Rudolf Unger

Rudolf Unger (born May 8, 1876 in Hildburghausen ; † February 2, 1942 in Göttingen ) was a German philologist and literary historian .

Life

In addition to German studies in Freiburg and Munich , Rudolf Unger also studied English philology , modern art history , philosophy and psychology in Munich as well as classical philology in Heidelberg and Berlin , a. a. with Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff . The doctorate took place in 1902 at the University of Munich with the topic " Platen in his relationship to Goethe ". He completed his habilitation there in 1905 with a paper on Johann Georg Hamann's theory of language, whereby his continuation of this work proved to be trend-setting for literary studies.

His academic career began in 1905 as a private lecturer in modern literary history at the University of Munich, and from 1911 as adjunct professor. Between 1915 and 1917 he was a full professor of modern German language and literary history at the University of Basel , succeeding Julius Petersen, and between 1917 and 1920 he was full professor of modern literature at the University of Halle . After a year as professor of German literary history at the University of Königsberg , he was professor in Breslau from 1924 to 1925 . From 1925 to 1942 Unger finally held the professorship for German Philology in Göttingen . In 1929 he was elected a full member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . Successor to Rudolf Unger's chair in Göttingen was Hermann Pongs in 1943 .

Unger's main research areas were the Enlightenment , Sturm und Drang and Romanticism ; in terms of the history of the work, the work of Hamann , Herder , Goethe , Schiller , Kleist , Grabbe , Meyer and Platen . In addition to the history of literature in the narrower sense, he also dealt with philosophy, linguistics and the history of concepts . Moreover, his work was of particular importance for the area of methodological reflection on literary studies of the humanities and the history of problems . In his work he built on the philology of Wilhelm Dilthey and the style history of Heinrich Wölfflin and turned against the influential literary positivism of his time . In particular, he sought to overcome Wilhelm Scherer's positivist approaches.

The pivotal point in Unger's thinking is undoubtedly the turn-of-the-century philosophy of life inspired by Dilthey . The concept of the holistic view of life contexts was propagated against rationalistic and positivistic perspectives, which should also leave room for the emotional level, personal experience and individual fate. From this perspective, poetry does not represent the life of an individual in causal contexts, but rather as a “symbol” of life contexts pointing beyond themselves. Instead of individual experiences, literature reveals a genuinely poetic view of life, as it were as a substrate of coagulated life experience, which cannot be captured by positivistic or rationalistic perspectives: “The poet, however, experiences the world in his personality with the totality of his life forces and creates them out of this totality of personal experience, he mediates the same synthetically summarizing energy of his imagination, selecting, transforming, unifying new. "

With these and other views today hardly represented was Unger an influential philologists and, through specialized radius addition, the "life-philosophical inspiration of Warburg -Kreises." A peculiar continuation, with some ethnic undertones, these views heard at his pupil Clemens Lugowski , one of the masterminds of today's narratology .

Honors

Dr. theol. hc. of the University of Königsberg

Publications

Platen in his relationship with Goethe , 1903
Hamann's Theory of Language , 1905
Hamann and the Enlightenment , 2 volumes, 1911 and 1925
From Nathan zu Faust , 1916
Weltanschauung and Poetry , 1917
Herder, Novalis and Kleist , 1922
Literary history as problem history. On the question of the historical synthesis, with particular reference to W. Dilthey , 1924
Essays on literary and intellectual history , 1929
Essays on the doctrine of principles of literary history , 1929
On the soul history genesis of Romanticism , 1930
Goethe and his German people , 1932
Gervinus and the beginnings of political literary historiography in Germany , 1935
Directions and problems of the more recent Schiller interpretation , 1937
The word “heart” and its conceptual sphere in Novalis , 1937
On the poetry and intellectual history of the Goethe era , 1944
Collected studies , 3 volumes, 1929–1944

literature

Barbara Besslich: Unger, Rudolf. In: Christoph König (Ed.), With the assistance of Birgit Wägenbaur u. a .: Internationales Germanistenlexikon 1800–1950 . Volume 3: R-Z. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2003, ISBN 3-11-015485-4 , pp. 1922-1924.
Ingrid Brunecker: General validity or historical conditionality of the poetic genres: a main problem of modern poetics, worked out by Dilthey, Unger and Staiger. Philosophical dissertation, Kiel 1954.

Web links

Wikisource: Rudolf Unger - Sources and full texts

Entry on Rudolf Unger in the Catalogus Professorum Halensis

Individual evidence

↑ 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. 244.
↑ See Rudolf Unger: History of Literature as Problem History. On the question of the historical synthesis, with special reference to Wilhelm Dilthey , Berlin 1924, p. 9 ff.
↑ Ibid., P. 11.
↑ Martin Jesinghausen: The novel between myth and post-histoire - Clemens Lugowski's theory of romance at the crossroads. In: Matías Martínez (ed.): Formal myth. Contributions to a theory of aesthetic forms. Paderborn, Munich, Vienna and Zurich 1996, pp. 183–218, here: p. 190.
↑ See five letters from Clemens Lugowski. In: Formal Myth. Contributions to a theory of aesthetic forms, ed. v. Matías Martínez , Paderborn, Munich, Vienna and Zurich 1996, pp. 229–244, here: pp. 229–240.

personal data
SURNAME	Unger, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German Germanist and literary historian
DATE OF BIRTH	May 8, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH	Hildburghausen
DATE OF DEATH	February 2, 1942
Place of death	Goettingen

[1] 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. 244.

[2] See Rudolf Unger: History of Literature as Problem History. On the question of the historical synthesis, with special reference to Wilhelm Dilthey , Berlin 1924, p. 9 ff.

[3] Ibid., P. 11.

[4] Martin Jesinghausen: The novel between myth and post-histoire - Clemens Lugowski's theory of romance at the crossroads. In: Matías Martínez (ed.): Formal myth. Contributions to a theory of aesthetic forms. Paderborn, Munich, Vienna and Zurich 1996, pp. 183–218, here: p. 190.

[5] See five letters from Clemens Lugowski. In: Formal Myth. Contributions to a theory of aesthetic forms, ed. v. Matías Martínez , Paderborn, Munich, Vienna and Zurich 1996, pp. 229–244, here: pp. 229–240.