Otto Höfler

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Otto Eduard Gotfried Ernst Höfler , (born May 10, 1901 in Vienna ; † August 25, 1987 there ) was an Austrian German and Scandinavian Medievalist .

Youth and education

Otto Höfler came from a middle-class family with a right-wing conservative Catholic background. His father Alois was a professor of philosophy and education at the University of Vienna , his mother, Auguste Dornhöfer, came from Bayreuth . His older brother Karl Höfler (1893–1973) was a botanist and plant physiologist and professor in Vienna, his younger brother Wolfgang (1905–1984) a chemist.

Höfler began studying German and Scandinavian Studies in Vienna in 1921. There he was a student of Rudolf Much . In 1921 he became a member of the völkisch -minded, anti-Semitic Vienna Academic Association of Germanists and in 1922 a member of the "Ordnertruppe OT", a forerunner of the SA . Höfler's studies were broad and international. There were study stays at the University of Lund , in Basel with Andreas Heusler and Kiel .

After receiving his doctorate with a thesis on "Old Norse loanword studies" in 1926, he worked from 1928 to the winter semester 1933/1934 as a lecturer for German at Uppsala University . He did not give up his connection to Rudolf Much and Vienna, where he completed his habilitation in 1931 with a thesis on “Cultic Secret Societies of the Teutons”.

Work in the time of National Socialism

This habilitation thesis was published in 1934 and contained an open commitment to National Socialism . After Nazi at Kiel University students and professors, the - "growing soft" in the judgment of his predecessor against the Nazis - Rector Otto Scheel and led by the Nazis Bernhard Rust standing Prussian Ministry of Culture two professors and a professor of German studies with the help of " career civil servants law " who had driven out of their chairs were appointed as their successors loyal to the Nazis. In 1935 Höfler was appointed professor of Germanic antiquity and philology at the University of Kiel. In addition to Otto Höfler came Gerhard Fricke and later Clemens Lugowski . With this, the Germanists arrived in Kiel, who must be counted among the “propagandists and profiteers” of National Socialism.

The majority of the Germanists had a strong affinity for National Socialism at this time. They were representatives of a new German studies, "who looked for traces in linguistic and folklore remnants that testified to the" German spirit "or the" German essence ", the new guiding concepts of the time." Höfler's theory of the state-building power of so-called "Germanic male associations." ", Which Höfler himself referred to as" secret societies ", made him interesting for their institutions after the rise of the SS to an important power in Nazi Germany. Among other things, by converting the Wewelsburg into an SS castle, Himmler attempted to establish a connection between the Germanic era and National Socialist Germany. Like Jan de Vries , Höfler became a member of the SS Ahnenerbe . In addition, from 1936 Höfler was a member of the Advisory Board at the Reich Institute for the History of New Germany . After the ban on admission was relaxed , Höfler became a member of the NSDAP in 1937 . Under pressure from the SS leadership, Höfler was given a chair in German studies, German folklore and Nordic studies at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich in 1938 , where he was a professor until 1945. The Catholic Höfler was never a member of the SS, however, but used his position to keep competitors away from the academic field, such as the Germanist Bernhard Kummer , who was an active National Socialist, but who, in his opinion, advocated an unscientific image of the Germans and was close to the Rosenberg office . In addition, Höfler had a lifelong friendship with the Indo-Germanist Julius Pokorny (also a student of Much), who was of Jewish origin. During the Second World War , Höfler worked on the war mission of the humanities project . In the summer of 1943 Höfler took over the presidency of the German Scientific Institute in Copenhagen from Otto Scheel .

After 1945

Since Höfler was strongly committed to this during the Nazi era , he was initially banned from working after 1945 . However, he was classified as unencumbered in multiple denazification processes , and when his reappointment to the University of Munich was discussed, the national socialist interpreted folklore should expressly not be part of his teaching assignment. Therefore, in 1957, he accepted a call to the University of Vienna, where he held the chair for German language and older German literature until he retired in 1971 . He was also the managing director of the German Institute from 1957 to 1967. The Austrian Academy of Sciences appointed him first in 1956 as a corresponding member and in 1964 as a real member. The City of Vienna awarded Höfler the Gold Medal of Honor in 1979 .

Research and Teaching

Höfler dealt with the Germanic religious history and the so-called sacred kingship (royal salvation), he also wrote writings on historical phonology ( development theory ) and runic writing . All works are in the context of the theory of the "Germanic continuity", which aims to provide evidence of unadulterated Germanism in recent German folk customs .

In his interpretation of legends , which he used as the most important evidence of continuity, Höfler got into a technical dispute with his colleague Friedrich Ranke , which lasted until 1973 after his death (1950).

From his views, which were also thematized by National Socialist authors, u. a. Höfler later distanced himself partly due to public pressure on his “Theory of Germanic Male Associations”, but insisted on his basic theses in a 1973 publication on metamorphosis cults, e. B. about the origins of the sagas about the wild hunt , which he called a "core myth".

Academic students and researchers who were influenced by Höfler, are or were u. a .: Heinrich Beck (Scandinavian Studies Bonn), Helmut Birkhan (Old German Studies, Germanic Linguistics Vienna), Klaus Düwel (Old German and Scandinavian Studies Göttingen), Alfred Ebenbauer (Old German Studies Vienna), Thomas Finkenstaedt (English Studies Saarbrücken), Otto Gschwantler (Scandinavian Studies Vienna), Leopold Hellmuth (Old German Studies Vienna), Heinz Klingenberg (Scandinavian Studies Freiburg / Brsg.), Fritz Peter Knapp (Old German Studies Passau), Karl-Sigismund Kramer (Folklore Kiel), Peter Krämer (Old German Studies Vienna), Wolfgang Lange (Scandinavian Studies Göttingen), Edith Marold (Scandinavian Studies Kiel), Gunter Müller (Germanic onomology Münster / Westf.), Mohammed Rassem (cultural sociology Salzburg), Hermann Reichert (Old German Studies, Germanic onomastics Vienna), Kurt Schier (Scandinavian Studies in Munich), Richard Schrodt (Germanic Linguistics Vienna), Gerlinde Weiss (Old German Studies Salzburg), Peter Wiesinger (Old German Studies German Linguistics Vienna), Manfred Zips (Old German Studies Vienna).

Articles and works

  • Cultic secret societies of the Germanic peoples . Diesterweg, Frankfurt 1934 - only volume 1 published. (Habilitation thesis at the University of Vienna from 1931 with the title Totenheer - Kultbund - Fastnachtsspiel )
  • The Germanic continuity problem . After a lecture, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1937. (In the series of writings of the Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany .)
  • The political achievement of the Great Migration Period . Speech, Wachholtz Neumünster 1939. Series: Writings of the scientific academy of the NSD.-Dozentbundes of the Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel; 7 .
  • Friedrich Gundolf and Judaism in literary studies . In: Research on the Jewish question , Vol. 4, Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt 1940, pp. 115-133.
  • Germanic Sacred Kingship, 1952 - only volume 1 published
  • Balder's funeral and the Nordic rock carvings, Vienna 1952
  • For the discussion of the Rökstein, Num . d. phil.-hist. Class of the Austrian Academy of Sciences 1954, No. 4, pp. 62–99.
  • The Sacrifice in Semnonenhain and the Edda , published in Edda, Skalden, Saga. Festschrift for Felix Genzmer. Heidelberg 1952, pages 1-67.
  • Goethe's Homunculus, 1963
  • Cults of transformation, folk tales and myths, 1973
  • Theodoric the Great and his image in the saga, 1975
  • Siegfried, Arminius and the Nibelungenhort, 1978
  • Small fonts. Selected works on Germanic antiquity and the history of religion, on medieval literature, on Germanic linguistics and on cultural philosophy and morphology, ed. v. Helmut Birkhan, Hamburg 1992

literature

  • Birgit Aschmann: German Art in Language and Poetry. German studies at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel under National Socialism . In Christoph Cornelißen; Carsten Mish Hrsg .: Science at the limit. The University of Kiel under National Socialism. Klartext, Essen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8375-0240-4 , p. 204 ( communications from the Society for Kiel City History. Vol. 86).
  • Heinrich Beck: Otto Höfler . In: Heinrich Beck, Dieter Geuenich, Heiko Steuer (Eds.): Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde , Vol. 15, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2000, ISBN 3-11-016649-6 , pp. 30–34.
  • Helmut Birkhan (Ed.): "Otto Höfler - Smaller Writings" . Hamburg 1992, IX-XVI ( Google book search ).
  • Helmut Birkhan: Otto Höfler. Obituary. In: Almanach der Österr. Akad. D. Knowledge , 1988, vol. 138, pp. 385-406.
  • Esther Gajek : German studies and National Socialism. On the interweaving of science and politics using the example of Otto Höfler. In: Walter Schmitz, Clemens Vollnhals (Ed.): Völkische Movement - Conservative Revolution - National Socialism. Aspects of a politicized culture (= culture and anti-democratic politics in Germany; 1). Thelem, Dresden 2005, ISBN 3-935712-18-9 , pp. 325–355.
  • Frank-Rutger Hausmann : "Even in war, the muses are not silent": the German Scientific Institutes in World War II. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-35357-X , pp. 183-210.
  • Carmen cabineta: dialect customers and Germanic religious history. On the work of Otto Maußer and Otto Höfler , in: Folklore at the Munich University 1933 to 1945, Münchner Contributions zur Volkskunde 6, Munich 1986
  • Julia Zernack: Continuity as a Problem in the History of Science. Otto Höfler and the Munich Institute for Nordic Philology and Germanic Classical Studies. In: Continuity in Criticism. For the 50th anniversary of the Munich Nordic Institute. Historical and Current Perspectives in Scandinavian Studies , ed. v. Klaus Böldl u. Miriam Kauko. Rombach, Freiburg im Breisgau 2005. (= Rombach Sciences; Series Nordica; 8) ISBN 3-7930-9379-4
  • Harm-Peer Zimmermann : Men's Association and cult of the dead. Methodological and ideological basics of Otto Höfler's folklore and antiquity 1933–1945 . In: Kieler Blätter für Volkskunde 26 (1994), pp. 5–27.
  • Harm-Peer Zimmermann: From the sleep of reason. German Folklore at Kiel University 1933-1945 . In: Hans-Werner Prahl (Ed.): Uni-Formierung des Geistes. University of Kiel under National Socialism . Vol. 1, Kiel 1995, ISBN 3-89029-967-9 , pp. 171-274.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Frank-Rutger Hausmann: "Even in war the muses are not silent" , p. 184
  2. ^ Harm-Peer Zimmermann: From the sleep of reason. German Folklore at Kiel University 1933-1945 . In: Hans-Werner Prahl (Ed.): Uni-Formierung des Geistes. University of Kiel under National Socialism . Vol. 1, Kiel 1995, ISBN 3-89029-967-9 , p. 202.
  3. ↑ Birgit Aschmann: German Art in Language and Poetry. German studies at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel under National Socialism . In Christoph Cornelißen; Carsten Mish (Ed.): Science at the limit. The University of Kiel under National Socialism. Klartext, Essen 2009, p. 204
  4. ↑ Birgit Aschmann: German Art in Language and Poetry. The German ..... . In Christoph Cornelißen; Carsten Mish Hrsg .: Science at the limit. The University of Kiel under National Socialism. Essen 2009, p. 204
  5. ↑ Birgit Aschmann: German Art in Language and Poetry. The German ..... . In Christoph Cornelißen; Carsten Mish Hrsg .: Science at the limit. The University of Kiel under National Socialism. Essen 2009, p. 206.
  6. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 261.
personal data
SURNAME Höfler, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Höfler, Otto Eduard Gotfried Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian Germanist
DATE OF BIRTH May 10, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH August 25, 1987
Place of death Vienna