Paul Hoffmann (Germanist)

Paul Hoffmann (born April 5, 1917 in Willendorf in the Wachau , Austria-Hungary ; † May 2, 1999 in Tübingen ) was Full Professor of German Philology at the University of Tübingen .

Live and act

From 1935 to 1939 Paul Hoffmann studied German, history and philosophy in Vienna before going into exile in New Zealand. In 1958 he received his doctorate in Vienna, then in 1959 he went to the Victoria University of Wellington . In 1970 he was appointed to the University of Tübingen , where he continued to work until his retirement in 1985 and thereafter.

The final sentence of Paul Hoffmann's last major publication in 1997 was called "After years of being alone with poetry, I was lucky enough to read together" and reads like his innermost confession. The “poet of reading”, as the bibliophile anthology published on the occasion of his 80th birthday called him, was above all a poet of reading together because he had to forego community for so long: the long years of his exile in New Zealand shaped him. Brutally torn out of his studies and out of his world in Vienna by the Nazis, he first had a hard, depressing fate as a farmer 'down under', until the encounter with the Jewish exile author Karl Wolfskehl led to a turning point in his life: it almost seems it is as if he had only discovered his real topics, his real cultural home at this point in time.

Web links

Commons : Paul Hoffmann (philologist)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Paul Hoffmann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Lexicon entry in: Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand (2014)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jürgen Wertheimer : Paul Hoffmann died: Obituary for the Tübingen Germanist . ( Memento of December 24, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Edited by Michael Seifert, Press Office of the University of Tübingen.