Melitta Gerhard

Melitta Gerhard (born November 22, 1891 in Berlin , † November 10, 1981 in Cambridge, Massachusetts ) was an American literary historian of German origin. She was the first woman to receive the Venia Legendi for German literary history .

Life

Melitta Gerhard, daughter of the Berlin judiciary and notary Stephan Gerhard (1857-1936) and the writer Adele Gerhard née de Jonge (1868-1956), studied at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin (today Humboldt University ), where she in 1919 received his doctorate . In Berlin she had contact with Friedrich Gundolf , who made her aware of the then relatively unknown Stefan George . Gerhard later wrote a book about George.

A habilitation project by Gerhard was rejected by the University of Heidelberg , but made possible at the University of Kiel (title of the habilitation thesis: The German Development Novel to Goethe's ' Wilhelm Meister ' ). In 1927 she became the first woman in Germany to be a private lecturer in German literary history and taught at Kiel University from 1927 to 1933.

In April 1933 Gerhard was suspended as a Jew (within the meaning of the law to restore the civil service ). Although she wrote to the Reich Ministry in June 1933 that she had never sympathized with Marxist or "Jewish" views and that she had " fought the pacifist war literature with the greatest passion", her license to teach was revoked on September 9, 1933 .

Gerhard then emigrated to the USA . There she initially taught as a visiting professor at Wellesley College , Massachusetts . After her final move to the USA in 1937 (together with her mother and her brother Dietrich ) she earned her living by teaching German to soldiers in St. Louis . From 1938 to 1942 she taught at Rockford College in Illinois , then for two years at the University of Missouri , Columbia . From 1946 until her retirement , Gerhard was a professor at Wittenberg College in Springfield , Ohio .

In 1965 she was awarded an honorary doctorate as part of the 300th anniversary of the University of Kiel .

Works (selection)

• The significance of Greek tragedy for Schiller's dramas , Weimar: Duncker, 1919.
• The German development novel up to Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister" , Halle / Saale: M. Niemeyer, 1926.
• Schiller , Bern: Francke, 1950.
• Stefan George , Bern: Francke, 1962.
• The work of Adele Gerhard as an expression of a turning point , Bern [u. a.] 1963.
• Life in Law , Bern: Francke, 1966.
• On the way to a new worldview , Bern, Munich: Francke, 1976.

Web links

• Literature by and about Melitta Gerhard in the catalog of the German National Library
• Biographical note on the page about expelled scientists from the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Data on the person and the family in the Euregio family book