Ulrich Leo

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Ulrich Leo (born May 28, 1890 in Göttingen ; † July 4, 1964 in Toronto ), with full name Ulrich Paul Ludwig Leo, was a German- Canadian Romance scholar , particularly Italian and Hispanic , and a literary scholar .

life and work

Ulrich Leo was the son of the classical philologist Friedrich Leo (1851–1914) and his wife Cécile geb. Hensel (1858-1928). Both parents' families were of Jewish origin, but had been of Protestant denomination since the early 19th century. After the father's death, the family lived in modest circumstances, which were made worse by the economic crisis of the 1920s.

Ulrich Leo's brother Paul lived as a Protestant pastor in Osnabrück. In 1938 he had to resign and was given retirement. In November 1938 he was briefly arrested and after his release fled to Holland and later to the USA. Shortly before his first planned trip to Germany, he died in 1958 of a heart attack. The only thing known about sister Erika is that she married in Munich.

After studying in Göttingen, Berlin and Munich (with Karl Vossler ), Ulrich Leo received his doctorate in 1914 in Göttingen with Alfons Hilka on the first branch of the Roman de Renart . He took part in the First World War (1914–1917), worked on the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (1917–1918), and then embarked on a career as a librarian. In 1921 he passed the diploma examination, worked at the Prussian State Library in 1921/1922 and completed a traineeship in Marburg in 1922. In 1925 Leo passed the library specialist examination (together with the state examination) and then worked as a librarian in Marburg until 1927 , in Greifswald in 1927 and in Frankfurt from 1928.

At the University of Frankfurt from 1931 he was also active as a lecturer in Romance philology with special attention to Italian in Erhard Lommatzsch's institute. After two earlier unsuccessful attempts (1920 in Tübingen, 1922 in Marburg), he received his habilitation certificate here on August 15, 1931. His habilitation thesis is entitled " Antonio Fogazzaro's Style and the Symbolist Life Novel", the subject of his trial lecture on July 24, 1931 is "Dialect Geography and Romance Linguistics". He gave his inaugural public lecture on November 4, 1931 on the subject of " Luigi Pirandello as a symbolic poet".

Ulrich Leo married Helene Vageler (born June 9, 1893) in October 1919, the daughter of a manorial landlord in East Prussia. Their son Thomas was born in 1925 and Gerhard in 1930. The family initially lived in Marburg, initially there after Leo's employment at the University of Frankfurt and from 1932 in Oberursel (Taunus) .

The transfer of power to the National Socialists ruined Ulrich Leo's career plans. Despite his Protestant beliefs, as an alleged Jew, he was placed under the Law Restoring the Civil Service . As a former combatant in the front, he was able to work as a library councilor in the Frankfurt am Main city library until the end of 1935 . Then he was retired. He received a pension, which is why, despite his wife's urging, he did not initially pursue the emigration vigorously. In 1937 he went to London and worked there on a dictionary of medieval Latin. However, this work was difficult for him due to his lack of English language skills, which is why he did not feel comfortable in London. He moved on to Venezuela , where he took up a position at the library of the "Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores Caracas / Venezuela" on April 1, 1938 in Caracas .

Meanwhile, the situation for the family who remained in Germany became more and more threatening. During the November pogrom in 1938 , the house in Oberursel was attacked, which now also caused his wife to flee. She initially hid in the forest of Oberursel with her two sons and then fled with them to Holland. The sons were able to attend the Quaker School in Eerde there, while the mother managed the trip to Venezuela. The family lived together again soon after in Venezuela, but the financial situation was difficult for them, as Ulrich Leo had been completely cut off as a German war veteran due to emigration and his salary alone was not enough to support himself. Only after the end of the Second World War could the two sons travel to the USA to study.

Ulrich Leo went to William Penn College (now William Penn University) in Oskaloosa , Iowa , in 1945 , and in the same year switched to a professorship in the Department of Italian and Hispanic Studies at the University of Toronto . Here he retired in 1959.

After his retirement, Ulrich Leo took on a visiting professorship in Bonn in the summer semester of 1959. This trip was a psychological burden on him. He fell ill and in the same year had to stay at the Hohe Mark Clinic in Oberursel. After this break he went to Jamaica as a substitute lecturer. In the summer semester of 1961 he gave two guest lectures at the Free University of Berlin .

Ulrich Leo had already been awarded compensation under the Federal Compensation Act in 1953 for his interrupted career as a library councilor. However, there were difficulties when he tried to claim compensation for the financial losses as a displaced university professor. The dean of the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Frankfurt opposed this request, and a process that lasted several years resulted in Leo again receiving support from Erhard Lommatzsch. The university's curator recognized on July 11, 1961 that Leo would have become a full professor under normal conditions on January 1, 1942, which is why he was entitled to use the designation "full professor emeritus". However, he should not be allowed to give lectures or seminars. A final agreement was only reached in 1963: "In 1963 he was rehabilitated by the University of Frankfurt by being appointed full (emeritus) professor."

Other works

  • Fogazzaro's style and the symbolist life novel , Heidelberg 1928
  • Estudios filológicos sobre letras Venezolanas , Caracas 1942
  • Torquato Tasso , Bern 1951
  • Rómulo Gallegos , México 1954, Caracas 1967
  • Seeing and Reality at Dante , Frankfurt a. M. 1957
  • On the poetic originality of the Arcipreste de Hita , Frankfurt a. M. 1958
  • Interpretaciones hispanoamericanas , Santiago de Cuba 1960
  • Romance essays from three decades , Ed. Fritz Schalk, Cologne 1966
  • Interpretaciones estilísticas , Caracas 1972

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Angelika Rieber: Family Leo
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Patrizia Schauber: Ulrich Leo's life's work as a Romanist: Why strokes of fate have conceptualized his research work
  3. ↑ a b Leo, Ulrich Paul Ludwig
personal data
SURNAME Leo, Ulrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Leo, Ulrich Paul Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Romanist, Italianist, Hispanist and literary scholar
DATE OF BIRTH May 28, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Goettingen
DATE OF DEATH 4th July 1964
Place of death Toronto