Walter Solmitz

Walter Moritz Solmitz (born January 19, 1905 in Braunschweig , † August 23, 1962 in Brunswick ) was a German philosopher and university professor .

life and work

The son of the Jewish businessman Zadek Otto Solmitz (1852–1907) and his wife Sofie, b. Sanders (1866–1957) attended the humanistic grammar school in Braunschweig from 1914, before moving to the Odenwald School in Ober-Hambach in Hesse in 1918 for economic and health reasons . With its founder and director Paul Geheeb he remained closely connected for life. Solmitz studied from 1923 to 1930 in Heidelberg , Berlin and Hamburg . Ernst Cassirer and Erwin Panofsky were among his teachers in Hamburg . Through the mediation of his doctoral supervisor Cassirer, he came to the Warburg Library of Cultural Studies in Hamburg, where he worked as a student and freelance worker from 1927 to 1931 and from 1933 to 1934. There he had contact with Aby Warburg and the art historian Fritz Saxl . From 1933 to 1935 he was head of the philosophical working groups of the Franz Rosenzweig Memorial Foundation in Hamburg. In 1936 Solmitz moved to Munich with his wife Elly Reis, who as a Jew was not allowed to study at the Landeskunstschule Hamburg . Solmitz was arrested immediately after the Reichspogromnacht and interned in the Dachau concentration camp from November 10 to December 21, 1938 . At the instigation of Fritz Saxl and the art historian Gertrud Bing , he was released from prison and emigrated to London with his wife in January 1939. There he worked at the Warburg Institute before moving to the USA in June 1940. He completed his studies as an MA at Harvard University and taught German from 1943. In 1946 he went to Bowdoin College in Brunswick / Maine, where he taught German and philosophy until his suicide in 1962.

literature

• Reinhard Bein : Eternal House. Jewish cemeteries in the city and country of Braunschweig. Braunschweig 2004, ISBN 3-925268-24-3 , p. 247.
• Reinhard Bein : You lived in Braunschweig. Biographical notes on the Jews buried in Braunschweig (1797 to 1983). In: Communications from the Braunschweig City Archives , No. 1, Döring Druck, Braunschweig 2009, ISBN 978-3-925268-30-4 , pp. 378–383.
• Hans-Jürgen Derda : Solmitz, Walter Moritz, Prof. Dr. In Horst-Rüdiger Jarck , Günter Scheel (ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon - 19th and 20th centuries . Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hannover 1996, ISBN 3-7752-5838-8 , p. 572 f .
• Richard Moderhack : Brunsvicensia judaica. Memorial book for the Jewish fellow citizens of the city of Braunschweig 1933–1945 (Braunschweiger Werkstücke, Volume 35), Braunschweig 1966.
• Solmitz, Walter , in: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 347
• Solmitz, Walter , in: Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.2. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , pp. 1092f.

Web links

• Literature by and about Walter Solmitz in the catalog of the German National Library
• The Jewish Hamburg - A historical reference work , short biography