Richard Oehler

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Richard Oehler (born February 27, 1878 in Heckholzhausen , † November 13, 1948 in Wiesbaden ) was a German librarian and Friedrich Nietzsche editor.

Relatives, studies and first world war

Richard Oehler and his brother Max Oehler were Nietzsche's cousins.

Richard Oehler studied classical philology and received his doctorate in 1903 at the University of Halle-Wittenberg with Hans Vaihinger on a topic on Nietzsche. He then continued to work as an archivist and publicist with the work and legacies of his famous relative. At the same time, Oehler began a career as a librarian; when the First World War broke out , he held the position of assistant librarian at the Bonn University Library .

During the war he served the German Empire as an officer, most recently with the rank of major. In mid-1915, Oehler did not return to regular military service, but from then on dealt with issues relating to the Belgian library system , including the future of the Löwen University Library , which had been burned down by German soldiers in August 1914 .

Nietzsche researcher

Like his brother Max, Richard Oehler worked temporarily for the Nietzsche Archive , founded and directed by their common cousin Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche , for the first time in 1903. Among other things, he published the “Nietzsche Register”. He was unreservedly attached to the philosophy of the superman and the will to power. From 1934 he was editor of a complete edition of the works of Friedrich Nietzsche.

State Commissioner and Library Directorates

Article 247 of the Versailles Treaty provided that Germany had to actively take care of the reconstruction of the University Library in Leuven. On the recommendation of Fritz Milkau , with whom he had worked during the war, Oehler was appointed State Commissioner for the restoration of the University Library in Leuven . His official seat was the German bookseller's house in Leipzig . As State Commissioner he was Germany's representative to the University of Leuven , the Belgian government and the Reparations Commission . Oehler accepted the Belgian book demands, had to ensure that they were fulfilled quickly and ensure that the public libraries in Germany did not suffer irreparable damage. He held this office from April 1920 to April 1, 1925. Oehler managed to complete the task successfully in fruitful cooperation with his Belgian librarian colleagues.

In recognition of his work as State Commissioner, Oehler was appointed director of the Wroclaw University Library in 1925 . From 1927 to 1945 he finally occupied the post of director of the city ​​and university library in Frankfurt am Main . Oehler received an honorary professorship at the university there .

Activities in National Socialism

Oehler is considered a staunch National Socialist . He joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party on May 1, 1933 and received membership number 2,393,316. Of the total of 34 library directors at the 23 university libraries in the German Reich within the borders of 1937, twelve were in the party, of which only a minority, including Oehler, was politically exposed. Oehler was also a member of other Nazi organizations such as the Kampfbund for German Culture , the National Socialist Association of German Librarians and the National Socialist People's Welfare . He was also a supporting member of the SS and cultural warden in Frankfurt's old town. On May 11, 1933, loan traffic was severely restricted on Oehler's initiative. He blocked access to "Marxist literature" in the libraries subordinate to him. In October 1933, Oehler reported that 1732 books had been withdrawn from loan in this way. Oehler also participated in the implementation of the National Socialist cultural policy elsewhere: he supervised the liquidation of the library of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research .

As a Nietzsche connoisseur, with the help of his work Friedrich Nietzsche and the German Future , he propagated the supposed correspondence of Nietzsche's philosophy with the worldview of National Socialism. In Adolf Hitler he saw the successor and accomplisher of his relative: "With Nietzsche, as with Hitler, struggle is never just struggle, destruction for its own sake, but making space for better, more fertile, bigger things." In militarism , anti-Semitism , the Führer principle and in racial theory of the National Socialists he saw the application of Friedrich Nietzsche's ideas. After the end of the Second World War, Hanns Wilhelm Eppelsheimer , his successor in the office of library director in Frankfurt, issued a devastating judgment and spoke of Nietzsche's falsification by Oehler.

On May 16 and 17, 1940, Wehrmacht troops destroyed the University Library in Leuven again through air raids and artillery fire. However, German propaganda claimed that withdrawing British troops had set them on fire. Oehler was reactivated in his capacity as State Commissioner for the restoration of the Leuven University Library . He visited the ruins in July 1940 and determined their condition. He summarized the results of his investigations and recommendations in a report. He recommended that the English should pay for the damage in a future peace treaty . In his report, he emphasized the fact that the library to be restored must be checked when selecting the book inventory. This stock should not become a “nest of anti-German, Jewish and Masonic literature”.

From August 1941, Oehler worked as an expert on the safeguarding and exploitation of German cultural property from Jewish property for the purposes of the Reich, so he participated in the looting and arbitrary confiscation of books and archives in Germany and in countries occupied by the Wehrmacht. The organizational center of this robbery was the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg .

Fonts (selection)

  • Nietzsche's relationship to pre-Socratic philosophy . Orphanage, Halle 1903 (Halle, Univ., Phil. Diss., [1903])
  • Friedrich Nietzsche and the pre-Socratics . Dürrsche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1904 ( digitized ).
  • Ernst Baumann: from the mental life of a young German . Schwetsche, Berlin 1904.
  • Ed .: Friedrich Nietzsche: Letters . Insel, Leipzig 1911.
  • Between death and life: poems . Ahn, Bonn 1913.
  • Ed .: Friedrich Nietzsche's correspondence with Franz Overbeck . Insel, Leipzig 1916.
  • Guide to the libraries in Brussels under German administration . [Staatsdruckerei] [Brussels] [1916] ( digitized version ).
  • On a young day: try u. Thoughts . Röhrscheid, Bonn 1920.
  • Nietzsche register: alphabetical-systematic overview of Nietzsche's works according to terms, key phrases and names . Naumann, Leipzig 1926 (Nietzsche's works / Nietzsche, Friedrich; 20).
  • Ed .: Friedrich Nietzsche: Letters of Friends . Insel, Leipzig [1931] (Insel-Bücherei; 421).
  • together with Maria Lanckorońska: The book illustration of the XVIII. Century in Germany, Austria and Switzerland , 3 volumes, Maximilian Society, Berlin 1932–1934.
  • Hermann Traut †. In: Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen, vol. 49, 1932, pp. 84–85.
  • Ed .: Friedrich Nietzsche: Nietzsche Breviary . Insel, Leipzig 1933 (Insel-Bücherei; 438).
  • Friedrich Nietzsche and the German future . Armanen, Leipzig 1935.
  • The construction of large libraries of the future . In: The building guild. Communications from the Association of German Architects, BDA, 1935, pp. 755–764.
  • Ed .: Guide through the cultural institutions of the city of Frankfurt am Main . Diesterweg, Frankfurt a. M. [1936].
  • Nietzsche's Kulturkampf against world Bolshevism . In: National Issues. Swiss Monthly Journal, vol. 3 (1936/37), no. 10, pp. 506-514.
  • Ed .: Friedrich Nietzsche: Selection from his works . Bibliographical Institute, Leipzig 1944.

literature

  • Wolfgang Schivelbusch : A ruin in the war of spirits. The library of lions. August 1914 to May 1940. Revised edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-596-10367-3 . (For the first time under the title Die Bibliothek von Löwen. An episode from the time of the world wars. Hanser, Munich et al. 1988, ISBN 3-446-15162-1 )
  • Rachel Heuberger: Library of Judaism. The Hebraica and Judaica collection of the City and University Library Frankfurt am Main. Origin, history and today's tasks. (Frankfurt library writings, vol. 4). Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-465-02863-5 .

Web link

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 440.
  2. ↑ Information on the Thuringia archive portal (accessed January 3, 2014). See also Schivelbusch: A ruin in the war of spirits. The library of lions. August 1914 to May 1940 . P. 63.
  3. ^ Richard Oehler: Friedrich Nietzsche and the pre-Socratics. Leipzig 1904 (emerged from Oehler's dissertation: Nietzsche's relationship to pre-Socratic philosophy. Halle 1903, see Bernd Kettern: Friedrich Nietzsche. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon . Volume VI (1993), Sp. 774–804. )
  4. ↑ a b c Biographical information on Oehler In: Detlef Thiel (Hrsg.): Salomo Friedlaender : Friedrich Nietzsche. An intellectual biography. (Salomo Friedlaender / Mynona: Gesammelte Schriften , edited by Hartmut Geerken , Volume 9). Waitawhile / Books on Demand, Herrsching / Norderstedt 2009, ISBN 978-3-8391-2001-9 , p . 223..
  5. ↑ Schivelbusch: A ruin in the war of spirits. The library of lions. August 1914 to May 1940. p. 63.
  6. ↑ Schivelbusch: A ruin in the war of spirits. The library of lions. August 1914 to May 1940. pp. 37 f.
  7. ^ Richard Oehler: Nietzsche register. Alphabetical and systematic overview of Friedrich Nietzsche's world of thought. Developed from the text using terms and names. 4th edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1978, ISBN 3-520-17004-3 (for the first time as Nietzsche register. Alphabetical-systematic overview of Nietzsche's works according to terms, core sentences and names. Prepared for the Nietzsche Archive by Richard Oehler , Kröner, Leipzig 1926. )
  8. ↑ Schivelbusch: A ruin in the war of spirits. The library of lions. August 1914 to May 1940. p. 63.
  9. ^ Reparation provisions of the contract
  10. ↑ Schivelbusch: A ruin in the war of spirits. The library of lions. August 1914 to May 1940. pp. 62 f and p. 91.
  11. ↑ Comprehensive on this Schivelbusch: A ruin in the war of the spirits. The library of lions. August 1914 to May 1940. pp. 61-103.
  12. ↑ Schivelbusch: A ruin in the war of spirits. The library of lions. August 1914 to May 1940. p. 99.
  13. ↑ Gerd Simon with the participation of Eberhardt Gering, Dagny Guhr, Hannah Soppa and Ulrich Schermaul: Chronology 'Society for Documentation' with brief excursions into its prehistory and into the development of the library system mainly in the 3rd Reich, Part I: Archives. (First version Jan 2004, present version October 3, 2006; PDF; 424 kB).
  14. ^ Heuberger: Library of Judaism. The Hebraica and Judaica collection of the City and University Library Frankfurt am Main. P. 85 f.
  15. ^ Heuberger: Library of Judaism. The Hebraica and Judaica collection of the City and University Library Frankfurt am Main. Pp. 88-90.
  16. ↑ Schivelbusch: A ruin in the war of spirits. The library of lions. August 1914 to May 1940. p. 172.
  17. ^ Richard Oehler: Friedrich Nietzsche and the German future. Leipzig 1935, p. 36. Quoted from Schivelbusch: A ruin in the war of spirits. The library of lions. August 1914 to May 1940. p. 172.
  18. ↑ Schivelbusch: A ruin in the war of spirits. The library of lions. August 1914 to May 1940 , p. 172.
  19. ↑ See Heuberger: Bibliothek des Judentums. The Hebraica and Judaica collection of the City and University Library Frankfurt am Main. P. 86 f.
  20. ↑ Schivelbusch: A ruin in the war of spirits. The library of lions. August 1914 to May 1940. p. 177 f, on p. 178 the quotation.
  21. ^ Jens Thiel: Inclusions and omissions. Karl Schlechta in the 'Third Reich' . In: Hans Jörg Sandkühler (Ed.): Philosophy in National Socialism , Felix Meiner Verlag, o. S. , ISBN 978-3-7873-2124-7 .
  22. ^ Alfons Maria Arns: Richard Oehler . In: Frankfurter Personenlexikon . The reference work with Frankfurt biographies from over 1,200 years of city history . Retrieved January 15, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Oehler, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German librarian and Friedrich Nietzsche editor
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Heckholzhausen
DATE OF DEATH November 13, 1948
Place of death Wiesbaden