Ludwig Wolff (Germanist)

Ludwig Wolff (born February 1, 1892 in Nieder-Wildungen , † June 30, 1975 in Gießen ) was a German specialist in German and professor at the University of Göttingen and the University of Marburg .

Wolff was the son of a judiciary and received private tuition because of polio. After graduating from high school in Göttingen in 1912, he studied German and English in Göttingen and Munich. In 1919 he did his doctorate under Edward Schröder on "Three-way resonance in Germanic languages". In 1922 he completed his habilitation on Gottfried von Strasbourg . Wolff remained a private lecturer until 1929, when he received a non-civil servant ao. Professorship. In 1931/32 he went to the Herder Institute in Riga for a year . In November 1933 he signed the professors' declaration of Adolf Hitler at German universities and colleges . In the winter of 1936/37 he represented Karl Helmin Marburg and subsequently received the chair. His focus was on Old High German and Middle High German literature, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Otfried von Weißenburg , as well as Low German .

Wolff had been a member of the Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten , since 1925, although he was not served, through which he was admitted to the SA in 1933 until his honorable discharge in 1934 . He was close to the DNVP . He belonged to the Gesellschaft Deutscher Staat and took part in lecturer camps that were required for a professorship. In 1939 he joined the Reich Colonial Association , but not the NSDAP . In judgments he was considered to be nationally reliable, but not particularly politically committed. The old Germanism should give values ​​for orientation in the present. In 1951 he still held this view. In 1955 he became an honorary member of the Society for Low German Research in Lund .

literature

• Holger Wagemann: The Marburg German Philology of the Middle Ages. In: Kai Köhler et al. (Ed.): German and art studies in the “Third Reich”. Marburg developments. 1920-1950 (= Academia Marburgensis. Vol. 10). Saur, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-598-24572-6 , pp. 233-250.

Web links

• Literature by and about Ludwig Wolff in the catalog of the German National Library
• Publications by Ludwig Wolff in the OPAC of the Regesta imperii