Robert Petsch

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August Ferdinand Robert Petsch (born June 4, 1875 in Berlin ; † September 10, 1945 in Hamburg ) was a German philologist and folklorist .

life and work

Petsch studied in Berlin with Erich Schmidt and at the University of Würzburg , where he received his doctorate in 1898 on "Volksriddle" and in 1900 he completed his habilitation on "Formula-based conclusions in folk tales". He belonged to the leading Berlin German school in the wake of Wilhelm Scherer . In 1914 he worked as a lecturer in Liverpool. Then he was appointed full professor at the German Academy in Posen . With the loss of Posen through the Treaty of Versailles , he lost his job. In October 1919 he became a professor at the University of Hamburg with the first chair for modern German literary history and taught beyond the age limit until 1945. He co-founded general literary studies , which was less about history and biography than about the nature, typology and forms of literature is interested. Petsch dealt a lot with Lessing and Goethe and especially in 32 publications with the Faust poem. In 1924 he was a co-founder of the Hamburg Goethe Society . In folklore he dealt with fairy tales .

After the transfer of power to the National Socialists , in November 1933 he was one of the signatories of the professors' commitment to Adolf Hitler at German universities and colleges . In 1937 Petsch emphasized that the Nordic poetry of the “genuinely Germanic form” was particularly close to the Germans. Selma Lagerlöf , Sigrid Undset and Knut Hamsun are "related" poets who wrote in "appropriate lines of thought", not "dissolving" and "destroying" like Alfred Döblin and Thomas Mann . For Petsch, Hamsun in particular was the greatest Nordic narrator, one of the “warmest admirers and defenders” of Nazi Germany abroad. Paul Böckmann and Fritz Martini were among his students . Because of his early membership in the NSDAP (since 1933), Petsch was suspended by the British occupation authorities at the age of almost 70 in May 1945 and retired at the beginning of September.

Fonts (selection)

  • Freedom and Necessity in Schiller's Dramas (= Goethe and Schiller Studies . 1, ZDB -ID 531596-7 ). Beck, Munich 1905.
  • Lessing's correspondence with Mendelssohn and Nicolai about the tragedy. Along with related writings by Nicolais and Mendelssohn (= Philosophical Library. Vol. 121, ISSN  2365-2861 ). Dürr, Leipzig 1910.
  • Content and form. Collected treatises on literary studies and general intellectual history (= Hamburg texts and investigations on German philology. Series 2: investigations. 1, ZDB -ID 530928-1 ). Ruhfus, Dortmund 1925.
  • The essence and forms of storytelling (= German quarterly journal for literary studies and intellectual history . Book series. 20, ZDB -ID 200380-6 ). Niemeyer, Halle (Saale) 1934.
  • as editor with Hermann Blumenthal : Goethe's works. 12 volumes. Small festival edition. Bibliographical Institute, Leipzig 1938.

literature

  • Fritz Martini (ed.): From the spirit of poetry. Memorandum for Robert Petsch. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 1949.
  • Christa Hempel-Küter: German Studies between 1925 and 1955. Studies on the world of science using the example of Hans Pyritz Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-05-003472-6 (also: Hamburg, University, habilitation paper, 1997).
  • Hans-Harald Müller: Robert Petsch. His academic career and the founding of general literary studies in Hamburg. In: Myriam Richter, Mirko Nottscheid (eds.) In connection with Hans-Harald Müller and Ingrid Schröder: 100 years of German studies in Hamburg. Traditions and perspectives (= Hamburg contributions to the history of science. 19). Reimer, Berlin et al. 2011, ISBN 978-3-496-02837-6 , pp. 107-124.

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Ernst Klee: The personal dictionary for the Third Reich (= Fischer. 16048). 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 456.
  2. ^ Robert Petsch: Nordic poetry. Olav Duun and his contemporaries. In: Germanic-Romanic monthly . 25, 1937, pp. 242-256.
personal data
SURNAME Petsch, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Petsch, August Ferdinand Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philologist and literary scholar
DATE OF BIRTH June 4, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH September 10, 1945
Place of death Hamburg