Oluf Krückmann

Oluf Krückmann (born November 30, 1904 in Leipzig , † April 6, 1984 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German orientalist . His academic work encompassed the languages ​​and cultures of the Middle East from ancient times to the Islamic period.

Life

Oluf Krückmann, the son of the ophthalmologist Emil Krückmann (1865-1944), grew up in Leipzig, Königsberg and Berlin, where he attended the Friedrichswerder high school. From 1923 to 1931 he studied Classical Philology , Indo-European and Oriental Philology at the universities of Berlin , Innsbruck , Freiburg and Halle (Saale) . His main focuses in his studies were ancient Egyptian , Arabic and the languages ​​of the Middle East. 1931 Krückmann was the Assyriologists Bruno Meissner Dr. phil. PhD .

In 1931 Krückmann was appointed curator of the Hilprecht collection in Jena. With the materials there, he expanded his dissertation, a collection of Babylonian legal and administrative texts , and completed his habilitation on February 25, 1933 at the University of Jena in Assyriology . In 1934 Krückmann took leave of his curatorial position and went to Iraq, where he took part as a philological expert in the excavations of the German Orient Society in Uruk . After just one year, Krückmann left the excavation team for political and ideological reasons. He stayed in Baghdad for a few years , first as a teacher and then as director of the Archaeological Museum .

In 1938 Krückmann returned to Jena and expanded his venia legendi to include Arabic studies . In 1940 he was appointed adjunct professor. Due to the events of the war, he was unable to take up a position in Baghdad that was offered to him shortly afterwards. During the Second World War , Krückmann served as an interpreter in Iraq from 1941. In 1944 he became a British prisoner of war, from which he was released in 1947 at the instigation of the University of Freiburg. He then was a lecturer at the University of Munich . In 1949 he was appointed professor of oriental studies at the University of Freiburg. In 1954 he turned down an offer at the University of Vienna , and in 1962 also an offer at the University of Graz . In the same year he traveled to Baghdad and Cairo as a visiting professor. In 1964 he was appointed full professor and retired in 1973 .

The University of Freiburg had tried since 1946 to win Krückmann for the chair of Oriental Studies, which had been orphaned since 1926. The hiring failed at first due to the tight budget of the university and then took place in the winter semester of 1949/50. Krückmann made great contributions to the rebuilding of Oriental Studies in Freiburg and taught for almost 30 semesters continuously. Krückmann supervised numerous students (including Karl Hecker and Horst Steible ), but did not have his own research work, especially since his work from Baghdad had been lost. In his private life his later years were overshadowed by the long illness and finally the death of his wife (1968); Krückmann himself suffered from a serious illness from the 1970s.

Fonts (selection)

• Babylonian legal and administrative documents from the time of Alexander and the Diadochi . Weimar 1931 (dissertation)
• Neo-Babylonian legal and administrative texts . Leipzig 1933

literature

• Andrea Becker: Oluf Krückmann . In: Communications of the German Orient Society . Volume 116 (1984), pp. 13f.
• Horst Steible : In memoriam. Oluf Krückmann in memory . In: Freiburg University Gazette . Vol. 87-88 (1985), pp. 5-7 (with picture) online
• Ludmilla Hanisch : The successors of the exegetes. German-language exploration of the Middle East in the first half of the 20th century . Wiesbaden 2003, p. 195