Kurt von Fritz

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Karl Albert Kurt von Fritz (born August 25, 1900 in Metz , † July 16, 1985 in Feldafing ) was a German classical philologist .

Life

Kurt von Fritz, son of the Prussian Lieutenant Colonel Adolf von Fritz, who was ennobled in January 1900, began to be interested in ancient philosophy and literature as a schoolboy. He first visited the cadet institute in Lichterfelde . In 1914, for health reasons, he had to switch to a high school in Freiburg im Breisgau , where he graduated from high school in 1918. After a short military service as an ensign in the artillery, he began studying classical philology in Freiburg and Munich, despite a pronounced inclination towards mathematics and philosophy. A lecture by Eduard Schwartz in 1919 on the Greek historian Thucydides was to shape his future life and future research interests. The chronicler of the Peloponnesian War describes the fall from civilization into barbarism. Kurt von Fritz then studied philosophy, Arabic and mathematics. When Schwartz received a call to the University of Munich , he followed him and received his doctorate in 1923 with a thesis on Diogenes von Sinope . In 1927 he completed his habilitation in Munich on Democritus . On November 26, 1931, von Fritz married Luise Eickemeyer, the sister of the architect Manfred Eickemeyer (who rented his studio to Hans Scholl and friends of the White Rose resistance group in 1942 ). In 1931 von Fritz went to Hamburg as Ernst Kapp's assistant , and in 1933 he was finally offered an extraordinary professorship for Greek at the University of Rostock .

Besides Karl Barth, von Fritz was the only university professor in Germany who refused to take the oath of service to Adolf Hitler in 1934 and was forced into retirement. He was unable to combine the oath required for all civil servants after Hindenburg's death with his freedom as a scientist. Von Fritz hoped that other university professors would join his protest against the National Socialist ideology's claim to leadership , but saw himself isolated and was forced into retirement in April 1935. He moved to Munich, where he was denied access to the Bavarian State Library after being denounced . Von Fritz went to Oxford in early 1936 , where he became a lecturer at Corpus Christi College , and that same year to the USA. There he taught at Reed College in Portland (Oregon) , and from 1937 at Columbia University .

In 1954 Kurt von Fritz returned to Germany, initially to the Free University of Berlin . From 1958 until his retirement in 1968 he taught at the University of Munich .

Honors

Kurt von Fritz had been a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences since 1959 and a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences since 1962 and of the British Academy since 1973 . In 1981 Fritz received the Sigmund Freud Prize for scientific prose from the German Academy for Language and Poetry .

The Kurt von Fritz Prize for young scientists of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation was named after him, as was the Kurt von Fritz Science Program of the State of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

plant

Kurt von Fritz left behind an impressive oeuvre of more than 260 publications, including 15 books alone, in which he dealt with Greek philosophy, the natural sciences, poetry and historiography, ancient political theory and Roman literature. The focus is always on the question of a just state, which is particularly evident in his publications on Plato and the Aristotelian writings .

Fonts (selection)

  • Greek historiography. Volume 1: From the beginnings to Thucydides. 2 volumes (Part 1: Text. Part 2: Notes. ). de Gruyter, Berlin 1967.
  • Basic problems in the history of ancient science. de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 1971, ISBN 3-11-001805-5 .
  • The Relevance of Ancient Social and Political Philosophy for our Times. A short introduction to the problem. de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 1974, ISBN 3-11-004859-0 .
  • Writings on Greek and Roman constitutional history and theory. de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 1976 ISBN 3-11-006567-3 .
  • Writings on Greek logic (= Problemata. Vol. 70–71). 2 volumes (Vol. 1: Logic and Epistemology. Vol. 2: Logic, Ontology and Mathematics. ). Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1978, ISBN 3-7728-0685-6 (vol. 1), ISBN 3-7728-0687-2 (vol. 2).

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Professor Kurt von Fritz - Elected 1973. In: thebritishacademy.ac.uk. Retrieved on August 16, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Kurt von Fritz Prize for Young Scientists. In: fes.de . Archived from the original on July 7, 2016 ; accessed on February 21, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Heike Schmoll : Time of Theory. Funding program for humanities scholars . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 29, 2016, p. N4.
  4. ↑ No more published
personal data
SURNAME Fritz, Kurt von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fritz, Karl Albert Kurt von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German classical philologist
DATE OF BIRTH August 25, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Metz
DATE OF DEATH July 16, 1985
Place of death Feldafing