greeting America to Germany" found its way into a widespread, well-known anthology, which Francke was proud of.

In 1878 Francke completed his doctorate with von Giesebrecht in Munich. He devoted himself to the high medieval Latin school poetry. Von Giesebrecht suggested Francke for the König Ludwig scholarship, which enabled his student to spend six months at Italian libraries and archives. He used this time for medieval studies. He then went to Kiel and worked in the summer of 1880 as a trial candidate at the Kiel School of Academics. In the winter months he got a job as an assistant teacher for German, Greek, Latin and French. Like other teachers, he continued his scientific studies.

At the end of 1881 Francke officially resigned from school “for health reasons”. The real reason may have been that Georg Waitz had offered him to publish the pamphlets of the 11th and 12th centuries on the conflicts between emperor and pope in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica . Francke was to produce a total of three volumes. The first two volumes appeared until 1882.

Move to Harvard

Kuno Francke before 1903

Ephraim Emerton , a friend of Francke's school days and professor at Harvard University, and Friedrich Paulsen helped Francke get a job at Harvard. He therefore did not complete work on the third volume of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica . In the winter semester of 1884/85 at Harvard, he took on a three-year position as a lecturer (instructor) in German language and literature. Immediately after arriving in America, Francke co-founded the American Historical Association . He made the acquaintance of Andrew D. White , who then supported Francke in various ways. In 1887 Francke received a position as "Assistant Professor of German Literature", and in 1886 a professorship. Karl Follen , who had left the university in 1835, had previously held a professorship for the German language for the first time . Until 1872 no new teacher had filled the chair again. In the meantime, an old scholar had taken over the teaching. Then there were repeated young lecturers who primarily taught the German language at high school level. Francke's teaching assignment initially also provided for German lessons, but was not limited to that. He was also allowed to give other lectures on freely chosen topics from the field of German studies, which he did extensively.

Francke spoke in class with a clear German accent. He won the sympathy of his students, who were skeptical for this reason, thanks to his impressive rhetoric and was quickly a sought-after guest lecturer: in the winter semester of 1898/99 he taught as a visiting professor at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, in the summer of 1899 at the University of Wisconsin , in the winter semester of 1915 / 16 at Cornell University in Ithaca and in the summer of 1916 at the University of California, Berkeley .

Francke was committed to the regular exchange of professors in Germany and Harvard. When he was in Germany in 1901/02, he convinced Education Minister Friedrich Althoff of his plan. Althoff then negotiated with Harvard President Charles William Eliot . This resulted in a program for the exchange of German and American professors that went beyond Francke's original idea. The Kaiser mentioned the project in his New Year's address to the diplomatic corps at the beginning of 1904, thus turning it into a foreign policy process. The program developed into a permanent fixture in the academic relationship between the two countries and initially existed until 1914.

Commitment to German culture

In 1891 Francke took American citizenship. He was fascinated by the democratic institutions there and the informal and spontaneous social contact that he had experienced since immigration. He still had a deep emotional bond with Germany and was passionately committed to increasing information and understanding about German culture in his new home. This was his main motivation for the numerous publications and lectures.

Especially during the First World War , Francke concentrated on bringing German views closer to his compatriots. He wrote series of articles that appeared in leading American newspapers and magazines. In it he spoke out against anti-German propaganda. He advised the German-Americans not to express themselves anti-British and thus to say goodbye to America's leading circles. In 1915 the articles became the confessional "A German American's Confession of Faith", and one year later "The German Spirit".

Francke never shared the chauvinism of the German Emperor Wilhelm II . He talked to him in 1912 and then was horrified by his views. He harshly criticized German exchange professors who, in a know-it-all attitude, tried to convey the advantages of German culture and civilization to their American students. He recommended restraint and a modest demeanor in attempts to bring the Americans closer to the German minority and their homeland.

In 1915 Francke did not take part in a central gathering of German-Americans in Washington . The protests there were directed against arms exports by the Americans to the Entente . With his refusal he came into conflict with all sides. The Americans assumed at least partial loyalty to him. It didn't help that he always emphasized being an American citizen. Even his warnings to millions of German-Americans not to organize themselves politically centrally but instead to use their votes as leverage did nothing to change that. The German-Americans, on the other hand, often saw Francke as a traitor. The ancient historian Eduard Meyer , 1909/10 exchange professor at Harvard, and other compatriots attacked Francke hard. For similar reasons, the relationship with his Harvard colleague Hugo Münsterberg broke up.

Interruption of teaching

Heinrich Albert , husband of a niece of Francke, acquired war goods as a commercial attaché in New York and Washington since 1914 and was responsible for pro-German propaganda. In 1915 this resulted in a major scandal that caused a sensation and brought hostility to Francke from both the German and American sides. For this reason he went on a sabbatical year in September 1916 . After the USA entered the war, Francke asked for release in April 1917. He moved to Gilbertsville , where his wife was from. Here he completed the second volume of his “Cultural Values”. Serious suspicions against him continued at his new place of residence. Among other things, he had to accept that his private correspondence was opened without his knowledge. Even so, he was elected President of the Modern Language Association in 1917 . In the same year he wrote in “Is there to be a German Republic” that socialists should lead Germany in the future, but that the monarchy should be retained.

Francke himself later wrote that the time of the First World War was the most important conflict he had ever experienced. He considered Germany threatened by Great Britain, but fully accepted that the Americans were not interested in clashes with the British. His son went to war in France as a volunteer soldier for the Americans, something Francke understood and respected. For these reasons, it seems tragic that both Germans and Americans defamed him.

Late years

After the war, Francke returned to Cambridge in the summer of 1920. In the same year he traveled to Germany and met Friedrich Ebert , whose policies he supported and whom he held in high regard. Many American German scholars took part in the honorable celebration of his 70th birthday in 1925. Thanks to the resumption of communication between the German Reich and the USA, the professors' exchange program he founded could be continued.

Francke died in mid-1930 and was buried in Gilbertsville.

Act as a curator

The Busch-Reisinger Museum

Since the end of the 1890s Francke planned to set up a "Germanic Museum" at Harvard. In May 1901 he created the "Germanic Museum Association" and won Carl Schurz as a committed honorary chairman and influential person from Boston with Anglo-Saxon roots. Theodore Roosevelt joined the board as vice chairman of the sponsorship committee the year he took office as American president. This is how the Busch-Reisinger Museum , which opened in 1903, came into being . Francke was then appointed professor of German cultural history (instead of literary history). This should emphasize his teaching and the work in the museum more clearly.

Francke acted as curator of the museum from the opening to the completion of the building in 1917. In 1920 he was made an honorary curator, but was de facto the actual curator of the exhibition. In 1923 he traveled extensively through Germany and acquired plaster casts or received these exhibits, as in Lübeck, as gifts.

Act as editor

Francke worked as editor in another large project, with which the reception of German culture in America should be supported. The German Publication Society , created in 1912, wanted to distribute a series of editions with the help of which German texts should become better known beyond the circle of Germanists and German-Americans. The funds came in particular from Adolphus Busch and Hugo Reisinger . Woodrow Wilson and Robert Borden were among the patrons . Reisinger chose Francke as editor of the series entitled “German Classics of the XIX. and XX Centuries ”.

Francke deliberately did not choose any “classics” for the font collection, which was unique at the time. With the choice of more recent German literature at the time, he hoped to be able to achieve better understanding among a larger group of people. The newly translated texts received introductory words from renowned German and American experts. In line with Francke's understanding of literature, the collection comprised philosophical, political and essayistic writings, including von Bismarck , Helmut von Moltke , Richard Wagner , Ferdinand Lassalle and Wilhelm I.

Francke was able to complete the 20 volumes of the series despite the outbreak of the First World War. The marketing started in May 1913 in a spectacular environment with great reception in the press. The sales of the works were initially successful. With the entry of American troops into the war, sales declined; the sponsoring company had to file for bankruptcy; Numerous remaining stocks were almost destroyed. The study of German language and literature in the USA never returned to the quantitative level it had reached during Francke's time. From 1982 to 2007, “The German Library” was a similar approach to making German texts available in English.

Works

Francke published in German and English. His main work was the "Social Forces in German Literature" from 1896, which appeared in several editions. From the fourth expanded edition onwards, it was entitled “A History of German Literature by Social Forces”, printed in 1901. Reprints of this were distributed until 1969. Francke wrote in it on the intellectual and social history of German literature. He based it on the anthropological assumption that people strive for freedom and self-development, which is in conflict with the desired integration into a community. In the field of aesthetics, observation and description of the particular and changeable follow from the first suggestion, and thus ultimately realism. The striving for integration leads to an orientation towards the general harmonic and permanent, which thus leads to idealism.

Francke used not only reputable “high literature” as evidence, as was customary at the time. His literary history had significant influences on American German studies and other new philologists. Critics sometimes justifiably noted that Francke had to use unusual sources due to the schematism of his explanations, since the basic theses could not be consistently substantiated with high literature.

family

Francke married Katherine Gilbert on June 27, 1889 (born November 2, 1860 in Gilbertsville, † February 1, 1956 in Cambridge). Her father John H. Gilbert (born January 14, 1817 in Gilbertsville, † after 1899) owned land and was a businessman. The mother Elizabeth, nee Lathrop (1824-1910), was a daughter of the doctor William Lathrop from Gilbertsville.

The Francke couple had a daughter and two sons.

Honors

Francke has been honored many times for his services:

• His former student and later federal judge Julian W. Mack suggested an endowed professorship for German art and cultural history in 1929. The facility, maintained by German-Americans, bears Francke's name and still exists today.
• In 1903 Francke was awarded the 3rd Class Red Eagle Order .
• In 1906 he received the Prussian Order of the Crown, 2nd class.
• The University of Wisconsin awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1912 (Litt. D.)
• The Philosophical Faculty of the University of Munich made him an honorary doctorate in 1928.
• Francke had been an honorary member and senator of the German Academy since 1925 .
• Francke was a fellow of the American Philosophical Society (election year 1904), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (election year 1905) and, since 1927, the Medieval Academy of Arts and Sciences .
• The former Renaissance hall of the Adolphus Busch Hall is now called "Kuno Francke Hall".

Memberships

Francke belonged to the German-American Historical Society from Chicago and became its vice-president in 1904. He was also a member of the American Historical Association from Washington and the German Society for Sociologists , which made him an honorary member.

literature

• Hartwig Molzow: Francke, Kuno . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, pp. 158–168.

Web links

• Literature by and about Kuno Francke in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hartwig Molzow: Francke, Alexander . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 148.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Hartwig Molzow: Francke, Kuno . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 158.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Hartwig Molzow: Francke, Kuno . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 159.
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Hartwig Molzow: Francke, Kuno . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 160.
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Hartwig Molzow: Francke, Kuno . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 164.
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Hartwig Molzow: Francke, Kuno . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 165.
7. ↑ Hartwig Molzow: Francke, Kuno . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 161.
8. ↑ ^{a b} Hartwig Molzow: Francke, Kuno . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 162.
9. ↑ ^{a b c} Hartwig Molzow: Francke, Kuno . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 163.
10. ↑ Hartwig Molzow: Francke, Kuno . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 166.