Max Henning

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Max Henning (born December 18, 1861 in Ruda, Posen , today in Ruda Śląska , † September 21, 1927 in Neuhaldensleben ) was a German self-taught Arabist and journalist .

He translated the Koran as well as numerous stories from the Arabian Nights and was editor of the magazine Das Freie Wort in Frankfurt am Main. From 1907 to 1919 he was managing director of the Weimar cartel .

Henning's translation of the Koran found wide distribution through its inclusion in Reclam's Universal Library . Until the middle of the 20th century, it was considered the most accurate German translation available. There was confusion about the authorship of the Koran translation, which has continued to this day. It was assumed that Max Henning was a pseudonym of the orientalist August Müller (1848–1892), who had published the translation of the Koran by Friedrich Rückert in 1888 . This circumstance and Müller's special knowledge gave rise to the suspicion that he himself translated the Koran under the pseudonym "Max Henning". Evidence of this is still missing today. Incidentally, Henning's translation of the Koran first appeared in 1901, nine years after Müller's death. Max Henning also published other works after Müller's death.

Works

  • Thousand and one Night. Translated from the Arabic by Max Henning. 17 parts and 7 supplements in eight volumes. Reclam, Leipzig 1895-97.
    • New edition: Tales from a thousand and one nights . Edited by Johann Christoph Bürgel and Marianne Chenou. Reclam, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-15-020195-4 .
  • The Koran. Translated from Arabic and given an introduction by Max Henning. Reclam, Leipzig 1901 ( archive.org ).
  • An academy of free thought. Collected essays, ed. on behalf of the Weimar cartel and provided with a foreword by Max Henning, Frankfurt am Main 1916.

Web links

Remarks

  1. Horst Groschopp: Dissidents: Freethinking and culture in Germany. Dietz, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-320-01936-8 .
  2. a b Ulrich Nanko: Neoliberal, socialist and völkisch freethinkers between 1848 and 1881. In: Richard Faber, Susanne Lanwerd (ed.): Atheism: Ideology, Philosophy or Mentality? Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2006, ISBN 3-8260-2895-3 , pp. 183–198, here: p. 185 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  3. See Ahmad von Denffer: History of the Translation of the Meanings of the Qur'an in Germany up to the Year 2000. A Bibliographic Survey. (PDF, 5.14 MB)
  4. Even in the foreword to the Reclam edition published by Annemarie Schimmel and last revised in 1991, the identity of Max Henning is described as "not fully clarified" (p. 5).