Uwe Poerksen

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Uwe Pörksen (born March 13, 1935 in Breklum ) is a German linguist . He is a professor emeritus for the German language and older literature and lives in Freiburg .

life and work

Uwe Pörksen was born in Breklum in 1935 as the son of theologian and missionary Martin Pörksen . After graduating from high school in 1954, he studied German, history and philosophy in Freiburg im Breisgau , Göttingen and Kiel . In 1960 he graduated with the state examination; In 1962 he went to school.

In 1964, Pörksen, supported by his teacher Friedrich Ohly , became a student councilor at the University of Kiel. There he became assistant to the linguist and literary scholar Hugo Steger in 1965 and received his doctorate in 1968 with a thesis on the narrator in the Middle High German epic. In 1975 he completed his habilitation with a thesis on Goethe's scientific writings at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg , where Steger now had a new chair, which Pörksen took over himself in 1976. In 2000 he retired as professor for German language and older literature.

In the meantime, Poerksen was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin between 1981 and 1982 .

Uwe Pörksen's work focuses on the history of the German natural science languages ​​as well as language and image criticism. His books Plastic Words and The Political Tongue: A Brief Critique of Public Speech became particularly well known . In these he criticizes the use of language in politics and calls for the public debate to be understood as the center of politics. Pörksen also dealt with what he saw as the “disappearance” of German as a scientific language, as well as the influence of immigrants on the German language. He also wrote the novel Schauinsland , set in the press , which was published in 1991 by Klett-Cotta .

Pörksen is married and has three children, including the media scientist Bernhard Pörksen and the dramaturge and filmmaker Julian Pörksen .

Memberships

Pörksen is a member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz and the German Academy for Language and Poetry , the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina (Halle) (since 1996) and the PEN Center Germany .

For the German Academy for Language and Poetry, he was a member of the German Spelling Council . Because of differences of opinion (quote: “Our spelling history failed in the 1990s because a committee that was founded in the 1950s to examine the idea of ​​lower case letters based on the English or Danish model, when the idea was shelved , has not dissolved. ”) he submitted his resignation in 2008 - in unreformed spelling.

Since 2012 Pörksen has been involved in the citizens' initiative Pro Kulturhauptstadt Freiburg .

Awards

In 1984 Pörksen was awarded the Prize of the German Academy for Language and Poetry , in 1988 the Hermann Hesse Prize and in 1990 the German Language Prize.

Works (selection)

  • Breklehem. Novel of a village . Husum Verlag, Husum 2016.
  • Political Speech or How We Decide . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2016.
  • Camelot in Grunewald: Scenes from the intellectual life of the eighties (2014)
  • Rift Through the Mainland (2011)
  • Plastic Words: The Language of an International Dictatorship (1988)
  • The narrator in the Middle High German epic: Forms of his emergence in Lamprecht, Konrad, Hartmann, in Wolframs Willehalm a. in d. Spielmannsepen (1971)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Is Europe returning to itself? A family novel reflects the history of the border region . [Interview by Fiete Pingel with Martin Pörksen on his novel Riss through the mainland (2011)]. In: Nordfriesland , No. 179 (September 2012), pp. 26–29 [1] .
  2. ↑ Member entry of Uwe Pörksen at the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz , accessed on November 6, 2017
  3. ↑ Member entry of Uwe Pörksen at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on July 16, 2016.
  4. ↑ declaration of resignation. Retrieved June 8, 2017 .
  5. ^ Members. (No longer available online.) Prokulturhauptstadt-freiburg.de, archived from the original on June 19, 2012 ; Retrieved June 30, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.prokulturhauptstadt-freiburg.de
personal data
SURNAME Poerksen, Uwe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German linguist, essayist and university professor, professor of language and literature
DATE OF BIRTH March 13, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Breklum