Theodor Lessing

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Theodor Lessing in a recording by Will Burgdorf

Karl Theodor Richard Lessing (born February 8, 1872 in Hanover ; † August 31, 1933 in Marienbad , Czechoslovakia ) was a German philosopher , writer and publicist . The author, shot by three assassins in Czechoslovakia, is one of the first known victims of National Socialism .

biography

Lessing was born as the son of an assimilated Jewish couple from the upper middle class. The father was a doctor in Hanover, the mother a banker's daughter.

schooldays

“Hanover, Georgsplatz with Lyceum”, Lessing's school building under the direction of Carl Capelle ;
Postcard No. 2443 , Zedler & Vogel , around 1900

He described the experiences at home and at school as his two “hells” and reacted by withdrawing; he refused to meet the requirements and was regarded as a moderate student or as "unable to attend school". In his memoirs he wrote about his high school days:

“This humanistic German grammar school with patriotism, Latin and Greek in the main subjects ..., this human dumming institute, half based on official competition and striving, half on a mendacious, German stupid phrasing, was not only extremely unscrupulous - it was above all boring ... Nothing, nothing could ever make up for what these fifteen years of life have destroyed in me. Even today I dream almost every night of the torture of my school days. "

After he had to leave the Ratsgymnasium Hannover prematurely on the advice of the director Carl Capelle , he passed his Abitur in 1892 at the Städtisches Gymnasium Hameln . In contrast to what he himself portrayed and which Rainer Marwedel (1987, p. 28) adopted, Lessing was not in training at the Israelite Horticultural School in Ahlem . According to his own admission, he owed the successful completion of the Abitur to his teacher Max Schneidewin : "It happened for the first time that I met a person who did not want to master me as a teacher, which immediately raised resistance ..."

Lessing had a childhood friendship with Ludwig Klages , which he ended in 1899; To what extent Klages' anti-Semitism was the reason for this has not been definitively clarified. Both later emphasized that their youth together had shaped their future ideological thinking. The educational reform became a lifelong topic for Lessing.

Study time

After graduating from high school, he began to study medicine in Freiburg im Breisgau , Bonn and finally in Munich , where he switched to literature, philosophy and psychology in accordance with the inclinations that he had already shown as a schoolboy. He completed his studies in philosophy with a dissertation on the Russian logician Afrikan Spir . Lessing was friends with the painter Ernst Oppler , who went to Berlin in 1905. Together they regretted the mediocrity of their hometown in many ways.

A planned habilitation at the University of Dresden failed because of the resistance that was met with Jews , socialists and the public advocate of feminism there.

Years of work

He spent the following years without a permanent job as a substitute teacher, including with Hermann Lietz , and as a lecturer. Among other things, he gave introductions to modern philosophy in the waiting hall of Dresden Central Station. In 1906 Lessing went to Göttingen to write a habilitation thesis with Edmund Husserl . The plan failed. In 1906/07 he worked as a theater critic for the Göttinger Zeitung ; the texts are also available as a book under the title Nachtkritiken .

Lessing between 1925 and 1930 on a photograph by Nicola Perscheid

In 1907 he returned to Hanover, where he became a private lecturer in philosophy at the Technical University .

With an extremely sharp satire , Lessing attacked the critic Samuel Lublinski and also started from his unappealing figure. He described Lublinski as a "fat synagogue" and escapist babbler and triggered a literary scandal. Authors such as Theodor Heuss , Stefan Zweig and others from Lublinski's Weimar region signed a declaration that, unfortunately, there is no court of honor for journalists. Thomas Mann refused to sign, because he wanted to "drive the insolent dwarf" in a different way, "due to the mouth", and responded with the polemical essay The Doctor Lessing . The critic he sided with was one of the first to recognize the literary importance of the Buddenbrooks . In his work he accused Lessing of wanting to discredit Lublinski and of drawing a slanderous caricature. The argument reveals anti-Semitic clichés in both Lessing and Thomas Mann .

War participation

With his medical knowledge from his student days, Lessing volunteered for military medical service at the beginning of the First World War in order to avoid combat deployment at the front. During this time he served as a hospital doctor and worked as a teacher. On the side he wrote the story as giving meaning to the meaningless . The publication of this book was prevented by the military censorship during the war , as Lessing took a clear position against the war. It wasn't published until 1919.

Former home of Ada and Theodor Lessing in Hanover- Anderten

Publications

After the war, Lessing returned to his lecturer post in Hanover back and built in Linden since 1919 the local community college Hannover-Linden with his second wife Ada Lessing on. In addition, from 1923 he developed an extensive journalistic activity. He published articles, essays , glosses and features , especially in the two republican-democratic daily newspapers Prager Tagblatt and Dortmunder Generalanzeiger , and thus became one of the best-known political writers of the Weimar Republic .

His report on the trial of serial killer Fritz Haarmann , whom he followed as an eyewitness, attracted attention in 1925 . He made the dubious role of the Hanoverian police (Haarmann was a police spy) public in this case. He was then expelled from the trial.

In the same year he wrote a character study about the candidate for the office of Reich President and later winner of the presidential election Paul von Hindenburg , in which he warned against the election of this man. He described Hindenburg himself as a staid, intellectually undemanding personality, but behind whom he saw dangerous political forces at work:

“According to Plato , the philosophers should be leaders of the people. A philosopher would not take the throne chair with Hindenburg. Just a representative symbol, a question mark, a zero . One can say: better a zero than a nero . Unfortunately history shows that a future Nero is always hidden behind a Zero. "

Quotation from the letter of the Reich Ministry for Science, Education and National Education (REM) of April 20, 1933 to the TU Hannover

This article brought him hateful opposition from German national and ethnic circles. Students formed a committee against Lessing. It called for a boycott of its lectures, the withdrawal of the venia legendi and the removal from the university, and students violently disrupted its lectures. Anti-Semitic motivation became apparent during the protests . Lessing received little support from the public and especially from the university environment, and professor colleagues showed solidarity with the demands of his opponents, especially when on June 7, 1926 around a thousand students threatened to emigrate to the TU Braunschweig . When the situation did not calm down despite Lessing's leave of absence in the 1925/26 winter semester, he agreed with the Prussian minister of education, Carl Heinrich Becker, on June 18, 1926, to cease teaching and to take an indefinite leave of absence with reduced earnings.

Exile and murder

After the “ seizure of power ” by the National Socialists , Lessing took part in the “ Das Freie Wort ” congress in Berlin on February 19, 1933 , and fled to Czechoslovakia with his wife Ada on March 1, where he settled in the Marienbad spa ( Mariánské Lázně ). From here he continued his journalistic activities in German-language foreign newspapers. On April 20, 1933, his teaching and research assignment was withdrawn with immediate effect due to the Law on Civil Servants.

In June 1933 some Sudeten German newspapers in Czechoslovakia spread that a reward had been offered in Germany for those who kidnapped Lessing and handed over to the German authorities. On August 30, 1933, the National Socialist assassins Rudolf Max Eckert, Rudolf Zischka and Karl Hönl shot Lessing through the window of his study and seriously wounded him. The following day, at the age of 61, he succumbed to his injuries in the Marienbad hospital and was buried on September 2, 1933 without public attention in the Jewish cemetery in Marienbad. Rabbi Jakob Diamant announced that the Jewish community of Marienbad would set up a refugee home in his honor, but that did not happen. Lessing is considered to be the first person to be killed by National Socialism on Czech soil. The assassins escaped to Germany and were given new identities by the SA. Eckert returned to Marienbad in 1941, was recognized there in 1945 and sentenced to 18 years in prison in 1946. In 1959 he was deported to the Federal Republic. Zischka lived undisturbed in the GDR until his death in 1978.

Lessing's grave was devastated during the November pogroms in 1938 , and his gravestone was only erected again after the Second World War .

philosophy

Theodor Lessing's tomb in the Jewish cemetery in Marienbad (Mariánské Lázně)

Lessing's philosophy - like that of Oswald Spengler or Ludwig Klages - is attributed to the tradition of philosophical pessimism and the metaphysics of will , which goes back to Arthur Schopenhauer . Like Schopenhauer, Lessing dealt with the basic human experience of hardship and suffering , but did not react to it with a retreat into the private sphere or with aversion to the world, but with a philosophy of action .

This was expressed in a critical examination of the phenomena of public life in his time. Looking back, he wrote: “As a limit of my nature, my inability to 'let five be straight' became fatal to me. I always wanted to correct, educate, make understandable, ethically evaluate down to the last detail. Face-to-face there was hardly ever any misunderstanding. But as soon as I naively let myself go as a writer, the devil broke loose. ”A special topic due to this commitment was an axiomatic ethics of values . Unlike Max Scheler or Nicolai Hartmann , Lessing denied the existence of absolute values. His leitmotif was “Reduce the pain. This is the only possible imperative of moral action. "

He criticized Friedrich Nietzsche's historicism and relativism, even if he shared his critical view of historiography. In contrast to natural science, he characterized historiography as “willenschaft”. In the science of history, reality is only constructed. “It is always (in the natural sciences and in history) a matter of binding and rhythmicizing 'life' by virtue of thought. This forms symbols of calculable, limited, harmonious, measurable 'reality' from what is inherently immeasurable and inaccessible-incomprehensible. Both realities fictional! both transcendent in relation to what is immediately given. And one is neither truer nor more real than the other. "

Similar to Schopenhauer, Eastern thinking played an essential role in Lessing's formulation of his cultural criticism . Christianity and Buddhism have created a culture that is hostile to life. "Culture is that process, thanks to which a part of being (the brahma), namely the spirit (buddhi, the awakened) poses itself to be the ruler and the savior of life."

Honors

Stumbling block for Ada and Theodor Lessing in front of their former home in Hanover- Anderten

In 1958, a memorial plaque was unveiled at Lessing's Marienbad residence.

In November 2005, the AStA of the University of Hanover proposed the renaming to “Theodor Lessing University”, which the students rejected in a ballot in January 2006 (34.2% of the votes). The AStA of the university, later named after Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , has its seat in the Theodor-Lessing-Haus . On September 7, 2006, the Hanover Adult Education Center was named “ Ada and Theodor Lessing Adult Education Center ”.

On October 6, 2011, a stumbling block was laid in front of the former home of Ada and Theodor Lessing in the Anderten district of Hanover in the street Am Tiergarten . On August 30, 2013, the Hameln Library Society unveiled an information and memorial plaque on the 80th anniversary of Theodor Lessing's murder. It is in Lüders-Park, on the property on which Lessing lived in 1891/92 until he graduated from high school.

Theodor Lessing Prize

Award ceremony 2013

The German-Israeli Society in Hanover has been awarding the Theodor Lessing Prize for enlightened thinking and action since 2003 . Previous winners are:

  • 2003: The politician of Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen Ilka Schröder for exposing the financing of Palestinian terror from EU funds
  • 2006: The ambassadors Johannes Drexler and Shimon Stein because of their respective efforts for the image of their country in the host country
  • 2008: Wolf Biermann because of his journalistic work for Israel during the second Lebanon war and the first Gaza war
  • 2010: Journalist Esther Schapira for researching the false television report about the death of the Palestinian child Mohamed Al Dura
  • 2013: Iris Berben for her long-term commitment against right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism as well as for Israel's right to exist
  • 2015: The entrepreneur Regine Sixt because of her philanthropic engagement in Israel
  • 2017: To the survivors of the Holocaust Ruth Gröne, Salomon Finkelstein and Henry Korman for their decades of commitment as contemporary witnesses, who reported publicly, in schools and memorial events, to those who were born after their terrible experiences and made an active contribution to reconciliation.
  • 2019: Ahmad Mansour for his contribution to reconciliation and understanding with the State of Israel

Works (selection)

Complete list of fonts at Wikisource

  • African Spirs Epistemology. Münchow, Giessen 1900 (dissertation, University of Erlangen). Full text online
  • The noise. A pamphlet against the noises of our life (= borderline issues of nervous and mental life. Vol. 9). Bergmann, Wiesbaden 1908 (digitized version) .
  • The anti-bully. Monthly papers on the fight against noise, brutality and lack of culture in German economic, commercial and transport life. Hanover. Vol. 1, 1908/09 , Vol. 2, 1910 , Vol. 3, 1911 .
  • Samuel draws the balance and Tomi milks the moral cow or two kings fall. “Antirüpel” publishing house, Hanover 1910 (digitized version ) .
  • Europe and Asia. 1918 (fifth, completely new edition, Leipzig 1930, with the subtitle: Fall of the earth on the spirit ).
  • Jäö or how a Frenchman set out to learn the “roughest” German in Hanover (Theodore le Singe). Gersbach, Hannover 1919. Reprint: Schmorl & von Seefeld, Hannover 2002, ISBN 3-936836-05-1 .
  • History as giving meaning to the meaningless. Beck, Munich 1919 (digitized) . Reprints: Reinicke, Leipzig 1927, and Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-88221-219-5 .
  • The cursed culture. Beck, Munich 1921. Reprint: Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-88221-325-6 .
  • Hair man. The story of a werewolf. 1925.
  • Nietzsche. Ullstein, Berlin 1925 (digitized version) . Reprint: Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1985. With an afterword by Rita Bischof, ISBN 3-88221-358-2 .
  • Hindenburg. With a foreword by Maximilian Harden and an afterword by Herbert Eulenberg . Hapke and Schmidt, Berlin 1925 (digitized) .
  • My pets. 1926.
  • Flowers. 1928.
  • The Jewish self-hatred. Zionist Book Association, Berlin 1930 (digitized version ) . Reprint: Matthes & Seitz, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-88221-347-7 .
  • Germany and its Jews. Neumann & Co., Prague-Karlin 1933.
  • Against the phrase about the Jewish pest. Contribution to the by Heinrich Mann u. a. ed. Book, Amboss Verlag, Prague 1933.
  • Once and never again. Life memories. Post mortem published by Heinrich Mercy Verlag, Prague 1935. After the end of National Socialism, various editions. First Bertelsmann 1969 with a foreword by Hans Mayer (literary scholar) . ( Full text from Gutenberg-DE ).

Selected volumes after 1945: by year of publication:

  • Rainer Marwedel (Ed.): Theodor Lessing - "I threw a message in a bottle into the arctic ocean of history". Essays and features (1923–1933). Luchterhand, Darmstadt 1986, ISBN 3-472-61639-3 (contains political and socio-physiognomic essays, satirical and autobiographical feature sections).
  • Hans Stern (ed.): Theodor Lessing - Words of an intrepid man. Journalism from three decades. Gustav Kiepenheuer, Leipzig and Weimar 1987, ISBN 3-378-00074-0 (selection of more extensive texts, well commented and carefully edited).
  • Rainer Marwedel (Ed.): Theodor Lessing - Haarmann. A Werewolf Story and Other Court Reports. Luchterhand im dtv, Frankfurt 1989 and Munich 1995, ISBN 3-423-12230-7 (thematically closed collection, thoroughly documented).
  • Jörg Wollenberg (Ed.): Theodor Lessing - Selected writings. Donat, Bremen. (Some of the texts in these selected volumes have been severely shortened and insufficiently documented.)
    • Volume 1: Theodor Lessing: "Education is Beauty" - autobiographical testimonies and writings on the 1995 educational reform
    • Volume 2: Theodor Lessing: “We don't participate!” - Writings against nationalism and on the Jewish question 1997
    • Volume 3: Theodor Lessing: "Theaterseele" and "Tomi milks the moral cow" - writings on theater and literature 2003
  • Night reviews. Small writings 1906–1907. Edited and commented by Rainer Marwedel. Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-89244-614-9 ( publisher's presentation ).
  • Eckhard Gruber (Ed.): Theodor Lessing - Das Lazarett. Novellas and feature sections on the First World War. Elektrischer Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-943889-48-2 .
  • Robert Schmitt Scheubel (Ed.): Theodor Lessing - Essais from the Prager Tagblatt 1921–1933. Consassis.de, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-937416-51-9 (arranged in five volumes, only two published).

literature

Lexicon entries:

Biographical:

  • Ekkehard Hieronimus : Theodor Lessing , in: Life and fate. For the inauguration of the synagogue in Hanover , with photos by Hermann Friedrich a. a., Ed .: Landeshauptstadt Hannover, Presseamt, in cooperation with the Jüdische Gemeinde Hannover eV, Hannover: [Beeck in commission], [1963], pp. 124-138
  • Barbara Beßlich : The cursed culture. Theodor Lessing (1872–1933) between criticism of civilization, Jewish self-hatred and the will to reform politically. In: Ariane Huml, Monika Rappenecker (eds.): Jewish intellectuals in the 20th century. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2003, ISBN 3-8260-2310-2 , pp. 77-98 ( preview on Google Books ).
  • Jochen Hartwig: “Be whatever you are.” Theodor Lessing's versatile identity formation as a German and a Jew. Library and information system of the University of Oldenburg, 1999, ISBN 978-3-8142-0690-5 . (Oldenburg contributions to Jewish studies; Vol. 4) (PDF) Text can also be read online]
  • Helmut Heiber : University under the swastika. Part 1: The professor in the Third Reich. Images from the academic province. Saur, Munich 1991, pp. 54-67, note 514, pp. 186 ff.
  • Volker Klimpel : Doctors Death: Unnatural and Violent Death in nine chapters and a biographical appendix. Würzburg 2005, p. 133 f.
  • Elke-Vera Kotowski (Ed.): "History as a meaning of the meaningless". On the life and work of the cultural critic Theodor Lessing (1872–1933). Hildesheim 2006.
  • Elke-Vera Kotowski (Ed.): "I threw a message in a bottle into the immeasurable darkness". Theodor Lessing 1872–1933 (catalog for the traveling exhibition of the same name). Hildesheim 2008.
  • Elke-Vera Kotowski: Theodor Lessing (1872-1933). Philosopher - Feuilletonist - Volksbildner (= Jewish miniatures. Volume 87). Edited by the Centrum Judaicum . Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-941450-05-9 .
  • Rainer Marwedel: Theodor Lessing 1872–1933. A biography. Luchterhand, Darmstadt / Neuwied 1987, ISBN 3-472-86635-7 ( review ).
  • Wolf-Dieter Mechler : Albert Einstein and Theodor Lessing. Parallels. Touchings (= writings of the Historisches Museum Hannover. Vol. 25). Historisches Museum, Hannover 2005, ISBN 3-910073-27-1 (accompanying volume for the exhibition of the same name).
  • Julius H. Schoeps : The unloved outsider. On the life and work of the philosopher and writer Theodor Lessing. In: Walter Grab , Julius H. Schoeps (Ed.): Jews in the Weimar Republic. Tel Aviv 1984, pp. 200-217. Second edition Primus Verlag, Darmstadt 1998, ISBN 978-3-89678-074-4 .
  • Hans Eggert Schröder : Theodor Lessing's autobiographical writings. A comment. Bonn 1970.

Aspects of the work

  • Karl Albert : Philosophy in the shadow of Auschwitz: Edith Stein, Theodor Lessing, Walter Benjamin, Paul Ludwig Landsberg. Dettelbach 1995.
  • Lawrence Baron: Theodor Lessing: Between Jewish Self-Hatred and Zionism. In: Leo Baeck Institute (Ed.): Year Book. Vol. 26, 1981, pp. 323-340 (PDF) .
  • Peter Böhm: Theodor Lessing's attempt at an epistemological foundation of the world. A critical contribution to the aporetic of the philosophy of life. Rodopi, Amsterdam 1986, ISBN 90-6203-808-5 (preview) .
  • Marcus Andreas Born: Friedrich Nietzsche and Theodor Lessing. The reality of historical perspectives. In: ders. (Ed.): Retrospectivity and Retroactivity. Telling, story, truth. Wurzburg 2009.
  • Johannes Henrich: Friedrich Nietzsche and Theodor Lessing. Marburg 2004.
  • Daniel Hoffmann: Theodor Lessing's “Spilled Psominbüchsen”. In: ders. (Ed.): In the new cover God rich. Liturgical poetry in German-Jewish literature of the 20th century. Berlin 2002, pp. 145–158.
  • Elenor Jain: Theodor Lessing's idea of humanity. In search of the principles of life. In: Prima Philosophia. Vol. 15, 2002, No. 3, pp. 351-362.
  • Uwe Kemmler: Need and necessity. The primacy of ethics in Theodor Lessing's philosophy. Bern 2004.
  • Michael Kühntopf-Gentz : God ignored in Judaism: Theodor Lessing's religious philosophy. In: Journal of Religious and Intellectual History . Volume 41, 1989, pp. 134-145.
  • Kurt Mager: Subject and History with Arthur Schopenhauer and Theodor Lessing. In: Perspectives of Philosophy. Vol. 31, 2005, pp. 125-148.
  • Rainer Marwedel (Ed.): Edition to Theodor Lessing of the journal for religious and intellectual history. Vol. 50, 1998 ( content ).
  • Ernst Wolfgang Orth : Comments on Theodor Lessing's topos of history as giving meaning to the meaningless. In: Karl-Heinz Lembeck (ed.): History and stories. Studies on the historical phenomenology of Wilhelm Schapps (= Orbis phenomenologicus. Vol. 7). Würzburg 2004, ISBN 3-8260-2861-9 , pp. 73-85 (preview) .
  • Maja I. Siegrist: Theodor Lessing. Entropic Philosophy - Uncovering and Reconstructing a Repressed Thinker. Peter Lang, Bern 1995.
  • Günter Kunert: Theodor Lessing - The Prophet. Donat Verlag, Bremen, 1995.

Web links

Commons : Theodor Lessing  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Theodor Lessing  - Sources and full texts
Wikiquote: Theodor Lessing  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See once and never again. Lebenserinnerungen , Prague 1935, here cited from the Gütersloh 1969 edition, chapter Die Schule , pp. 104–126; The Two Hells , pp. 135–150.
  2. ^ Theodor Lessing: Once and never again. Life memories. Prague 1935, here quoted from the Gütersloh 1969 edition, p. 109.
  3. ↑ Selected works by Theodor Lessing: Der Lärm + Haarmann + Feind im Land + once and never again + Nietzsche. Musaicum Books, 2017, ISBN 978-80-272-1539-3 , [without page numbers]; Preview over google books.
  4. ^ Hans-Dieter Schmid : Theodor Lessing and the Israelite horticultural school Ahlem. A legend. In: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter . Volume 52, 1998, pp. 289-295.
  5. ↑ Once and never again. Life memories. Prague 1935, here cited from the Gütersloh 1969 edition, chapter Die Befreiung , pp. 235–245.
  6. ↑ Elke-Vera Kotowski: Enemy Dioskuren. Theodor Lessing and Ludwig Klages. The failure of a childhood friendship (1885–1899) (= Sifria. Volume 3). Jüdische Verlagsanstalt, Berlin 2000, p. 7.
  7. ↑ Jörg Wollenberg : From the "Haubinder Judenkrach" about the Odenwald school. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , September 1, 2010.
  8. ↑ Theodor Lessing: African Spirs epistemology. Dissertation, University of Erlangen, 1899. Review , in: Kantstudien. Volume 6, 1901, p. 102 f.
  9. ↑ See once and never again. Memorabilia , Prague 1935, quoted here from the Gütersloh 1969 edition, pp. 19-27 (text by Gutenberg) .
  10. ↑ Oliver Pfohlmann: "Damned night criticism!" - Theodor Lessing's excursions into theater criticism in the Göttingen winter season 1906/1907. In: Literaturkritik.de , September 11, 2006.
  11. ^ Theodor Lessing: Nachtkritiken: Kleine Schriften 1906-1907. Announcement of the publisher, Wallstein Verlag .
  12. ↑ Samuel draws the balance and Tomi milks the moral cow or two kings fall. A warning to Germans to write satires. By Theodor Lessing. With literary contributions by Thomas Mann, Samuel Lublinski and the forty most moral German poets and thinkers. Verlag des Antirüpel, Hanover 1910.
  13. ↑ Quotation from: Commentary on Der Doktor Lessing. In: Thomas Mann: Essays. Volume 1: Spring Storm. Fischer, Frankfurt 1993, pp. 347-348.
  14. ^ Heinrich Detering: Jews, women, writers. In: Thomas Mann and Judaism (= Thomas Mann Studies. Volume 30). Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt 2004, p. 26. See - in addition to Lessing's writing, which in the second edition already cites many reviews - Hans Eggert Schröder: Theodor Lessing's autobiographical writings. A comment. Bonn 1970, pp. 61 and 125 f.
  15. ↑ Hindenburg. In: Prager Tagblatt , April 25, 1925, p. 3 ( digitized version , full text ).
  16. ^ "Jews out, Lessing out!" The Theodor Lessing case: How radical and ethnic students drove a university professor out of his office and his hometown. In: University of Hanover (Ed.): AlumniCampus No. 10, 2013, p. 14 f. ( PDF, 1.1 MB , with picture of Lessing after a persecution by students armed with clubs); Jörg Wollenberg : The first test on the example. In: Ossietzky No. 19, 2005. See also some newspaper articles in the Prager Tagblatt .
  17. ^ Hugo Thielen : Lessing, Theodor. In: Dirk Böttcher (Ed.): Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon . From the beginning to the present. Hanover 2002, p. 232.
  18. ↑ Antonín Klimek: republice Vítejte v první. Havran, Prague 2003, ISBN 80-86515-33-8 , pp. 209 f.
  19. ^ A b c Karl W. Schubsky: Theodor Lessing: Death in Marienbad. In: HaGalil , February 14, 2016.
  20. ↑ Jochen Hartwig: “Be whatever you are”: Theodor Lessing's versatile identity formation as a German and a Jew. Library and information system of the University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg 1999, ISBN 3-8142-0690-8 , p. 72 (PDF, 1.3 MB) ; Martin Rath: Theodor Lessing: persecution and murder of a German professor. In: Legal Tribune Online , August 26, 2018.
  21. ^ Theodor Lessing: Once and never again. P. 404.
  22. ^ Theodor Lessing: Studies on the axiomatic of values. Studies of pure ethics and law. 2nd expanded edition, Meiner, Leipzig 1914, p. 28.
  23. ↑ Theodor Lessing: History as giving meaning to the meaningless. Reprint: Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1983, p. 191.
  24. ↑ Theodor Lessing: History as giving meaning to the meaningless. Reprint: Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1983, pp. 24-25
  25. ↑ Theodor Lessing: Antaios and Herakles or: The wrestling match of life and spirit. [1921] In: Theodor Lessing: The cursed culture. With an essay by Elisabeth Lenk. Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1995, pp. 55–72, here p. 55.
  26. ↑ Only 34.2% for “Lessing University” ( Memento from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ). In: Gruene-Hannover.de , February 1, 2006.
  27. ↑ Memorial plaque for Theodor Lessing. Library Society Hameln, half-year program 2013 / II (PDF, 7.9 MB); Bernd Bruns: Theodor Lessing. A high school graduate from Hameln. In: Yearbook of the Museum Association Hameln. Volume 2015, pp. 119–144.
  28. ^ J. Weil: Theodor Lessing Prize for Middle East Reporting. In: Israelnetz.de . September 8, 2010, accessed July 27, 2018 .
  29. ^ Theodor Lessing Prize: Award for Iris Berben. In: Jüdische Allgemeine . February 15, 2013, accessed September 10, 2019 .
  30. ↑ Monty Aviel Zeev Ott: Awarding of the Theodor Lessing Prize 2017. German-Israeli Society Hanover , April 25, 2017, archived from the original on August 18, 2017 ; accessed on September 10, 2019 .
  31. ^ Author Mansour receives Theodor Lessing Prize. In: deutschlandfunkkultur.de . September 9, 2019, accessed September 10, 2019 .
  32. ↑ Covers the following people: Paul Rée , Otto Weininger , Arthur Trebitsch , Max Steiner , Walter Calé , Maximilian Harden .
  33. ↑ Theodor Lessing destroyed his memoirs again and again and wrote them three times over the course of 20 years, "always with the same self-tormenting doubt, not impersonal, not being able to act honestly enough".
personal data
SURNAME Lessing, Theodor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lessing, Karl Theodor Richard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH February 8, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH August 31, 1933
Place of death Marienbad , Czechoslovakia