Richard Alewyn

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Richard Alewyn (born February 24, 1902 in Frankfurt am Main ; † August 14, 1979 in Prien am Chiemsee ) was a German literature critic , literary critic and university professor .

Life

He was the son of the factory owner George Alewyn. He studied in Frankfurt , Marburg , Munich and Heidelberg , among others with Ernst Robert Curtius , Heinrich Wölfflin , Friedrich Gundolf and Karl Jaspers .

In 1925 he received his doctorate in Heidelberg under Max von Waldberg , with the study "Pre-Baroque Classicism and Greek Tragedy". He then received a scholarship to work on a literary history of the 17th century. In 1931 his habilitation followed in Berlin, in 1932 he became an associate professor for modern German literature in Heidelberg, at the chair of Friedrich Gundolf , and gave his inaugural lecture on January 17, 1933.

Under the Law Restoring the Civil Service , Alewyn was dismissed in June 1933 because of a Jewish grandmother ("quarter Jew"). In December of the same year he left Germany and went to France. In 1934 he received a visiting professorship for German literature at the University of Paris, financed by the Rockefeller Foundation . Alewyn's wife and daughter followed him in February 1934. During this time he also gave guest lectures in London .

In 1935 the family emigrated to Austria . In August 1938 he fled to Ascona in Switzerland and finally on February 2, 1939 to the USA, where his family followed him in April 1940. There he was from 1939 as an associate professor at Queens College and from 1948 as a full professor. He became an American citizen on November 27, 1944. In 1947 and 1948 he made several research trips to Europe and gave guest lectures in Marburg and Cologne .

In May 1949 he was appointed professor of modern German literature at the University of Cologne , where he worked until 1955. On August 27, 1954, he renounced American citizenship and took German again. From 1955 to 1959 professorship in Berlin and from 1959 to his retirement in 1967 in Bonn .

In 1956 he was co-editor of the journal for literary history Euphorion, published in Heidelberg .

He said goodbye to his students in an affectionate way by reciting Goethe's “To Brother-in-Law Kronos”. Alewyn renounced the option to continue working as a professor until he was 68 in order to devote himself more intensively to research and literary criticism. In 1966 he was elected a full member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . Since 1967 he was a member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry . He lived in Perchting / Upper Bavaria until his death .

The German Literature Archive in Marbach is keeping Alewyn's estate .

effect

Alewyn was particularly influential as a university lecturer who proved to his students that even after the barbarism of National Socialism, a critical and at the same time enthusiastic examination of German literary history was possible.

Alewyn became known through his studies of the novel of the 17th century , in particular through the discovery of the author Johann Beer .

His studies on Hugo von Hofmannsthal and on German Romanticism ( Joseph von Eichendorff , Clemens Brentano ) are important.

Alewyn was also one of the first in Germany to study the detective novel in literary studies . After the Second World War , Alewyn was recalled to Germany. Here he gathered loyal students around him who later spread the "social history of literature" he had established as a teaching. Alewyn's research gained importance in the "critical" German studies of the 1960s.

Fonts

  • Johann Beer . Studies on the novel of the 17th century , Leipzig 1932. Second, improved edition. From the estate of ed. by Klaus Garber and Michael Schroeter (= supplements to the Euphorion. Issue 64). Winter, Heidelberg 2012, ISBN 978-3-8253-5939-3 .
  • Hofmannsthal's change , Frankfurt / M. 1949.
  • About Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Göttingen 1957.
  • The great world theater , Hamburg 1959.
  • Brentano's "Story of the good Kasperl and the beautiful Annerl". In: Jost Schillemeit (ed.): Interpretations 4, German stories from Wieland to Kafka (= Fischer Bücherei. Vol. 721). Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1966, pp. 101-150.
  • as ed. with Günther Müller : Gestaltprobleme der Dichtung. Günther Müller on his 65th birthday on December 15, 1955. Bonn 1957.
  • Problems and design , Frankfurt / M. 1974.

literature

  • Richard Alewyn's entry in: Norbert Giovannini, Claudia Rink, Frank Moraw: Remember, preserve, commemorate: The Jewish residents of Heidelberg and their relatives 1933-1945 . Das Wunderhorn, Heidelberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-88423-353-5 , p. 28 .
  • Klaus Garber : In the picture of Richard Alewyns . Munich 2005 ISBN 3-7705-4057-3 [with bibliography]
  • Klaus Garber, Ute Szell (Ed.): The Sensibility Project and the Origin of Modernity. Richard Alewyn's research on sentimentalism and its epochal context . Munich 2005 ISBN 3-7705-4071-9
  • Correspondence between Gottfried Benn and Richard Alewyn 1951-1956 . Editionspraktisches Seminar. In: Berliner Hefte zur Geschichte des literar Lebens 5 (2003), pp. 25–50 ISSN  0949-5371
  • Klaus Garber (Ed.): Richard Alewyn . Free University of Berlin 1982 [exhibition catalog with documents from the estate].
  • In memoriam Richard Alewyn . Speeches given on December 5, 1979 at the memorial service of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn by Horst Rüdiger , Dieter Gutzen, Beda Allemann . Bonn 1981 ISBN 3-416-09143-4
  • Complete bibliography with editor. Preliminary note in: Bibliographies. Writer, publicist and literary scholar in the USA. 1: A - G. Eds. John M. Spalek , Konrad Feilchenfeldt , Sandra H. Hawrylchak. de Gruyter, Berlin 2018, ISBN 9783110975536 , available in Google books .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Entry Prof. Richard Alewyn in: Norbert Giovannini; Claudia Rink; Frank Moraw: Remember, preserve, commemorate: the Jewish residents of Heidelberg and their relatives 1933-1945 . Das Wunderhorn, Heidelberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-88423-353-5 , p. 28 .
  2. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 25.
personal data
SURNAME Alewyn, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Germanist and literary critic
DATE OF BIRTH February 24, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 1979
Place of death Prien am Chiemsee