Momme Mommsen

Momme Mommsen (born January 29, 1907 in Markkleeberg ; † January 1, 2001 in Palo Alto ) was a German-American literary scholar and professor in Berlin.

Life

Momme Mommsen was initially a musician. As a conductor trained by Hermann Abendroth in Cologne, he became Kapellmeister in Dortmund, Trier, Ulm, Wuppertal and Berlin. His musical career was prevented by the Nazi seizure of power because he did not want to break away from Jewish friends and relatives and refused to join the NSDAP . He was temporarily active as a mushroom grower and as a lecturer, then he found a center of life in dealing with ancient and German poetry. After the end of the Second World War , he used his knowledge of the ancient languages to study classical philology at the Humboldt University in Berlin and to do his doctorate in 1950 with a dissertation on scene interpretations of Euripides' Hippolytos under Wolfgang Schadewaldt . Together with his wife Katharina Mommsen , whom he married in 1948, and who is also a literary scholar, he became a research assistant at the Institute for German Language and Literature of the German Academy of Sciences in the Soviet sector of Berlin in 1949 .

His name is primarily associated with a basic work of Goethe philology that he designed , the first volumes of which he edited together with his wife in 1958: The Origin of Goethe's Works in Documents . The Journal of English and German Philology described it as "a most important, indeed delightful publication of exact Goethe research ."

In 1962, Momme Mommsen completed his habilitation with the two volumes of his documentation at the Free University and, together with his wife, who also did her habilitation there, taught in Berlin. In 1970 the Mommsen couple accepted offers at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada , and in 1974 they moved to California when Katharina Mommsen was appointed to Stanford University , where she taught until 1992.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall they founded the Mommsen Foundation for the Advancement of Goethe Research to continue the Goethe documentation.

In 1999, Katharina Mommsen published most of the individual studies of her husband published since 1950 in an anthology entitled Lebendige Tradition .

Works

• Scene interpretations of Euripides' Hippolytos . Berlin, dissertation from April 28, 1950.
• Studies on the west-east Divan / Momme Mommsen . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1962.
• The origin of Goethe's works in documents: Vol 1. 2 . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1962.
• Renata von Scheliha: 1901–1967; Memorial book . With contributions from Momme Mommsen and others. Castrum Peregrini Press, Amsterdam 1972.
• Living tradition: George, Hölderlin, Goethe / Momme Mommsen . Lang, Bern a. a. 1999, ISBN 3-906760-67-7 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Momme Mommsen in the catalog of the German National Library
• Homepage of the Mommsen Foundation (English)
• Characterization of "The Origin of Goethe's Works in Documents"