Ludwig Marcuse

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Memorial plaque for the German and Austrian refugees in Sanary-sur-Mer , among them Ludwig Marcuse

Ludwig Marcuse (born February 8, 1894 in Berlin , † August 2, 1971 in Bad Wiessee ) was a German philosopher and writer . From 1944 he was an American citizen .

Life

Coming from the upper Jewish bourgeoisie, Marcuse began studying philosophy in his hometown after finishing school in 1913 . He later moved to Freiburg im Breisgau to continue his studies there in the field of literature . In 1917 he received his doctorate in Berlin under Ernst Troeltsch with a thesis on Friedrich Nietzsche .

Nietzsche remained a guiding star for him throughout his life, one that he knew how to defend against the diverse fashionable appropriations, even during his time in the USA: “Nietzsche is the greatest unlucky person in the history of philosophy. It was not only translated into their German by illiterate people, but also into their reality. "

After a short assistantship at Troeltsch, Marcuse worked as a freelance writer and theater critic in Berlin, Königsberg and Frankfurt am Main . After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, he was forced to leave Germany because of his Jewish origins. Until 1939 he lived - like many other German intellectuals - in Sanary-sur-Mer . In the same year, after a six-month stay in the Soviet Union, he managed to escape to the USA. There he took on a professorship at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles , where he taught German literature and philosophy. He also wrote under the pseudonym Heinz Raabe .

After the National Socialists expelled him from Germany in 1937 (his works were banned in Germany from 1933 to 1945), he received American citizenship in 1944. His younger sister Edith was abducted from Berlin-Charlottenburg in January 1942, she died (Marcuse literally: "perished") on May 8, 1945 at the age of 48. In papers from the estate that came to Marcuse, she described the everyday situation of Jews who lived in Berlin in 1941. Edith had lived with her mother in a small guesthouse in Berlin-Charlottenburg until a porter denounced her. The mother died of heart failure in 1942 at the age of 78.

Grave of Ludwig Marcuse and his wife Erna, called Sascha, in Bad Wiessee

After the end of the Second World War , Marcuse stayed temporarily in Germany, only to settle permanently in Bad Wiessee in the early 1960s. He died there in 1971. From 1957 he was a member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry .

The "great, ungrateful enlightenment of the Germans" ( Hans Heinz Hahnl ) wrote not only his books but also numerous theater critiques, reviews and commentaries on current affairs. The latter, for example, for a radio broadcast on Bavarian Radio in the early 1960s.

In his literary work he was mainly based on the writers of the 19th century and the expressionists of the 20th century. This resulted in his publications on Ludwig Börne , Heinrich Heine , August Strindberg and Georg Büchner , for example . He also published two autobiographies . His individualistic philosophy has been examined in the book by Karl-Heinz Hense Glück und Skeptis - Ludwig Marcuse's Philosophy of Humanism .

Works

  • Individuality as a value and Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy . Inaugural dissertation to obtain a doctorate approved by the Philosophical Faculty of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin. Promotion day: May 4, 1917. Speakers: Ernst Troeltsch and Alois Riehl . Self-published, Berlin 1917
  • Strindberg. The life of the tragic soul . Franz Schneider, Berlin / Leipzig 1920
    • New edition by Diogenes, Zurich 1989
  • Gerhart Hauptmann and his work (as editor). Franz Schneider, Berlin / Leipzig 1922
  • The world of tragedy. With 12 portraits: Shakespeare , Schiller , Kleist , Büchner, Grabbe , Hebbel , Ibsen , Hauptmann, Schnitzler , Wedekind , Shaw and Kaiser , Franz Schneider, Berlin / Leipzig 1923
    • Reprint there in 1977 and as a Fischer-Taschenbuch (FiBü 6499), Frankfurt am Main 1985
  • Contemporary world literature: Germany (as editor). 2 volumes, Franz Schneider, Berlin / Leipzig 1924
  • Contemporary literary history (as co-editor). 2 volumes, Franz Schneider, Berlin / Leipzig 1925
  • Revolutionary and patriot. The life of Ludwig Börne . Paul List, Leipzig 1929
    • New edition as: Ludwig Börne. From the early days of German democracy . Peter, Rothenburg ob der Tauber 1968
  • Heinrich Heine. A life between yesterday and tomorrow . Ernst Rowohlt, Berlin 1932
  • Ignatius of Loyola . Querido, Amsterdam 1935
    • New editions by Rowohlt (rororo 185), Hamburg 1956 and Diogenes (detebe 20078), Zurich 1973
  • The philosophy of happiness. From Job to Freud . Europe, Vienna / Zurich 1949
  • The philosopher and the dictator. Plato and Dionys (English original edition: New York 1947). Lothar Blanvalet, Berlin 1950
  • Pessimism. A stage of maturity . Rowohlt, Hamburg 1953
    • New edition as: Unforgotten Illusions : Szczesny, Munich 1965
      • New edition as: Philosophy of Unhappiness : Diogenes, Zurich 1981
  • Sigmund Freud. His image of people . Rowohlt (rde 14), Hamburg 1956
  • American philosophizing. Pragmatists, polytheists, tragedians . Rowohlt (rde 86), Hamburg 1959
  • Heinrich Heine in personal testimonies and photo documents . Rowohlt (rm 41), Reinbek near Hamburg 1960
  • My twentieth century. On the way to an autobiography . Paul List, Munich 1960
  • Obscene. Story of indignation . Paul List, Munich 1962
  • The memorable life of Richard Wagner . Szczesny, Munich 1963
  • From the papers of an elderly philosophy student . Paul List, Munich 1964
    • New edition as: My History of Philosophy . Diogenes, Zurich 1981
  • Arguments and recipes. A word book for contemporaries . Szczesny, Munich 1967
    • New edition as: Thinking with Ludwig Marcuse . Diogenes, Zurich 1984
  • Was i a nazi Politics - Contestation of Conscience . With contributions by Joachim Günther , Hans Egon Holthusen , Hans Hellmut Kirst , Rudolf Krämer-Badoni , Alexander Lernet-Holenia , Jens Rehn , Heinz Winfried Sabais , Hermann Stahl , Wolfgang Weyrauch . And with instructions for the reader by Ludwig Marcuse (as editor). Rütten + Loening, Munich 1968
  • Obituary for Ludwig Marcuse . Paul List, Munich 1969

Posthumously published:

  • Letters from and to Ludwig Marcuse . Diogenes, Zurich 1975
  • A panorama of the European spirit. Texts from three millennia (as editor). 3 volumes, Diogenes, Zurich 1975
  • Essays, portraits, polemics . The best essays from four decades, edited by Harold von Hofe. Diogenes, Zurich 1979
  • The fairy tale of security . Diogenes, Zurich 1981
  • How old can updates be? Literary portraits and reviews . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 978-3-257-01825-7

literature

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