Reinhart Meyer (cultural historian)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reinhart Meyer (born November 15, 1942 in Berlin ) is a German cultural historian .

life and work

Meyer grew up in Hamburg and began studying at the University of Hamburg in 1963 . There he took philosophy , German studies , history and musicology , but subsequently concentrated on philosophy and German studies. He passed the state examination at the Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg im Breisgau , where he also studied Catholic and Protestant theology. In 1973 he received his doctorate from Hans-Joachim Mähl at the University of Regensburg in philosophy with a thesis on Gotthold Ephraim Lessing . His dissertation was published that same year. In 1982 the habilitation followed in Wuppertal. After teaching assignments in Bremen, Marburg, Regensburg and Thessaloniki, Meyer withdrew from the university and devoted himself to extensive research on the documentation of theater productions of the 18th century.

From 1976 onwards Meyer - himself a musician, actor and director - directed the Regensburg Student Theater for 35 years. The relevant materials have been in the archive of the University of Regensburg since July 2017.

Bibliographical Research

Over the course of forty years, Reinhart Meyer has scoured around 150 libraries for sources on the theater history of the Holy Roman Empire in the 18th century and indexed them in the Bibliographia Dramatica et Dramaticorum, a source documentation of around 25,000 pages. This project was supported by several funding institutions, in particular the Volkswagen Foundation and the German Research Foundation .

Meyer is currently working on the Documenta dramatica. Speech, music and dance theater in Central Europe in the 18th century , a follow-up project that is even more extensive than the Bibliographia dramatica et dramaticorum is characterized by the large-scale incorporation of theater notes, dedications, prefaces, etc. as well as extensive registers. This work is produced by Matthias J. Pernerstorfer .

Meyer showed ways to interpret the material in numerous studies; An anthology was published in 2012 as the opening volume of the Summa Summarum series of the Don Juan Archive Vienna by the Viennese science publisher Hollitzer . Meyer's evaluations and interpretations force a revision of numerous basic assumptions of German and literary research on 18th century theater, which as a rule is more about a drama than a theater history. Among other things, they show that the interpretation of 'German theater' as German-speaking is an ideological construct that does not correspond to the historical circumstances in the 18th century, and that the portion of music-dramatic production was significantly more significant than the majority German and theater studies research suggests.

Reinhart Meyer Collection

Meyer's research library was given to the Don Juan Archive in Vienna and has been open to the public there since 2014. The collection created in the course of his bibliographical work is unique in scope and density worldwide, it contains almost all large holdings of theater slips and perioches, that is, the programs of the Ordenstheater, as well as the theater journals from the research period. The grand opening of the collection took place on April 28, 2014.

Publications (selection)

  • "Hamburgische Dramaturgie" and "Emilia Galotti". Studies on a methodology of scientific citation, developed on the problem of the relationship between drama theory and tragedy practice in Lessing . Wiesbaden and Frankfurt am Main: Humanitas Verlag 1973.
  • Dada in Zurich and Berlin 1916–1920. Literature between revolution and reaction . Kronberg: Scriptor 1973 (developed with students) (= scripts literary studies 2).
  • The people arise. - War public and war experience . An exhibition on the 1st World War. 20.-30. June 1978, University of Regensburg, foyer of the central library. Exhibition catalog , ed. with Hermann Altmann, Fritz Isenmann, Renate Isenmann, Hans-Peter Neureuter and others Regensburg 1978 (worked out with students) (2nd edition. Regensburg 1978).
  • The Hamburg Opera. A collection of texts by the Hamburg Opera from the period 1678–1730 . 3 volumes. Munich: Kraus Reprint, 1980.
  • Bibliographia dramatica et dramaticorum. Annotated bibliography of the dramas of the 18th century printed and played in the former German Reich, together with their translations and arrangements and their reception up to the present day . 1. Department: Editions of works, collections, series . Volume 1-3. Tübingen: Niemeyer 1986; 2. Department: Individual issues . Tübingen: Niemeyer 1993 - 2009 (Vol. 1 - 29); Berlin, New York: De Gruyter 2010 - 2012 (vol. 30 - 34).
  • Writings on the theater and cultural history of the 18th century , ed. by Matthias J. Pernerstorfer . Vienna: Hollitzer Wissenschaftsverlag 2012 (Summa Summarum 1). ISBN 978-3-99012-019-4 , also published as an e-book.
  • Alhambra - Texts of the Regensburg Student Theater

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ “Hamburgische Dramaturgie” and “Emilia Galotti”. Studies on a method of scientific citation , developed on the problem of the relationship between drama theory and tragedy practice in Lessing, 1973.
  2. ^ Archive of the University of Regensburg
  3. ^ Don Juan Archive Vienna: • Documenta dramatica. Retrieved October 3, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Meyer, Reinhart
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German cultural historian and bibliographer
DATE OF BIRTH November 15, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin