Paul Böckmann

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Paul Böckmann (born November 4, 1899 in Hamburg , † April 22, 1987 in Cologne ) was a German German philologist and founder of the history of literary forms with his work History of Forms of German Poetry (1949).

Life

Paul Böckmann was drafted as a soldier in the First World War in 1917 and returned wounded in 1918. In 1919 he began studying German literature at the newly founded University of Hamburg , working with Robert Petsch and Ernst Cassirer , whose lectures on the philosophy of symbolic forms (published in three volumes 1923–1929) laid the foundation for Böckmann's later conception of the history of form. In 1923 Böckmann received his doctorate with a doctoral thesis on Schiller's mental attitude as a condition of his dramatic work (published in 1925).

On November 11, 1933, Böckmann was one of the signatories of the professors' commitment to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist state at German universities . After he joined the NSDAP in 1937 , he was ao in 1938. Professor at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg . In 1949 he was actually given the chair there (he was initially associate professor "with the title of office and the rights of an o. Professor" and was appointed professor for modern German literary history in 1953), but in 1958 he moved to the University of Cologne , where he was professor has been. Since 1944 he was a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences .

The first reappraisal of the role of German studies during National Socialism in the second half of the 1960s had no consequences for Böckmann, who had been in office and dignity throughout the Nazi era and had made appropriate concessions. In 1998, however, the Aachen linguist Ludwig Jäger raised allegations against him for helping the former SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Schwerte, alias Schneider, in 1964/65 to an Aachen chair in German. Jäger's argument was strongly questioned, if not disproved , by Klaus Weimar and Claus Leggewie . The method of form history founded by Böckmann, however, had already suffered a loss of prestige or had begun to dissolve into the modern methods of conceptual history and cultural anthropology .

Böckmann is considered one of the "kingmakers" of post-war German studies. Several influential professors ( Walter Müller-Seidel , Wolfgang Preisendanz , Hans-Henrik Krummacher ) have emerged from his school.

plant

In 1933 the first programmatic contribution to the history of form appeared with the essay Das Formprinzip des Witzes in the early days of the German Enlightenment , which was also included in the first volume of the form history of German poetry , published in 1948 . This first volume under the title “From Symbolic Language to Expression Language. The change in literary formal language from the Middle Ages to the modern age ”dealt with German literature up to the epoch of Sturm und Drang, including Schiller's youthful dramas. A second volume entitled “The Development of Expression Language” for the 19th and 20th centuries was planned, but never appeared, although with the book Hölderlin und seine Götter (1935) and his essays on Nietzsche (1953) and on modern poetry ( 1953) extensive preparatory work was already available. In particular, the work Formenssprache (1966) and the posthumously published collection of essays Poetical Paths of Subjectivation are viewed today as an unofficial substitute for the never-published continuation of the monumental work History of Forms .

Fonts

  • Schiller's mindset as a condition of his dramatic work. 1925.
  • The formal principle of the joke in the early days of the German Enlightenment. In: Yearbook of the free German Hochstift. 1932/33, pp. 52-130.
  • Form history of German poetry. Vol. 1: From symbolic language to expressive language. The change in literary formal language from the Middle Ages to the modern age. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 1949.
  • Holderlin and his gods. Munich 1935.
  • The importance of Nietzsche for the situation of modern literature. 1953.
  • The sagas of modern poetry. 1953.
  • Design language. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 1966; New edition: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1973.
  • Poetic ways of subjectification. Studies on German literature in the 19th and 20th centuries. Edited by the German Schiller Society, Niemeyer, Tübingen 1999.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 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. 58.
  2. ↑ Jörg Riecke: A History of German Studies and German Research in Heidelberg. Universitätsverlag Winter , Heidelberg 2016, p. 96.
  3. ^ Members of the HAdW since it was founded in 1909. Paul Böckmann. Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, accessed on July 18, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Böckmann, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Germanist
DATE OF BIRTH November 4, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH April 22, 1987
Place of death Cologne