Richard Weiss

Richard Weiss (born November 9, 1907 in Stuttgart ; † July 29, 1962 in the Ticino mountains) was a Swiss folklorist and professor of folklore in Zurich from 1946 to 1962.

Life and Scientific Work

Richard Weiss studied German and history in Zurich, Heidelberg and Paris. In 1933 he received his doctorate with a dissertation on the Alpine experience in German literature of the 18th century . In 1941 he completed his habilitation with the text Das Alpwesen Graubuenden .

He was a teacher at the Protestant Middle School in Schiers , where he had been a student himself. With his appointment to the newly created chair for Folklore at the University of Zurich , his main work, Folklore of Switzerland , appeared in print . Floor plan .

Weiss wanted to differentiate scientific folklore from "applied folklore", ie from u. a. Traditional costume movement, promoted folk art and cultivation of the dialect, all of which, in his opinion, actively intervene in the cultural process with an evaluative statement. Folklore in its sense does not mean exclusively antiquarian research, but is "contemporary science". A central concept in his work is tradition . In contrast to the consideration of the “crowd”, the “community concept” plays a major role.

The focus of this comprehensive presentation is in the general part u. a. “The popular term as defined by folklore”, “Folk life in contrast to mass life”, “Tradition and progress”, “Community and individual”, “Folk culture and people” and “Folk culture and individual culture”.

The special part deals with settlements, buildings and apartments, economy and material culture, food, clothing, customs and festivals, games and sports, drama and dance, music and song, language and linguistic material, faith and knowledge and the state, law and national character ( each chapter headings and analyzes and focus of examples from Switzerland). Detailed notes, registers and lists complete the volume, which provides comprehensive (and in this form more or less unique) information on the state of folklore and its science in 1946 in Switzerland.

Weiss deals with many topics, among which the Alps form a special focus following the dissertation . Another focus was his work on the Atlas of Swiss Folklore, which he had been preparing since around 1937 and whose first volume he edited together with Paul Geiger in 1950. He also takes up unfamiliar topics at the time.

Richard Weiss was criticized in the 1970s for excluding phenomena such as urban life, media, mass culture and industry. This is only partially correct if you z. B. recalled that in 1959 he undertook an excursion with students to the Ruhr area. The modernity of the scientific approach (especially the inclusion of sociological and psychological issues), its functional-analytical approach and the sobriety with which possible interpretations are sketched and carried out, as well as the comprehensive breadth of the outlook on the overall Swiss culture are remarkable. You made Weiss a «folkloristic symbol of the post-war period».

This has raised expectations for a high standard of folklore research that was hardly met by the following generations (this applies to all German-speaking folklore, including the terms that followed this scientific discipline). The early death of Weiss broke such perspectives, but u. a. German-speaking folklore rubbed against him and developed in the period of upheaval since the 1970s. Students of Weiss are u. a. the sociologist Peter Atteslander and the linguist Robert Schläpfer .

Weiss opposed a one-sided sociological demarcation of the “people” as a lower class from an upper class and advocated a “psychological demarcation” that takes into account individual attitudes in both overlapping and intermingling areas. He also sees tradition under the aspect of the "stupidity and indolence" that existed against the Enlightenment, the renunciation of new experiences and with reference to "enough examples of harmful traditions". He understands home as a bond with nature and the culture of the “local community and their traditions”. Homesickness reflects the loss of the “local local community”, “being torn out of the community”.

In the following chapters, Weiss et al. a. "The alphorn and alpine music", the references to the alphorn since around 1563, the construction of the wooden tube, its natural tones, the occurrence of this scale in yodelling and in early Christian music of the 10th century, i. H. in ancient «alpine folk music». The Kühreihen is a lure and driving song for cattle, which has been attested since 1545 (an alphorn tune sounds). In addition, Weiss outlines two «song fates», that of the Guggisber link and that of the Emmental song . According to a study by Otto von Greyerz, the Guggisberg link consists of wandering stanzas from love songs, and according to a study by John Meyer , its refrain is said to be a mockery of the Guggisbergers. The melody goes back to Protestant chorales of the 16th century and is similar to that of the Emmental wedding dance from 1812 as well as those from the Baltic States from the 16th century. The melody of the Emmentalerlied with its "curious leaps of the melody" is, according to investigations u. a. by Hanns in der Gand already attested in the composition of an Italian guitar virtuoso from the late 18th century. There is also a Florentine copyright lawsuit from 1927, which involved a very similar melody that served as a fascist hymn. According to Weiss, the two examples are typical, and it is therefore “unlikely” if folk songs in general were limited to Switzerland in terms of text and melody.

Works

• Folklore of Switzerland. Layout. Rentsch, Erlenbach-Zurich 1946; 3rd, unchanged edition Rentsch, Zurich and Schwäbisch Hall 1984, ISBN 3-7249-0567-X .
• Atlas of Swiss Folklore . Founded by Paul Geiger and Richard Weiss, continued by Walter Escher, Elsbeth Liebl and Arnold Niederer. 2 map volumes of two half volumes each, plus an introductory volume and seven commentary volumes. Basel 1950/88; Register tape. Basel 1995.
• Houses and landscapes in Switzerland. Rentsch, Erlenbach-Zurich 1959; 2nd, unchanged edition with a foreword by Jean-Pierre Anderegg. Haupt, Bern 2017, ISBN 978-3-258-08017-8 .

Literature (selection)

• Karl Meuli : Obituary. In: Swiss Archives for Folklore 58, 1963, pp. 185–199.
• Matthias Zender : Obituary. In: Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 58, 1963, pp. 258-259.
• Hermann Bausinger : Obituary. In: Württembergisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde 1961–1964 [Stuttgart 1965], pp. 295–297.
• Otto Holzapfel : The concept of tradition in Richard Weiss (1946) and in modern folklore. In: Unity in Diversity. Festschrift for Peter Lang. Lang, Bern 1988, pp. 237-248.
• Ueli Gyr: Richard Weiss - Locations and work of a folkloric symbolic figure. In: Swiss Archives for Folklore 105, 2009, pp. 65–80. Reprinted in Ueli Gyr: Interface of Everyday Life. Studies on life-world cultural research. Google eBook / Waxmann, Münster 2013, pp. 109–123. ( Digitized version ). The entire issue 1 of the journal Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde 105, 2009, with various articles is dedicated to Richard Weiss.
• Ueli Gyr: Weiss, Richard. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Konrad J. Kuhn: Networks, identity politics and a narrative of demarcation. On the history of knowledge of the relationships between “folkish” and Swiss folklore. In: Journal for Folklore - Contributions to Cultural Research, 113 (2017), pp. 42–63.
• Konrad J. Kuhn: «Contemplative action» or a European perspective? Positions and dynamics of folklore cultural studies in Switzerland between 1945 and 1970. In: Johannes Moser, Irene Götz , Moritz Ege (eds.): On the situation of folklore 1945-1970. Orientations of a Science at the Time of the Cold War. Waxmann, Münster a. a. 2015, pp. 177–203.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ After Ueli Gyr . In the online encyclopedia = www.enzyklo.de, however, Mettmenstetten near Zurich. This is the mother's home village; the father died when the boy was 2 years old.
2. ^ Accidental death near Russo in the Onsernone Valley, Ticino
3. ↑ first professor there
4. ^ Printed in Erlenbach-Zurich 1941. Reprinted by Octopus, Chur 1992.
5. ^ Printed by Eugen Rentsch Verlag, Erlenbach-Zürich 1946. XXIV, 436 pages, numerous photographic images and folding cards. 2nd edition 1978, 3rd unchanged edition by Rentsch in Zurich and Parabel in Münster, 1984.
6. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, foreword p. VIII.
7. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, foreword p. IX.
8. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, preface SX
9. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, pp. 6–9.
10. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, pp. 12-14.
11. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, pp. 15–23.
12. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, pp. 23–32.
13. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, pp. 33–39.
14. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, pp. 39–44.
15. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, p. 71 ff.
16. ↑ See Richard Weiss: Houses and Landscapes of Switzerland. Rentsch, Erlenbach-Zurich 1959.
17. ↑ See Richard Weiss: The discovery of the Alps. A collection of Swiss and German Alpine literature up to 1800. Frauenfeld and Leipzig 1934. See also Ueli Gyr: From Richard Weiss to Arnold Niederer . A comparison of two alpine research exponents. In: Swiss Archives for Folklore 102, 2006, pp. 231–250.
18. ↑ The numerous folding maps in Swiss Folklore come from this atlas. Cf. Richard Weiss: Introduction to the Atlas of Swiss Folklore. Basel 1950. Likewise: Richard Weiss: The Brüning – Napf – Reuss Line as a cultural border between Eastern and Western Switzerland on folklore maps. In: Swiss Archives for Folklore 58, 1962, pp. 201–231.
19. ↑ Cf. for example Richard Weiss: Fundamentals of a Protestant folk culture. In: Swiss Archives for Folklore 61, 1963, pp. 75–91.
20. ↑ See from these years Helmut Möller: Investigations on functionalism in folklore. Typewritten, unprinted dissertation, Göttingen 1954.
21. ↑ Ueli Gyr, 2009.
22. ↑ Cf. Thomas Metzen: Notes on "Folklore of Switzerland" by Richard Weiss. In: Farewell to popular life . Ludwig Uhland Institute, Tübingen 1970, pp. 173-190.
23. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, foreword p. 8.
24. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, p. 21.
25. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, p. 21.
26. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, p. 30.
27. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, p. 30.
28. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, p. 31.
29. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, pp. 228–230.
30. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, p. 230.
31. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, p. 234 f.
32. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, p. 237 f.
33. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, p. 238.
34. ↑ Folklore of Switzerland, p. 238. This rejects the dubious term “genuine folk song”.

Web links

• Literature by and about Richard Weiss in the catalog of the German National Library