Lothar Scheithauer

Lothar Johannes Scheithauer (born July 8, 1923 in Plauen ; † March 10, 2008 in Göttingen ) was a German specialist in German .

Life

Beginnings

Born in Vogtland, Scheithauer came to Leipzig with his parents as a child . At the Thomas School , to which he was admitted because of good school reports and musical talent, he passed the Abitur . Military service in World War II , for which he was called up after graduating, initially prevented him from studying.

Studies and university political activity

When the University of Leipzig was able to resume operations in the summer semester of 1946 , Scheithauer enrolled in its philosophy faculty. There he met Wolfgang Natonek , with whom he was friends until his death in 1994. Influenced by Natonek, he joined the LDP and the Liberal University Group. After the university groups of the LDP and CDU won the majority in the student council elections in 1947, Natonek became chairman of the student council and Scheithauer spokesman for the student body of the Philosophical Faculty of Leipzig University. He was significantly involved in the organization of the only all-German student convention at the time at the Wartburg near Eisenach . He was also a member of the program commission of the Liberal University Group, which formulated a liberal university policy as a counterpoint to the ideas of the SED . After the arrest of Natonek, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a Soviet military tribunal, in November 1948 and the subsequent ban on the Liberal University Group, Scheithauer was no longer able to take direct political action. In addition, he had to repeat his final examination in history, which he passed with “very good” in 1949, because - according to Walter Markov in a letter to the faculty dean - the previously submitted work would not guarantee that Scheithauer would “in the class at the upper level of the unit school Matters of the materialistic worldview and the history of Eastern Europe "would be sufficiently represented".

Scientific work in Leipzig

Despite his oppositional stance, Scheithauer was still able to work scientifically in Leipzig in the early 1950s. This was favored by the still incumbent non-socialist professor at the Philosophical Faculty there, so in June 1951 he became assistant to Hermann August Korff , the author of the four-volume work Geist der Goethezeit . Before that, he had already begun with Ludwig Erich Schmitt to write a dissertation on the criticism of sound analytical theories in rhythm research in linguistics and musicology, with which he received his doctorate in April 1952. After Korff's retirement in 1954 with Hans Mayer , he worked as a theater critic for the LDPD newspaper Sächsisches Tageblatt . In addition, the Reclam publishing house asked him to revise the Faust commentary by Theodor Friedrich , which he was to oversee for several decades. The end of his time in Leipzig was announced at the beginning of 1958, when he - like all “middle-class” assistants in the humanities subjects - only received a fixed-term contract. The State Security had previously noted about him:

"Dr. Scheithauer has a particularly strong effect on many middle-class students who are Dr. Scheithauer thought they were their role model. SED comrades in the German Studies group are required to take Scheithauer's nimbus as the head of the opposition and expose him professionally. "

Work in Göttingen

After a scientific future for Scheithauer in the GDR was no longer conceivable, he went to Göttingen for the winter semester of 1958/59 and was assistant to Wolfgang Kayser at the Georg August University there , Korff had already recommended him to him in September 1951 If he wants to or has to leave Leipzig and the GDR. Here he completed the reworking of the Faust commentary for Reclam, which had begun in Leipzig and which first appeared in the Universal Library in 1959 . After Kayser died in January 1960, Scheithauer gave up another academic career and, after completing the mandatory legal clerkship, became a teacher at the Max-Planck-Gymnasium in Göttingen, where he met his friend from Leipzig student council meetings, Wolfgang Natonek, who also taught there . From 1971 until his retirement in 1988, Scheithauer was Deputy Director of Studies at the Max-Planck-Gymnasium, from 1977 to 1978 and 1983 he took over the post of headmaster on an interim basis. In addition to his teaching activities, Scheithauer was involved in the Association of Liberal Academics , at whose Whitsun Convention he also regularly participated as a speaker.

Fonts

• Rhythm and folk song. A contribution to the methodological problem of rhythm analysis. Leipzig 1952 (typewriter; Leipzig, University, dissertation of April 18, 1952).
• Commentary on Goethe's Faust. With a Faust dictionary and a Faust bibliography (= Universal Library 7177–7180 / 1780a). (in succession to Theodor Friedrich ). Reclam, Stuttgart 1959 (reprint. 1999, ISBN 3-15-007177-1 ).

literature

• Holger Helbig: The years in Leipzig. Conversation with Lothar Scheithauer. In: Johnson Yearbook. Vol. 4, 1997, ISSN  0945-9227 , pp. 17-38.
• Günter Kröber : Obituary for a liberal educator personality. In: Association of Liberal Academics. Newsletter. Issue 3, 2008, ZDB -ID 2475054-2 , p. 2f.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ quoted from Helbig: The years in Leipzig. 1997, p. 23.
2. ^ At Kröber: Obituary for a liberal educator personality. In 2008, it is said that Scheithauer became an assistant at Korff in 1950, Scheithauer himself dates in Helbig: The years in Leipzig. 1997, p. 19, but he started working for Korff in June 1951.
3. ↑ From Scheithauer's Stasi files, quoted from Kröber: Obituary for a liberal educator personality. 2008.
4. ^ Helbig: The years in Leipzig. 1997, p. 24.
5. ↑ The history of the Max Planck Gymnasium (PDF; 108 kB), accessed on December 24, 2012.