Ulrich Jahn

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Ulrich Jahn (born April 15, 1861 in Züllchow , Randow district , † March 20, 1900 in Berlin ) was a German philologist , folklorist and storyteller . He published u. a. three volumes of folk tales: legends, tales and fairy tales. The most famous band, Folk Tales from Pomerania , earned him the reputation of the "Pomeranian Grimm".

Life

education

Ulrich Jahn was one of ten children of Gustav Jahn (1818–1888) and his wife Dorothea geb. from Dieskau. His father Gustav Jahn was the head of the Züllchower rescue house and of the Brethren Institution of the Inner Mission. After attending the Marienstiftsgymnasium in Stettin , Jahn first studied theology and philosophy in Leipzig and Berlin . But soon he was taking courses in German studies . After moving to the University of Breslau in 1882 , he was impressed by the lectures given by the German scholar Karl Weinhold on German mythology. Jahn received his doctorate with him in 1884, shortly before his 23rd birthday. The dissertation, which, incidentally, was dedicated to his father, formed a closed chapter in his work on the sacrificial customs of the Germans, which appeared in the same year. In 1885 he passed the state examination in religion and German and from the same year he worked as a senior teacher at a grammar school in Stettin.

Szczecin

After returning to his homeland, Jahn devoted himself - in addition to his professional work - to collecting oral stories - legends , fairy tales , swans and other stories - from the rural population. He was given the opportunity to do so by the institutions in Züllchow , headed by his father, which in addition to the brothers from the Inner Mission, teachers, medical staff and servants, had more than a hundred pupils, as well as former convicts and sick people from the administrative district of Stettin and the rest of Pomerania . In search of stories, he also went on targeted walks through the province. His inventory soon comprised 670 legends, of which he said he had collected 2/3 himself. As early as 1886 he published a thick volume of legends, which was an astonishing achievement: not only because of its large size, but because it combined source accuracy and systematics as well as theoretical embedding. In connection with the publication, however, there were controversies with the Dutch narrative researcher Otto Knoop (1853–1931) with regard to a possible collaboration, research methods and results. At the congress of the " Society for Pomeranian History and Archeology " in Stettin, Jahn was elected to the board of directors and the editorial committee of " Baltic Studies " on April 1, 1886 , a journal on Pomeranian history, art and folklore published by the society.

Berlin

The doctor and former member of the Reichstag, Rudolf Virchow , with whom Jahn came into closer contact at the congress, apparently persuaded him to move to Berlin and through his connections he helped him to transfer to a Berlin high school before the summer of 1886. In Berlin, Jahn married in the same year and founded his household. Since 1887, Jahn increasingly collected material folk culture, i. H. Peasant costumes and peasant implements that were already considered "antiquities" at that time. In the summer of 1888 he visited the Mönchgut peninsula on Rügen, the Pyritzer Weizacker and the old Friesian colony Jamund near Köslin to purchase items. Together. Together with the Berlin banker and art collector Alexander Meyer-Cohn , he designed the “Museum for German Folk Costumes and Domestic Products”. The two then procured a large part of the exhibits and founded the museum in 1889 in the Vierchow-sponsored exhibition house on Klosterstrasse . From this museum emerged the Berlin Museum of Folklore, whose preserved holdings were taken over in 1999 by the Museum of European Cultures .

After Jahn's former teacher Karl Weinhold came to Berlin at Easter 1889 to take over the professorship at the university that had been offered to him, Jahn initiated the founding of an association for folklore. Weinhold took over as chairman and Vierchow as his deputy, while Jahn became secretary, author and editor of the "Zeitschrift des Verein für Volkskunde" published by Weinhold. In the following period (until the end of 1891) Jahn had a decisive influence on the appearance of the association: he gave at least four lectures per year, several of his essays and reviews appeared in the association's magazine, as well as the monthly minutes. During this time, two other books were also published: Schwänke and purring from peasants mouth (1890) and above all the collection on which his obituary is essentially based: folk tales from Pomerania and Rügen. First part (1891). Although Jahn still had a lot of material, further parts have not appeared because he developed new interests in the period that followed and lost interest in continuing this project.

He regularly drove to Altona near Hamburg for a long time on the weekends to help set up a museum. In the summer of 1891 he stayed at the German Exhibition in London , where he designed an exhibition of German folk costumes and domestic inventory. In December 1891, Jahn was no longer elected secretary of the association, which he justified with the fact that he did not want to be prevented from the ethnographic trips he planned. However, he remained a member of the business committee. Already at this time he was busy with the plans for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 . In this context, he actually traveled all over the German-speaking area between Friesland and South Tyrol in 1892 to look for exhibits.

Traveling art and antiques dealer

Jahn also traveled back and forth to Chicago several times to oversee the construction of a German village at the world exhibition. This was his main task for a while. Since the leave he had been granted several times by the teaching post was no longer sufficient, he renounced his secure job. The constant attacks of Otto Knoop and Edmund Veckenstedt may have induced him to withdraw from Germany, at least in part . In early 1893 he gave another lecture at the Berlin Association for Ethnology, which turned out to be his last lecture. From then on he worked practically exclusively as an art and antiques dealer. As the disappointed Karl Weinhold described in the later obituary, Jahn was also a talented businessman and this quality, which gradually took up more and more space in his life, filled him completely - after he had got to know the American hustle and bustle. Jahn moved his residence to London, where he also set up a small museum. The financial transactions put him in a two-year process. He also began to be interested in African folk culture. This period of constant travel remains rather opaque. Although Jahn stayed abroad a lot, he remained connected to Germany and every time he went to Germany he visited his relatives in Züllchow.

Jahn died surprisingly young in Berlin as a result of a brief illness that ended with cardiac paralysis. He was buried in Züllchow, but his grave no longer exists.

Fairy tales from Pomerania

Ulrich Jahn's best-known book Folk Tales from Pomerania and Rügen contains 62 fairy tales as well as a detailed and descriptive - anecdotal - description of his collecting experiences and experiences. There are a few more fairy tales that Jahn classified as variants in the extensive notes. This book is the largest collection of Pomeranian fairy tales. Jahn's rival and critic Otto Knoop brought only 15 fairy tales in his book Folk Tales, Stories, Superstitions, Customs and Fairy Tales from Eastern Pomerania (1885). Alfred Haas published only 8 fairy tales in his book Rügensche Sagen und Märchen (1891). The collectors who published their work after Jahn, such as Hugo Findeisen, Hugo Stübs and Wilhelm Schmidt, could not even come close to reaching the number of Jahn. Jahn "continued the scientific preoccupation with the fairy tales initiated by the Brothers Grimm in his home landscape in a way that gave this special branch of folklore new impulses."

Jahn's fairy tales do not come from all over Pomerania. Most numerous are the fairy tales from the area on the Oder , specifically from the districts of Ueckermünde , Randow , Pyritz and Saatzig , as well as from the district of Schlawe in Western Pomerania , while northern Western Pomerania and Rügen are not represented at all. In Jahn's fairy tales the tone is striking, which is largely based on the linguistic peculiarities of living folk tales, but which Jahn has intensified in their effect many times over. Through his own poetic design, Jahn brought the texts to an impressive unity of content and form. Stylistically, he follows Wilhelm Grimm by using such means as formulaic expressions at the beginning and end of the texts, proverbial idioms and comparisons, stick and end rhymes (simmen and hum, knufft and puffed), double setting of verbs and adjectives (he ate and ate ; quiet quiet), schallnachahmende onomatopoeia he (ran trapp trapp), etc. In addition, used Jahn rhetorical questions and direct reader donations that deepen the sense of narrative immediacy.

Jahn's edition was aimed primarily at academically interested readers and there were no reprints. However, his fairy tales appeared in numerous, much thinner popular editions, which consisted of a significantly smaller number of fairy tales. It was precisely these expenses, aimed primarily at children, that brought Jahn fame.

Fonts

  • 1884 The German sacrificial customs in agriculture and cattle breeding. A contribution to German mythology and antiquity , Breslau: Koebner (extension of his dissertation The defensive and the Atonement of the Germans ; Reprint: Hildesheim: Olms 1977, ISBN 3-487-06157-0 ; Hamburg: Severus-Verlag 2011, ISBN 978-3 -86347-070-8 )
  • 1886 Folk sagas from Pomerania and Rügen , Stettin: Dannenberg (2nd edition Berlin: Mayer and Müller 1889; new edition: newly edited and provided with explanations by Siegfried Neumann and Karl-Ewald Tietz, Bremen and Rostock: Edition Temmen 1999, ISBN 3 -86108-733-2 )
  • 1886 Witch creatures and magical creatures in Pomerania . In: Festschrift for the 17th Congress of the German Anthropological Society in Stettin , Breslau: Komm.-Verlag von Koebner (reprint: Niederwalluf near Wiesbaden: M. Sendet 1970, ISBN 3-500-22490-3 )
  • 1886 The folk tale in Pomerania . In: “Yearbook of the Association for Low German Language Research”, 1886, p. 151–161 (lecture at the 13th annual meeting of the Association for Low German Language Research in Stettin on May 31, 1887, second edition: In: “Monthly sheets of the Society for Pomeranian History and antiquity "1, 1887, pp. 113–121 and 129–137)
  • 1890 Schwänke and purring from farmers' mouths , Berlin: Mayer & Müller (reprint: Berlin: Contumax 2008, ISBN 978-3-86640-409-0 )
  • 1891 Folk tales from Pomerania and Rügen. First part , north u. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann (reprint: Hildesheim: Olms 1973, ISBN 3-487-04700-4 ; new edition: newly edited and provided with explanations by Siegfried Neumann and Karl-Ewald Tietz, Bremen and Rostock: Edition Temmen 1998, ISBN 3- 86108-711-1 )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ According to today's understanding, the dissertation would be included in folklore and not in German studies.
  2. ↑ a b c Siegfried Neumann; Karl-Ewald Tietz: Afterword ... , p. 338
  3. ↑ a b NDB, Vol. 10, pp. 306-307
  4. ↑ a b c Siegfried Neumann; Karl-Ewald Tietz: Afterword ... , p. 339
  5. ↑ a b Siegfried Neumann; Karl-Ewald Tietz: Afterword ... , p. 340
  6. ^ Siegfried Neumann; Karl-Ewald Tietz: Afterword ... , pp. 341–342
  7. ↑ a b Siegfried Neumann; Karl-Ewald Tietz: Afterword ... , p. 343

literature

  • Hans-Jörg Uther: Ulrich Jahn biography on zeno.org (greatly shortened version of the biography of Neumann and Tietz)
  • Katarina Berger: Stories and narrative materials in Pomerania 1840 to 1938 , Waxmann Verlag, 2001, ISBN 978-3-89325-869-7
  • Siegfried Neumann; Karl-Ewald Tietz: Preliminary remark to the new edition and afterword. The short and eventful life of Ulrich Jahn . In: Ulrich Jahn: Folk tales from Pomerania and Rügen , newly edited by Siegfried Neumann and Karl-Ewald Tietz, Bremen a. Rostock: Edition Temmen 1998, ISBN 3-86108-711-1 , pp. 8 and 337-344
  • Konrad Köstlin:  Jahn, Ulrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-428-00191-5 , p. 306 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • U. Bentzien: In: "German Yearbook for Folklore" 6, 1960, p. 419f
  • Karl Weinhold : In: "Journal of the Association for Folklore" 10, 1900, pp. 216-219

Web links

Wikisource: Ulrich Jahn  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Ulrich Jahn  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Jahn, Ulrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philologist, folklorist and narrative researcher
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH Züllchow , Randow district
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 1900
Place of death Berlin