Traugott Konstantin Austria

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Traugott Konstantin Oesterreich (born September 15, 1880 in Stettin , † July 28, 1949 in Tübingen ) was a German historian of philosophy, religious philosopher and psychologist .

Life

Austria's father was Heinrich Oesterreich (1842–1918), most recently secret accountant in the Prussian War Ministry in Berlin. After childhood years in his native city of Stettin, Konstantin Oesterreich grew up in Berlin. After he had passed the Abitur examination at the Prinz-Heinrich-Gymnasium in 1899 , he studied mathematics, physics and astronomy for four semesters at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin in the winter semester 1899/1900. He then switched to philosophy and psychology. In 1905 he did his doctorate with Friedrich Paulsen and Carl Stumpf on the subject of Kant and Metaphysics (Berlin 1906). phil.

After five years as a private scholar and scientific collaboration with the Neurobiological Institute in Berlin, he completed his habilitation in 1910 at the University of Tübingen for philosophy ( The German Philosophy in the Second Half of the XIXth Century , Habilitation Lecture, held on July 30, 1910 at the University Tübingen, Tübingen 1910). In the winter semester of 1922/1923 he was appointed scheduled professor of philosophy and psychology at the University of Tübingen. In this academic position he taught until 1933.

In his political visions, Konstantin Oesterreich believed he was in the tradition of the German-Prussian revolutionary liberation struggle of 1848. During the political unrest of 1917 he had been close to the Volksbund für Freiheit und Vaterland . He expressly welcomed the political change triggered by the First World War from the monarchy to the democratic form of the Weimar Republic and made no secret of his pacifist attitude.

In connection with its ideological convictions, Austria was denounced by professional colleagues after the National Socialists came to power . In the summer of 1933 he was forcibly retired from the Nazi government. The Württemberg Ministry of Culture also asserted, among other things, that Austria, which formally belonged to the Protestant faith but did not practice it, had a Jewish woman, Dr. phil. Maria Austria born Raich, was married. The couple had a daughter. During the Nazi dictatorship he received a reduced pension; he and his family were largely spared political persecution.

After the end of the Second World War he was reinstated as a teacher in the summer of 1945, with the rank of personal professor. Against his violent protest, Austria was retired on April 1, 1947 for reasons of age. He then suffered a stroke; after another stroke, which left him paralyzed, he was unable to work. Konstantin Oesterreich died on July 28, 1949 after being handcuffed to a sick bed for two years.

His estate was handed over to the archives of the University of Tübingen for care in 1984 by his daughter and then transferred to it in 1990 (inventory signature: UAT 399). In 1992 documents from the estate of Maria Oesterreich, b. Raich, added, which date from 1905 to 1947.

plant

In the area of ​​the history of philosophy, Austria, at a critical distance from Neo-Kantianism, has, in addition to individual publications on Kant, Schelling, Möbius and Driesch, above all in the update of Friedrich Ueberweg's " Outline of the History of Philosophy " with extensive revisions and additions to the 11th and 12th edition of the 4th and 5th volume, which appeared in 1916, 1923 and 1928, worked on philosophy from the beginning of the 19th century to the present, that is, until the 1920s. This includes the change from a chronology to a systematic order as well as new articles on topics such as Darwinism, Monism or occultism as well as on important then younger philosophers such as Bolzano, Nietzsche, Eduard von Hartmann, Wilhelm Wundt, Dilthey or Rudolf Eucken.

Konstantin Oesterreich's scientific work covers philosophy and in particular the fields of psychology and psychopathology. While preparing for his habilitation, he had already dealt with questions of ego identity and personality constitution. Following on from this, he dealt increasingly with problems of the identity crisis and the split in personality . The preoccupation with what he called the "depersonalization problem" meant that he also took an unbiased attitude towards parapsychic phenomena and tried to research them. Impressed by meetings with well-known media in which he had participated, he underlined the raison d'être of the research area parapsychology. Together with Hans Driesch and Rudolf Tischner , he called for the establishment of a German “Central Institute for Parapsychology”, based on the model of the British Society for Psychical Research .

He saw additional possibilities for deepening knowledge in paranormal phenomena and forms of extra-sensory perception. It is necessary to place philosophical epistemology on a broader basis that takes these phenomena into account.

Knowing that on the one hand religious practice corresponds to human needs and is also desirable and on the other hand that the established world religions cannot all be right at the same time, he thought of a new, superior denominational "system" that did not contradict conventional religions. Influenced by Adolf Harnack's research on the development of early Christianity in the history of religion, he took the view that in the modern, technological world only a religion that renounces church dogmas and the mediation of sacraments by priests can develop sustainability.

He called for a "Hellenization of the new religion". This “system” of such a “new religion” should bring about that “with innermost conviction directly, without the mediation of reflection, art and culture are experienced and felt as divine origin.”

Grave in the Tübingen city cemetery

Fonts (selection)

  • Kant and Metaphysics (Kant Studies, Supplement No. 2), Berlin 1906; previously as a dissertation print: Halle 1905.
  • The German philosophy in the second half of the XIX. Century , Tübingen 1910.
  • The phenomenology of the ego in its basic problems , Leipzig 1910.
  • The religious experience as a philosophical problem . Lecture given at the Kant Society in Berlin on April 14, 1915, Berlin 1915.
  • Introduction to the psychology of religion as a basis for the philosophy of religion and the history of religion , Berlin 1917.
  • The contemporary world view , Berlin 1920; 2nd edition Berlin 1925.
  • The Obsession , Langensalza 1921.
  • Occultism in the modern worldview , Dresden 1921.
  • Foreign philosophy from the beginning of the 19th century to the present day . Überweg Outline of the History of Philosophy, Part Five. Berlin 1923, edited by Traugott Konstantin Oesterreich.
  • The philosophical meaning of mediumistic phenomena . Extended version of the lecture given at the Second International Congress for Parapsychological Research in Warsaw, Stuttgart 1924.
  • Basic concepts of parapsychology. A Philosophical Study , Pfullingen 1931.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Traugott Konstantin Austria, The state idea of ​​the new Germany. Prolegomena to a New State Philosophy , Leipzig 1919.
  2. ↑ Traugott Konstantin Austria, From the ideal of power to the ideal of culture. Words of German self-reflection , Charlottenburg 1919.

Web links

Commons : Traugott Oesterreich  - Collection of images
personal data
SURNAME Austria, Traugott Konstantin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Austria, Traugott
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German religious philosopher and psychologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Szczecin
DATE OF DEATH July 28, 1949
Place of death Tübingen