Traugott Fuchs

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Traugott Fuchs, self-portrait, around 1940

Traugott Fuchs (born November 23, 1906 in Lohr , Alsace , † June 21, 1997 in Istanbul / Turkey ) was a German literature professor, philologist and painter in Istanbul. As a refugee from Nazi Germany in exile in Turkey , he contributed significantly to the development of teaching in German at the Istanbul universities.

Life

Traugott Fuchs was born in 1906 in the Alsatian village of Lohr as the fourth child of the pastor family Karl and Adelheid Fuchs. The influence of the - Urelsässischen - maternal family and the environment, especially the city of Metz , where Karl Fuchs was pastor from 1916-1919, awakened Traugott's inclination to the French language and culture and prepared his choice of studies. When Metz / Lorraine became French after the First World War, the Prussian-minded father voted for Germany and went to Schmalkalden in Thuringia with the family. There Traugott Fuchs also passed the Abitur at the secondary school.

He began studying Romance languages, but also philosophy, art history and German studies in Berlin, and continued in Heidelberg and Marburg , there, especially with the Romance scholars Erich Auerbach and Leo Spitzer . Admitted to the inner circle around Spitzer, he followed it to Cologne and became his assistant at the chair there. He started a doctoral thesis on "The Je ne sais quoi in 18th-century French literature". Fuchs went to the University of Caen , France, for a year-long editing . When he returned in 1933, he found Germany in the hands of the Nazi regime. The honored Spitzer is removed from the chair as a Jew. Fuchs organized a protest meeting in Spitzer's favor, was temporarily arrested and forced out of the university.

Around this time Turkey began the Ataturk university reform and accepted numerous professors, scientists and specialists who could no longer live in Germany and thus not only found refuge on the Bosporus (Fritz Neumark), but also made a contribution to the Construction of modern Turkey. This included Spitzer and Fuchs, whom Spitzer had to follow to Istanbul in February 1934. First he taught French at the foreign language school, then on Spitzer's order, instead of a missing German professor, he founded the German department of the University of Istanbul . This gave rise to his main task, teaching German language and literature history, which he practiced until 1983, almost 50 years, and since 1943 also at the American Robert College , which was converted into the state Bosphorus University in 1971 . While most of the emigrants left Turkey before 1945 or soon afterwards, Fuchs stayed there until his death in 1997.

Spitzer left Turkey in 1936 for a call to the USA, his successor was Erich Auerbach from Marburg , who was also persecuted by the Nazi regime . A circle of young German and Turkish philologists formed around them, in which the blossoming of academic life in the renewed Turkey was shown in an invigorating way. Fuchs returned to his doctoral thesis, which was accepted by Spitzer, but before it was handed in, it was destroyed in a house fire in 1943.

After Turkey joined the war alliance against Nazi Germany in 1944, it interned all German nationals, emigrants and Nazi supporters. Fuchs was interned in Çorum , Anatolia, for 13 months. Far from his university, he painted intensively under difficult conditions. His "Çorum pictures" today give vivid testimony to the country and people and life in Central Anatolia before 1950.

Back in Istanbul at the end of 1945, he resumed teaching. The campus of Robert College on the Bosphorus became the center of his life. He was deeply rooted in the emigre milieu, and after most of them left, extensive correspondence kept him within a worldwide network of former colleagues and friends. His friendship with the orientalist Hellmut Ritter , who also lived on the Bosporus for many years after the war, and from 1953 his correspondence with Hermann Hesse were decisive . Most importantly, he continued to paint in evolving styles. It was presented in Istanbul with three exhibitions (1956, 1986, 1995).

Processed out of his apartment, Fuchs suffered a stroke at the age of 85. He spent - spiritually alive - another five years in the Austrian St. George Hospital in Beyoglu until he died on July 21, 1997.

meaning

Picturesque work

This is the more visible part of Fuchs' work: around 200 paintings (oil, tempera) and several thousand sketches and drawings. The objects are people, landscapes, urban vedutas of the Bosporus and Istanbul, Anatolia and the Mediterranean, the style of painting is very variable, after initially following his uncle Daniel Krencker, he strived for attention to detail. According to A. Bonnet, "the not always ... and very differently appearing ..." naivety "... gives the pictures their idiosyncratic character and deeply felt truthfulness ... There are precise, almost pedantically drawn and painted pictures and then again quite boisterous, abstract notes ... Again and again, Fuchs reverts to themes and painting styles or plays on different registers at the same time. What connects all pictures ... .. is the unconditional devotion to the subject, the painted, the painting and the drawing. " ... Even though "the world in the pictures ... is not without melancholy, you can still feel how something very precious and fragile is to be captured here. The contrast between the vastness of the horizons and the diversity of what is depicted and the modesty of the picture carriers leave this evidence an almost visual obsession, a longing and longing all the more haunting and touching. At the same time, they testify to Fuchs' unconditional love for the country ... which probably offered and was a "sweet and sad" Arcadia ". And on to the sketches: "The ductus of the quick notation is reminiscent of Arabic calligraphy, with which it was able to express something about the depicted with the form itself. This original and, although fleeting-looking, expressive line must be appreciated as a genuine Fuchs' artistic invention. " A whole series of images have dreamlike or mythological content. A sensitive interpretation of two of these images by Martin Vialon relates them to the exile situation.

  • Traugott Fuchs, in the hamam , 1940s

  • Traugott Fuchs, Red Rocks on Kinali Ada , 1960s

  • Traugott Fuchs, sailing ship off Istanbul, 1950s

  • Traugott Fuchs, young Turk

There were exhibitions of Fuchs' pictures in Turkey in 1955 ( Çorumand Anatolian Pictures ", Städtische Galerie Beyoglu, Istanbul, and 1956 Goethe-Institut Ankara), 1986 ( Çorum and Anatolian Pictures", Cultural Heritage Museum at the Bosporus University, Rumeli Hisar, Istanbul) and 1995 ( Traugott Fuchs - A life in Turkey , Deniz Müzesi with Goethe-Institut Istanbul). A selection of Fuchs pictures and drawings was compiled for Deutsche Welle, Cologne and exhibited there in 2001, and then also in 2001 at the DAI Heidelberg, 2003 at the Society for Fine Arts, Palais Walderdorff, Trier, and 2004 at the Literary Society Oberrhein im Max- Palais, Karlsruhe, and in 2008 in Fuchs' hometown Schmalkalden.

  • Traugott fox, buffalo

  • Traugott Fuchs, " Asleep I was carried back to my homeland in 1961. Cf. also M. Vialon, source 3

  • Traugott Fuchs, nocturnal view of the Bosporus near Rumeli Hisar

  • Traugott Fuchs, woman with jugs , 1945

  • Traugott Fuchs, Sardis

There are reproductions of his pictures in the catalogs for three of the exhibitions mentioned:

  • Traugott Fuchs Çorum and Anatolian Pictures , Boğaziçi Üniversitesi, Cultural Heritage Museum Publications I, 1986, Bebek, Istanbul
  • Traugott Fuchs - a life in Turkey , trilingual, S. Artemel, N. Buran Kurcoglu, S. Karantay (eds.), CECA Publications, Istanbul 1995.
  • Pictures of longing - Traugott Fuchs - a life on the Bosporus , Hermann Fuchs (Ed.), Deutsche Welle, 2001.

Furthermore in the picture calendars

  • Traugott Fuchs 2003 , for Octapharma from nonmodo communication design, www.nonmodo.de, Cologne, 2002
  • Traugott Fuchs Perpetual Calendar, nonmodo communication design, www.nonmodo.de, Cologne 2006, ISBN 3-00-017938-0

Fonts

Fuchs' pronounced modesty meant that despite his immense amount of writing, he hardly published at all and did not work on his academic career either. In his estate there are - unpublished - over 400 poems, stories such as B. Didyma or My visit to Hermann Hesse , the treatise Vital Etymologies - The Man , numerous and detailed notes on the literature courses, the translation of the old Turkish legend Mevlid , translations of contemporary Turkish poetry (e.g. by Nazim Hikmet ) and much more. Fuchs' translation of Gustave Flaubert's legend of Saint Julian the Hospitable was published in Istanbul in 1989 in bibliophile equipment with woodcuts by the graphic artist Herrad Fuchs. Some of Fuchs' poems were interpreted by Martin Vialon (see individual reference 3), also in relation to the problem of exile. In this context, it is also worth mentioning Fuchs' immense letter correspondence, which is not only of interest for the history of emigration from the 3rd Reich and the Europeanization of the Turkish Republic: thanks to their careful design and highly differentiated language, most of them are small works of art (e.g. the one to Hermann Hesse; see also below under estate). A suitable (sociological?) Appraisal is still awaiting Fuchs' Günaydin diaries, which have been kept for decades and in which he wrote ironic comments - mostly in rhyme - on current photographs or caricatures from the mass newspaper Günaydin .

Teaching

Although not made concrete in objects, his commitment to teaching and his talent for motivating his students represent an essential element of Fuchs' effectiveness (see also under Life ). Generations of German students have gone through his school, and the extraordinary effect of his teaching and his personality on the spread of German language and literature, and indeed culture as a whole, is documented by numerous testimonials. His literary interpretation, trained by Leo Spitzer and Erich Auerbach, can be deduced from the extensive lecture notes that have been preserved (see below under estate).

estate

Almost the entire estate is located in the rooms of the Bosporus University, Istanbul-Rumeli Hisar, where Traugott Fuchs' center of life has been since 1946. As a result of a project by the University's Historical Department, the estate was transferred to the Traugott Fuchs Cultural and Historical Heritage Archive and has been available for artistic and scientific work on it since January 2008, for example on the history of the German emigration to Turkey 1933–1945 (contact via the archive website, see below). The estate includes the pictures and drawings, the writings (see above) including a number of his letters, the letters he received, photographs and his library. The letters from Fuchs to Hellmut Ritter are in the Hessian State Archives in Marburg, those to Hermann Hesse in the German Literature Archives Marbach or in the Swiss Literature Archives in Bern. Hesse's letters to Fuchs were transferred to the Hesse Museum in Calw.

literature

The flight of German academics to Turkey 1933–1945
  • Fritz Neumark: Refuge on the Bosporus. German scholars, politicians and artists in emigration 1933-1953 (Fuchs: p. 92)
  • Anne Dietrich: Being German in Istanbul Leske & Budrich, Opladen 1998 (series of publications by the Center for Turkish Studies Vol. 13) ISBN 3-8100-2188-1 (Fuchs: pp. 258–394) Download
  • Regine Erichsen: Turkey as a place of refuge. Emigration of German researchers 1933-45 in: "Research. Messages from the DFG" 2-3, 1995, pp. 33-35
Biography with exile
  • Traugott Fuchs: A Short Story of my Life in: Çorum and Anatolian Pictures so (exhibitions) pp. 7-14
  • Georg Stauth & Faruk Birtek (eds): Istanbul. Spiritual wanderings from the "World in Shards" Transcript, Bielefeld 2007 ISBN 978-3-89942-474-4 (especially about Fuchs and Hellmut Ritter ). Esp. Martin Vialon: T. Fuchs between exile and adopted home on the Bosporus pp. 53–130, and Yasemin Özbek: Heimat im Exil. Everyday life on the Bosporus in the letters from T. Fuchs to Rosemarie Heyd-Burkart, pp. 159–190. See also p. 271–273 and from p. 280: List of publications by (6 titles) and about Fuchs (27 titles)
  • Süheyla Artemel & Lale Babaoglu (Eds): Gerald Wiemers and Suzan Kalayci: Bonds of Exile Bosporus University, December 2007
  • Suzan MR Kalayci: The Traugott Fuchs Cultural & Historical Heritage Catalog ISSUU document, [1]

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fritz Neumark: Refuge on the Bosporus. German scholars, politicians and artists in emigration 1933-1953 Joseph Knecht, Frankfurt 1980, ISBN 3-7820-0443-4 , p. 92
  2. ^ Anne Bonnet (Art History Institute, University of Bonn), Et in arcadia ego? in Pictures of Longing - Traugott Fuchs, a life on the Bosporus , Hermann Fuchs (Ed.), catalog for the exhibition at Deutsche Welle, Cologne, 2001
  3. ↑ Martin Vialon, Traugott Fuchs between exile and adopted home on the Bosporus. Meditations on classic picture and text motifs , in Stauth, Georg & Birtek, Faruk (ed.): Istanbul. Spiritual wanderings from the "World in Shards" Transcript, Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-89942-474-4 (mainly about Traugott Fuchs and Hellmut Ritter)
  4. ↑ sz B. Articles by Süheyla Artemel and Nataşa Masanoviç, Nedret Kuran Burçoglu, Walter B. Denny, Özer Kabaş, Şara Sayin in S. Artemel, N. Buran Kurçoglu, S. Karantay (eds.): "Traugott Fuchs - Ein in life spent in Turkey ", CECA-Publications, catalog for the exhibition of pictures by Traugott Fuchs in the exhibition rooms of Deniz Müzesi, Istanbul, April 18-30, 1995.
  5. ↑ Project management: Selcuk Esenbel, Bosporus University (BU); Archive management: Süheyla Artemel (BU and Yeditepe University) and Lale Babaoğlu (BU); Archiving and catalog: Suzan Kalayci (BU) and Gerald Wiemers (Leipzig)
personal data
SURNAME Fuchs, Traugott
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German literature professor, philologist and painter
DATE OF BIRTH November 23, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Lohr , Alsace
DATE OF DEATH June 21, 1997
Place of death Istanbul