Walter A. Berendsohn

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Walter Arthur Berendsohn (born September 10, 1884 in Hamburg , † January 30, 1984 in Stockholm ) was a German literary scholar .

Life

Walter A. Berendsohn studied German , Nordic studies and philosophy at the universities of Berlin, Freiburg, Munich and Kiel. During his student days he was a member of the free student body . In Kiel he received his doctorate in 1911. phil. After his habilitation in 1920, he was appointed adjunct professor at the University of Hamburg in 1926 , where he taught German literature and Scandinavian studies . In addition to his job, he was involved with lectures, baptisms and weddings in the Hamburg free religious community and in the German Monist Association . In 1920 he joined the Freemason Lodge Humanity , which belonged to the Masonic Association of the Rising Sun , in which more humanistic-Christian and monistic-free religious orientated men were members; and Carl von Ossietzky was a member there. Berendsohn was also very politically active and a member of the SPD . He took a public position against the emerging National Socialism .

In 2006, Greta Wehner remembered that her parents, the gardener Charlotte Clausen (born August 20, 1903 in Flensburg - 1979 as the wife of Herbert Wehner ) and the ship's carpenter and communist resistance fighter Carl Burmester met in an SAJ group in Blankenese , "Who met at the Jewish Social Democrat Berendsohn."

Because of his Jewish descent, Berendsohn was dismissed from the university by the National Socialists in 1933, applying the anti-Semitic law on civil servants, so that he was unemployed. In October 1933 he escaped arrest by emigrating to Denmark with his wife Dorothea, née Eggert, and their two children . In 1936 his German citizenship was revoked and his property confiscated . His doctorate was also revoked. Living in utter poverty, he received a scholarship from the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom from 1938 to 1940 . On September 26, 1943, the Berendsohns had to flee to Sweden in a fishing boat . Berendsohn worked there for a long time as a simple archive employee in the Strindberg archive . It was not until the mid-1950s that he received a visiting professorship at Stockholm University . He was a co-founder of the Free German Cultural Association (FDK) in Sweden. In 1974 he received an honorary doctorate from Stockholm University.

After the end of the Second World War , Berendsohn tried to make contacts in Hamburg again. Although the University Office considered it necessary to redress the professors for the injustice perpetrated on Berendsohn, nothing happened. Berendsohn had to humiliatingly apply for the title of doctor and professor to be restored to him. His reappointment and the reassignment of the doctoral degree were thwarted by the professors at the literary studies department of the philosophical faculty. The German studies professor Hans Pyritz even expressed in a statement that there were scientific concerns about Berendsohn. In December 1954 the philosophy faculty informed Berendsohn that the venia legendi had been awarded to him again, but he should please refrain from using it in Hamburg. In 1956, Berendsohn applied to the university authorities as part of reparations for his reinstatement as a permanent professor, a position that he could certainly have achieved without persecution. The Faculty of Philosophy rejected this application as a department because Berendsohn was not adequately qualified scientifically. In 1958, the then rector of Hamburg University, Karl Schiller, made another attempt to rehabilitate Berendsohn, who was then 74 years old. This approach was also rejected by the Philosophical Faculty. It was only in 1983 that the faculty gave in and awarded Berendsohn an honorary doctorate at the age of 99. The title was presented to him on January 16, 1983 at a ceremony in Stockholm. The university expressly thanked Berendsohn for not refusing to be awarded this honor after the history that was shameful for the university.

Berendsohn lived in Stockholm's Bromma district until his death .

Act

Walter A. Berendsohn is considered to be the founder of German exile literature research with his work Die Humanistische Front, written in 1939 . He worked for many decades at the German Institute of Stockholm University, where in 1969, together with Helmut Müssener, the current director of the institute, he set up the Stockholm coordination office for research into German-language exile literature . The Hamburg Office for German Exile Literature (HafdE) was renamed in 2001 in his honor to Walter A. Berendsohn Research Center for German Exile Literature (BFfdE).

Berendsohn also became known as the biographer and supporter of the writer Nelly Sachs . In response to his initiatives, Nelly Sachs received the Nobel Prize for Literature and Willy Brandt the Nobel Peace Prize .

Works (selection)

  • Hofmannsthal's impressionism as a contemporary phenomenon. A style-critical study. Gente, Hamburg 1920.
  • The ethics of student life. Fackelreiter-Verlag, Werther (Teutoburg Forest) 1923 (first Gente, Hamburg 1920).
  • Henri Fort: Little Swedish Language Teaching. Arranged by Walter A. Berendsohn, 5th edition, Groos, Heidelberg 1923.
  • Political leadership. Ernst Oldenburg Verlag, Leipzig 1924.
  • Selma Lagerlöf. Home and life, artists, works, impact and value. A. Langen, Munich 1927.
  • Knut Hamsun. The irrepressible self and the human community. A. Langen, Munich 1929.
  • The fight for freedom against the drinking habits. A call to the youth. Neuland-Verlag, Berlin [1929].
  • World war memories. Neumann, Prague [1934].
  • The living Heine in the Germanic north. With a single Contribution by Johannes V. Jensen. Schønberg, Copenhagen 1935.
  • To the history of the "Beowulf". With a foreword by Otto Jespersen, Levin & Munksgaard, Copenhagen 1935.
  • Humanisme i det 20. Aarhundererde. Kolding 1937.
  • The humanist front. Introduction to German emigrant literature. Part 1: From 1933 until the outbreak of war. Europa Verlag, Zurich 1946 (created between 1933 and 1945, reprinted by Georg Heintz, Worms 1976).
  • The humanist front. Introduction to German emigrant literature. Part 2: From the outbreak of war in 1939 to the end of 1946. Georg Heintz, Worms 1976 (manuscript 1953).
  • Development work in Israel. Experiences, studies, reflections. Berlin 1953.
  • August Strindberg. A born playwright. Munich 1956.
  • Escape from Denmark to Sweden. In: Egon Schwarz, Matthias Wegner (eds.): Banishment. Records of German writers in exile. Christian Wegner, Hamburg 1964, pp. 100-105.
  • Thomas Mann. Artists and fighters in turbulent times. Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 1965.
  • 153 autobiographies of the refugees from the Third Reich. Self-published, Bromma 1966 (printed from the manuscript).
  • Inner emigration. Bromma 1971.
  • Thomas Mann and his family. Bern / Munich, Francke 1973, ISBN 3-7720-1054-7 .
  • August Strindberg. Man and his environment, the work, the creative artist. Rodopi, Amsterdam 1974 (Amsterdam Publications on Language and Literature, Vol. 4), ISBN 90-6203-061-0 .
  • The master of the political novel: Lion Feuchtwanger. Stockholm 1976 (series: Writings of the German Institute of Stockholm University).
  • Nelly Sachs. Introduction to the work of the poet of Jewish fate. With a prose text “Life under Threat”, a selection of 30 letters from the years 1946–1958 and a report on the Nelly Sachs collection in Dortmund. Comment by Manfred Schlösser. Agora, Darmstadt 1974, ISBN 3-87008-046-9 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Letter from Grete Wehner dated June 11, 2006 to Günter Wiemann. In: Günter Wiemann: Hans Löhr and Hans Koch - political walks. Vitamine-Verlag, Braunschweig, 2011, ISBN 978-3-00-033763-5 , pp. 10-11.
personal data
SURNAME Berendsohn, Walter A.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Berendsohn, Walter Arthur
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philologist, Scandinavian scholar, exile researcher
DATE OF BIRTH September 10, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH January 30, 1984
Place of death Stockholm