Max Wundt

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Max Wundt (born January 29, 1879 in Leipzig , † October 31, 1963 in Tübingen ) was an anti-Semitic and National Socialist German philosopher .

Life

Max Wundt, the son of Wilhelm Wundt , attended the Nicolaischule in Leipzig. After graduating from high school, he studied German and classical philology and philosophy in Leipzig, Freiburg, Berlin and Munich. After receiving his doctorate in 1903 with a historical thesis on Herodotus with Justus Hermann Lipsius in Leipzig, Wundt traveled to Italy and Greece for a year. In 1906 he became a trial candidate at the grammar school in Dresden-Neustadt. After his habilitation in 1907 with Theobald Ziegler and Clemens Baeumker on the subject of "Intellectualism in Greek Ethics", he worked as a private lecturer in Strasbourg . There he married Senta (1885–1961), the daughter of the economist Baron August Sartorius von Waltershausen .

Wundt was called up for military service in August 1914 and was deployed in the field in January 1915. In May 1915 he was promoted to lieutenant in the reserve and used as a company commander. Against Natorp's resistance , Wundt became an associate professor in Marburg in the summer semester of 1918 because of the intercession of Erich Jaensch . In autumn 1918 he worked for a few months at the reopened Dorpat University . In 1920, at the instigation of Bruno Bauch, he accepted an appointment as a full professor in Jena as the successor to Rudolf Euckens . In 1924 he was admitted to the group of editors of the journal of the Pan-German Association "Deutschlands Erneuerung", to which u. a. Georg von Below , Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Heinrich Claß already belonged. From 1929 until his retirement in 1945, Wundt worked as a philosophy historian at the University of Tübingen . Since 1942 he was a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences .

Philosophy and worldview

Up until the First World War, Wundt dealt primarily with the history of Greek philosophy . He was less concerned with philological research than with interpretation in relation to the present. In pre-Socratic thinking , the figure of the sage is in the foreground. In contrast, philosophy emancipates itself in the classical period. Through individualization, Hellenism then relapses into the mystical beginnings. Greek philosophy must always be related to its Christian telos . He defines Platonism as the “rebirth of culture from the spirit of the subject.” Plato's idealism serves people in times of crisis to orient themselves towards higher goals.

In Marburg, Wundt read, among other things, about the “Philosophy of War”. In a speech given in 1918 on the “German state concept”, he described “orders and obedience” as the basis of every moral relationship. In 1920 he still felt the general enthusiasm of the Germans when they entered the war in 1914 as a moment “when a holy feeling melted the German people in all their members and classes, and an awareness of inner unity and the true worth of oneself came through in glowing enthusiasm . "

Max Wundt was one of those who rejected the Weimar Republic from the outset: “This state is un-German from the roots to the top.” He came out early on with national and anti-Semitic thoughts. Accordingly, Wundt was also a member of the anti-Semitic “German University Association for Lecturers”. The concern with the political changes is also evident in Wundt's writings after the World War, which now deal almost exclusively with the political situation of the present from the völkisch perspective. In ethics he pursued the project of a “German ethics” based on the values ​​of loyalty and honor . In addition to a number of books, Wundt wrote regularly in relevant magazines, such as Germany's Renewal , Kreuzzeitung , the radical folk sun , in the Türmer , in the German Adelsblatt . In addition, as early as 1917/18, Wundt was a co-founder of the conservative “ German Philosophical Society ”, which was aimed at counterbalancing the “Kant Society ”. In 1920 he was a co-founder of the " Gesellschaft Deutscher Staat ", an extremely conservative association of university lecturers closely related to the DNVP , of which he was chairman in 1924. In 1925 he joined the board of the “ Pan-German Association ” and in 1927 he was co-editor of the “Nationalwirtschaft” magazine, which was oriented towards the corporate state. After Wundt's speech at the general meeting of the Goethe Society in 1927, the Berlin journalist Fritz Engel commented that his writings on the philosophy of the state bear a small swastika, not on their skirt, but on their vest ; Wundt had been careful in his speech , the swastika still disappeared under the vest. From 1932 he supported Rosenberg's " Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur ". In Tübingen, Wundt ran the “Research Department of the Jewish Question of the Reich Institute for the History of New Germany ” together with Gerhard Kittel ; At a meeting of the Reich Institute he gave a lecture on "Judaism in Philosophy". George Leaman and Gerd Simon classify this article, published in 1937 as Das Judentum in der Philosophie and in 1939 as an article in Völkischer Beobachter , as the “most blatant” racism .

After the Second World War, Wundt dealt again with the philosophy of antiquity, the Enlightenment and German idealism .

In the Soviet zone of occupation , Wundt's writings, What does völkisch mean? German worldview. Basics of the völkisch thought , Volk, Volkstum, Volkheit , Rise and Fall of the Peoples and The Roots of German Philosophy in Tribe and Race put on the list of literature to be sorted out. In the German Democratic Republic , this list was followed by his books The Eternal Jew. and honor as the source of moral life in people and state .

Fonts (selection)

  • Intellectualism in Greek philosophy. W. Engelmann, Leipzig 1907.
  • History of Greek Ethics. 2 volumes, W. Engelmann, Leipzig 1908/1911
  • Wilhelm Meister and the development of the modern ideal of life. Berlin-Leipzig 1913.
  • Plato's life and work. Jena 1914.
  • Greek worldview. 2nd Edition. Leipzig-Berlin 1917.
  • Plotinus. Studies on the history of Neoplatonism. Leipzig 1919.
  • German philosophy and its fate. Erfurt 1920 (published by the German Philosophical Society: Contributions to the Philosophy of Idealism)
  • From the spirit of our time. 2nd Edition. Munich 1922.
  • State philosophy. A book for Germans. Munich 1923.
  • Kant as a metaphysician. A contribution to the history of German philosophy in the 18th century . Stuttgart 1924.
  • Loyalty as the core of the German worldview. Langensalza 1924 (3rd edition. 1937)
  • What does völkisch mean? Langensalza 1924 (3rd edition. 1925, 4th edition. 1927 as Volk, Volkstum, Volkheit )
  • The future of the German state. 2nd Edition. Langensalza 1925.
  • The Eternal Jew. JF Lehmann, Munich 1926.
  • German worldview. Basic features of nationalist thought. Munich 1926.
  • German worldview. A reply. In: Völkischer Beobachter. Feb. 18, 1927.
  • Johann Gottlieb Fichte. His life and his teaching. Frommann, Stuttgart / Berlin 1927 (reprint from Frommann-Holzboog Stuttgart 1976)
  • Spruce research. Frommann, Stuttgart 1929 (reprint from Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart 1976)
  • From Plato to Aristotle. Comments on the development of the Greek idea of ​​the state . In Karl Larenz (ed.): Legal idea and state thought . Festschrift Julius Binder . Berlin 1930, pp. 188-206.
  • History of metaphysics. Berlin 1931.
  • To Hegel's memory. In: Völkischer Beobachter. Reichsausgabe, Nov. 14, 1931, 1st supplement.
  • The meaning of the university in German idealism. Stuttgart 1933.
  • The idea of ​​nationality in the history of philosophy. In: Wholeness and Structure. Festschrift for Felix Krueger's 60th birthday . Volume III: Spiritual Structures . Munich 1934, pp. 9-27.
  • Plato as a national thinker. In: From teaching and research. Volume 6, 1934, pp. 124-128.
  • Plato's Parmenides. Stuttgart-Berlin 1935.
  • Kant and the German spirit. In: Archive for the whole of psychology. Volume 97, 1936, pp. 106-116.
  • Judaism in philosophy. In: FzJ. Volume 2, pp. 75-87.
  • Eternity and finitude. Fundamentals of Essence. Stuttgart 1937.
  • Honor as a source of moral life in people and state. Langensalza 1937.
  • German school metaphysics of the 17th century. Tübingen 1939.
  • The objectivity of science. Science and wisdom. Two essays on science. Tubingen 1940.
  • The rise and fall of peoples. Thoughts on world history on a racial basis. Munich-Berlin 1940.
  • Christian Wolff and the German Enlightenment. In: Theodor Haering (Ed.): The German in German Philosophy . Stuttgart-Berlin 1941, pp. 227-247.
  • The roots of German philosophy in tribe and race. Berlin 1944.
  • The German school philosophy in the Age of Enlightenment. Tübingen 1945 (reprinted by G. Olms, Hildesheim 1964, 1992)
  • Hegel's logic and modern physics. Opladen 1949.
  • Investigations into the metaphysics of Aristotle. Stuttgart 1953.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ For the biographical information see; Christian Tilitzki : The German university philosophy in the Weimar Republic and in the Third Reich. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2002, in particular pp. 123–129 and pp. 282–284.
  2. ^ Max Wundt: De Herodoti elucutione cum sophistarum comparata. Diss. Leipzig 1903.
  3. ^ Ulrich Sieg: Rise and Fall of Marburg Neo-Kantianism. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1994, pp. 380-381.
  4. ^ Title page of the 8th volume of the magazine "Deutsche Erneuerung" from 1924; Basic information about the journal: http://d-nb.info/01216867X
  5. ^ Ulrich Sieg: Rise and Fall of Marburg Neo-Kantianism. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1994, pp. 380-381.
  6. ^ Max Wundt: German State Conception. In: Germany's renewal. (2) 1918, pp. 199–202, printed in: Klaus Böhme (Hrsg.): Appeals and speeches of German professors in the First World War. Stuttgart 1975, pp. 152-157, p. 154.
  7. ↑ Max Wundt: From the spirit of our time. Munich 1920, p. 50; quoted from Ulrich Sieg: The rise and fall of Marburg Neo-Kantianism. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1994, p. 386.
  8. ↑ Max Wundt: From the spirit of our time. Munich 1920, p. 130.
  9. ^ Max Wundt: State Philosophy for Germans. Munich 1923 and Max Wundt: The Eternal Jew. Munich 1926.
  10. ^ Kurt Sontheimer : Anti-democratic thinking in the Weimar Republic. The ideas of German National Socialism between 1918 and 1933. Munich 1962, p. 273.
  11. ↑ List of these activities in: Christian Tilitzki: The German university philosophy in the Weimar Republic and in the Third Reich. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2002, p. 126 FN 320.
  12. ^ A b W. Daniel Wilson: The Faustian Pact. Goethe and the Goethe Society in the Third Reich. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-423-28166-9 , pp. 17, 143 .
  13. ^ Report of the working group "University of Tübingen under National Socialism": Jews at the University of Tübingen under National Socialism. ( Memento of September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) January 19, 2006.
  14. ↑ George Leaman: Heidegger in context. Complete overview of the Nazi involvement of university philosophers. Hamburg-Berlin 1993, p. 88.
  15. ↑ George Leaman, Gerd Simon: The Kant studies in the Third Reich. In: Kant studies. 85, 1994, pp. 443-469, (p. 34 FN 106 of the pdf version; 254 kB).
  16. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet occupation zone, list of literature to be sorted out. 1946, pp. 433-462.
  17. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet occupation zone, list of literature to be sorted out. 1948, pp. 307-328.
  18. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet occupation zone, list of literature to be sorted out. 1953, pp. 205-217.
personal data
SURNAME Wundt, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH January 29, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH October 31, 1963
Place of death Tübingen