Thomas Cave

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thomas Höhle at the presentation

Thomas Michael Höhle (born December 10, 1926 in Aue ; † January 9, 2012 in Magdeburg ) was a German literary scholar and historian . He lived and worked in Halle an der Saale from 1963 to 2008 . In his scientific work, Höhle followed the Marxist direction of literary studies, which he understood dialectically and thus avoided a rigid approach. He was married until 1999 and had two children from this marriage.

Childhood and youth

Thomas Höhle first grew up in Schwarzenberg / Erzgebirge . In 1932 the family moved to Erkrath near Düsseldorf . Thomas Höhle started school here. Immediately after the National Socialists came to power , his father was imprisoned in a concentration camp as a member of the KPD from 1933 to 1934. The experience remained formative for the later development. After the father was released, the family moved to Kassel . There he attended the Wilhelmsgymnasium. Since the family was bombed out in 1943, he continued school in Göttingen . In 1944 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and he finished his Abitur with an emergency certificate .

education and study

Before the end of the Second World War he deserted and returned to his parents in Zierenberg near Kassel. He began training as a banker before he began studying history, German and art history at the Philosophical Faculty of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen in 1945 . His teachers in Göttingen included Klaus Ziegler and Kurt May . Already a member of the KPD, he founded a communist student group.

Out of political convictions, Thomas Höhle moved to Leipzig University in 1947 in what was then the Soviet occupation zone . Here he heard from Hans Mayer , Ernst Engelberg , Walter Markov and Wieland Herzfelde as well as Werner Krauss , Hermann Budzislawski and Ernst Bloch . While still a student, he became a research assistant to Hans Mayer. In 1950, Thomas Höhle completed this course as a social scientist.

Scientific activity

In 1951 Thomas Höhle was appointed to the "Fritz Heckert" union college in Bernau . Here he met Hermann Duncker . With a thesis on Franz Mehring he received his doctorate in 1954 at the University of Leipzig. He completed his habilitation in 1978 at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg .

In 1957 he received a teaching position at the Humboldt University in Berlin . The focus of his work there was the Enlightenment and especially Gotthold Ephraim Lessing . At the age of only 33 he became a professor with a teaching assignment, making him one of the youngest professors in the GDR .

From 1960 to 1963 he was Associate Professor and Head of the German Studies Department at the University of Warsaw . After the devastating consequences of the Nazi regime for Poland and the resulting resentment against everything German, this was a particular challenge. The main areas of teaching in Warsaw were Enlightenment, Classical and Romanticism. The 20th century was dealt with by special lectures on Bertolt Brecht and Arnold Zweig .

From 1963 until his retirement in 1992, Thomas Höhle worked as a Germanist at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, succeeding Ernst Hadermann . Until 1970 he was director of the German Institute, from then on he held the chair and headed the research area for modern German literature. His teaching and research activities focused on literature from 1750 to 1850, especially Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Christoph Martin Wieland , Gottfried August Bürger and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe . The scientific investigation of Mehring and its effects remained a key issue over the entire time of his active career, despite the focus points mentioned here. In recent years in particular, he has endeavored in several publications to scientifically link the literary and historical phenomena, especially with the history of the labor movement. Here, for example, Mehring's contribution to the intellectual education of simple cave workers is of particular importance. The impression that Mehring made on the researcher is underlined by Höhle's introduction to the Lessing reading book (Lessing - A reading book for our time), which, in the Mehring tradition, tried to make the main ideas and works of the great Enlightenment accessible to a wide audience .

Even after his retirement, he held guest lectures at the universities in Halle (Saale) and Chemnitz . After completing these lectures, he remained scientifically active until his death.

Other work

For 40 years Thomas Höhle was chairman of the local association of the Goethe Society in Halle (Saale). In 2002 he was made an honorary member of the International Goethe Society Weimar eV.

Furthermore, Höhle was a member of the Ernst Ortlepp Society in Zeitz and a founding member of a support association for the Gottfried August Citizens Museum in Molmerswende in the Harz region. This small literary museum in the birthplace of the Münchhausen poet has been conceptually designed by him since 1972. The focus of the collection is on translations of the Munchausen texts as well as illustrations of Munchausen stories, some by internationally known artists. Settings of citizen poems by various composers are also compiled.

Thomas Höhle in front of the Bürger-Museum in Molmerswende; To his left is a bust of the poet

Thomas Höhle was characterized by extensive cultural interest. In the 1960s to 1980s, this led to participation in various initiatives for the maintenance and care of valuable facilities and facilities. He and his colleague, the art historian Hans-Joachim Mrusek , managed to preserve Reichardt's garden in Halle, which was to fall victim to an expansion of the Bergzoo Halle. A plaque is currently illegible due to vandalism. Johann Friedrich Reichardt was at times a close friend of Goethe, who stayed in Giebichenstein several times . The preservation of the garden as a place of Goethe memorial and ultimately also the memory of the composer and revolutionary friend Reichardt is the result of this commitment. Mrusek and Höhle also initiated the preservation of the Bauhaus in Dessau, the structure of which was in danger.

Furthermore, Höhle was a member of the GDR Writers' Association from 1957 until its end.

For family reasons, Thomas Höhle moved to Magdeburg at the beginning of 2008, where he died shortly after he was 85 years old.

Publications

Independent publications (selection)

  • Franz Mehring . His way to Marxism . Berlin 1956. - 2nd ext. Ed. (With a selection from the early writings of Franz Mehring). Berlin 1958.
  • The classical period in German literature from 1750 to 1830 . 4 booklets. University of the German trade unions "Fritz Heckert", Bernau 1959 (teaching material for distance learning).
  • Franz Mehring: Collected writings . Edited by Thomas Höhle, Hans Koch and Josef Schleifstein . Berlin 1960 ff. 16 volumes.
  • History of German Literature 1806–1830 . (In collaboration with Hans-Georg Werner). Berlin 1978. ( History of German Literature from the Beginnings to the Present . Volume 7, Part 2).
  • Halle studies on the effects of language and literature . Edited by Thomas Höhle, Eva-Maria Krech , Gotthard Lerchner and Dietrich Sommer. Hall 1980 ff.
  • Lessing . A reader for our time . Introduced by Thomas Höhle. Weimar 1975.
  • Samuel Richardson : Morals for the Young in the Chosen Aesopian Fables . (Translated by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing). Edited and with an afterword to the facsimile edition by Thomas Höhle. Leipzig 1977.
  • Educational colloquia in Halberstadt .
    • Lessing and Spinoza . Published by Thomas Höhle. Hall 1982.
    • Wieland Colloquium Halberstadt 1983 . Published by Thomas Höhle. Hall 1985.
    • Travel literature in the context of the French Revolution . Published by Thomas Höhle. Hall 1987.
    • The late work of Christoph Martin Wieland and its significance for the German Enlightenment . Published by Thomas Höhle. Hall 1988.
  • Johann Michael Afsprung : Journey through some of the Swiss cantons . Edited (and with an afterword) by Thomas Höhle. Leipzig 1990.

Contributions to other writings (selection)

  • "The Most Valuable Reason". Goethe's judgment in 1818 on the French Revolution . In: Wiss. Journal of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg , XVIII / 69 G, no. 2, pp. 223–232.
  • Friedrich Schlegel's examination of Lessing. On the problem of the relationship between romanticism and the Enlightenment . In: Weimar Contributions . Berlin 2/1977. Pp. 121-135.
  • Polish struggle for freedom and Prussian democracy. On Johann Jacoby's early political journalism . In: Germanica Wratislaviensia XXXIV, Wrocław 1978. pp. 69-78.
  • The song of the king and the fairy tale of the bloody tiger. On the subject of Lessing and Prussia . In: Goethe-Jahrbuch , Volume 98, Weimar 1981. pp. 49–61.
  • Problems of Marxist Lessing Research . In: Weimar Contributions , Berlin, 3/1980. Pp. 5-31.
  • Intuition and concept or effect without counteraction. Comments on Lessing and Winckelmann . In: Hallesche studies on the effects of language and literature . 1/1980. Pp. 7-27.
  • The "Swabian Seume". About the radical democratic journalist Johann Michael Afsprung (1748–1808) . In: Weimarer contributions, magazine for literary studies, aesthetics and cultural theory . 29th year 1983, issue 12. Berlin, pp. 2082–2091.
  • The King and the Jacobins. Johann Michael Afsprung's polemic against King Frederick II. “De la littérature allemande” . In: Hallesche studies on the effects of language and literature , 7/1983. Pp. 4-18.
  • The Helvetic Republic (1798–1803) as the historical background of the origin and problematic of Schiller's “ Wilhelm Tell ” . In: Friedrich Schiller. Offer and Discourse. Additions poetry contemporary . Edited by Helmut Brandt. Weimar 1987. pp. 320-328.
  • On the history and problems of the Marx biography . In: Statements about Marx and Engels . Results of two colloquia . Published by Thomas Höhle. Halle 1988, pp. 4-10.
  • Revolution, civil war and new constitution in Cyrene. Reflections on Wieland's "Aristippus" and the reenactments of the French Revolution . In: "You, and not us". The French Revolution and its effect on Northern Germany . Edited by Arno Herzig , Inge Stephan, Hans G. Winter. 2 volumes. Hamburg 1989. Volume 2. ISBN 3-926174-14-5 , pp. 591-605.
  • About the stories that Gottfried August Bürger added to the “Münchhausen” book . In: GA Bürger and JW Gleim . Edited by Hans-Joachim Kertscher . Tübingen 1996, pp. 149-158.
  • Social Democrats and Intellectuals. Disputes between Liebknecht and Mehring in the nineties of the 19th century . In: A Society of Freedom, Equality, Fraternity. Contributions from the conference on the 100th anniversary of Wilhelm Liebknecht's death on October 21 and 22, 2000 in Kiel. Edited by Wolfgang Beutin u. a. (Pp. 83-97). ( Bremen contributions to the history of literature and ideas . Edited by Thomas Metscher and Wolfgang Beutin. Volume 34). Frankfurt am Main u. a. 2001.
  • Heinrich Heine and the German pre-war social democracy . In: Year Book for Research on the History of the Labor Movement , Volume II, May 2006. pp. 102-109.
  • Literature and authors at the time of the Enlightenment (in St. Gallen: Johann Michael Afsprung, Ulrich Bräker , Johann Ludwig Ambühl , Karl Müller-Friedberg , Georg Joachim Zollikofer , Jakob Wegelin , Christoph Girtanner ) . In: St. Gallen. History of a literary culture. Monastery - city - canton - region. Published by Werner Wunderlich with the assistance of Rupert Kalkofen. 2 volumes. St. Gallen 1999. Volume 1: pp. 425-470; Volume 2: pp. 457-494.
  • Goethe in the GDR. Introduction. Viewpoints . In: Goethe in the GDR. Concepts, points of contention and new perspectives. Conference contributions. Research and discussion group GDR history . Issues on GDR history 79. pp. 5–13. Berlin 2003.
  • Herbert Ihering and Karl Kraus the insurmountable . In: Berlin - Vienna. A cultural bridge . Berlin 2007, pp. 50–57 (Pankower lectures, issue 102).

More fonts

  • Enlightenment and tradition. A ceremony for Thomas Höhle (= Hallesche studies on the effects of language and literature. Vol. 13). Edited by Dieter Heinemann. Halle (Saale) 1986.
  • Outsiders of the Enlightenment. International Colloquium Halle an der Saale 26. – 28. June 1992 (= Bremen contributions to the history of literature and ideas. Vol. 14). Edited by Günter Hartung. Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1995. ISBN 978-3631465004
  • Free flight for the free spirit. Contributions to German literature. For Thomas Höhle (= writings of the Ernst Ortlepp Society. No. 2). Edited by Dieter Bähtz, Manfred Beetz and Roland Rittig. Leipzig 2003. ISBN 978-3936522426

literature

  • Cave, Thomas . In: Collegium Politicum at the University of Hamburg. Historiography Working Group (Ed.): Historians in Central Germany . Ferd. Dümmerls Verlag, Bonn, Hanover, Hamburg, Munich 1965, p. 44.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Obituary for Prof. Dr. Thomas Höhle , website of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg , accessed on January 18, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Cave, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cave, Thomas Michael (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German literary scholar and historian
DATE OF BIRTH December 10, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Aue
DATE OF DEATH January 9, 2012
Place of death Magdeburg