Werner Krauss (Romanist)

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Werner Krauss (born June 7, 1900 in Stuttgart , † August 28, 1976 in Berlin ) was a German Romanist , resistance fighter against National Socialism and politician ( KPD and SED ).

Life

Werner Krauss was the son of archivist Rudolf Krauss and Ottilie, née Schüle, a sister of Eberhard Koebel's mother. In June 1918 he passed his Abitur at the Eberhard-Ludwigs-Gymnasium in Stuttgart and was then drafted for military service.

After his discharge from the army, Krauss studied literature , especially Romance studies, at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin (today's Humboldt University) . From 1922 to 1926 he lived in Spain . In 1929 he was at Karl Vossler , which also Victor Klemperer had studied, to Dr. phil. PhD. From April 1931 he was an assistant at the Romance Department of the Philipps University in Marburg and completed his habilitation with Erich Auerbach the following year . After his removal from office by the National Socialists, Krauss fulfilled the teaching duties of the university professor of Jewish origin. The rulers did not want to grant him a professorship because they doubted his ideological reliability. In November 1933 he signed the professors' declaration of Adolf Hitler at German universities and colleges . As a lecturer in Marburg he was in August 1940 for the Wehrmacht confiscated and an interpreter - Company allocated.

He came into contact with Harro Schulze-Boysen through his friend, the psychiatrist John Rittmeister , and his circle . With his girlfriend Ursula Goetze he took part in the sticky note campaign against the exhibition “ The Soviet Paradise ” in Berlin's Lustgarten in Berlin-Schöneberg . In November 1942 he was arrested as a member of the Red Orchestra and sentenced to death by the Reich Court Martial on January 18, 1943 for aiding and abetting high treason . In addition to sticking notes, he was charged with listening to foreign broadcasters and reading and passing on "inflammatory pamphlets".

The death sentence was not carried out, but with the help of psychiatric reports and the advocacy of influential scientists on September 14, 1944, after stays in various prisons (including in Plötzensee ) and in psychiatry , reduced to five years in prison . On the Plötzensee death cell , with his hands tied, he wrote a bizarre novel with an air force officer (Harro Schulze-Boysen) as the central figure : PLN - The Passions of the Halconian Soul .

Nevertheless, Krauss almost died shortly before the end of the war. From the Wehrmacht prison in Torgau , he and other prisoners were put on a march towards the east. The prison march was stopped by advancing US soldiers.

He experienced the end of the war in Eger (Cheb) , where he was released from American captivity on June 16. From there he returned to Marburg. There he was a member of a committee that was responsible for denazifying professors.

Krauss joined the Kulturbund for the democratic renewal of Germany in the summer of 1945, immediately after it was founded . In the autumn of 1945 he participated together with Karl Jaspers , Dolf Sternberger and Alfred Weber in the founding of the monthly magazine Die Wandlung , which achieved a considerable circulation.

At the beginning of 1946 he joined the KPD. From February 19, he was even appointed as a representative of the KPD in the advisory state committee of Greater Hesse . He left the pre-parliament on May 15 of the same year, in favor of Jo Mihaly .

On May 2, 1946, he finally received the long-awaited professorship and was appointed professor of Romance philology in Marburg. For health reasons, however, he took a leave of absence in the winter semester of 1946/47. At the end of the summer semester of 1947 he gave up his professorship in Marburg. On September 20, 1947, he moved to Leipzig, where he subsequently accepted an appointment as full professor of Romance philology. He stopped working on Die Wandlung entirely.

After moving to the GDR , he became a member of the SED party executive .

One of the main focuses of Werner Krauss's scientific work was the French Enlightenment . In 1955 Krauss founded a working group on the history of the German and French Enlightenment within the framework of the German Academy of Sciences in Leipzig . In addition to his own editions (e.g. by Cartaud de la Villatte), he also arranged for translations of important works for the purpose of Enlightenment. Krauss always understood the engagement with the Enlightenment as a contribution to the self-understanding of the present. In 1958 he became a professor at the Academy of Sciences; In 1964 he retired .

tomb

His grave is located in the cemetery of the Dorotheenstadt and Friedrichswerder communities in Berlin.

Awards and honors

Quote

"Socialism remains the only solution, in spite of its discrediting through a practice that fulfills some claims, but the claim that the human being is deliberately ignored and slandered."

Publications

Work edition
Scientific work

  1. Literary theory, philosophy and politics . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin and Weimar 1984, 2nd edition 1987
  2. Cervantes and his time. Edited by Werner Bahner . de Gruyter, Berlin 1990
  3. Spanish, Italian and French Literature in the Age of Absolutism . de Gruyter, 1997
  4. Essays on the Spanish and French literary and ideological history of modern times . de Gruyter, 1997
  5. Reconnaissance 1: France 1 . Edited by Winfried Schröder. Structure, Berlin / Weimar 1991, ISBN 3-351-01718-9
  6. Reconnaissance 2: France 2 . Structure, Berlin / Weimar 1987, ISBN 3-351-00583-0
  7. Enlightenment 3: Germany and Spain. Edited by Martin Fontius . de Gruyter, Berlin 1996
  8. Linguistics and word history. de Gruyter, 1997

Individual publications

  • Gracián's doctrine of life. Klostermann, Frankfurt 1947, 2nd edition: ibid. 2000 (Krauss wrote this book about the Spanish moralist Gracián on the death cell of Plötzensee prison)
  • Fontenelle and the Enlightenment. Wilhelm Fink, Munich 1969
  • The Enlightenment in Spain, Portugal and Latin America . ibid. 1973
  • Literary history as a historical mandate. Argument, Berlin 1979
  • Hans Kortum, Christa Gohrisch (ed.): On the anthropology of the 18th century. The early history of mankind in the focus of the Enlightenment . Hanser, Munich 1979; TB: Ullstein, Frankfurt 1987
  • The inside of world history. Selected essays on language & literature. Reclam, Leipzig 1983
  • Manfred Naumann (ed.): Before the curtain fell. Records of a key witness of the century . Fischer-TB, Frankfurt 1995
  • Elisabeth Fillmann, Karlheinz Barck (ed.): The navelless world. With three visions from Nuria Quevedo . Base print, Berlin 2001
  • Peter Jehle, Peter-Volker Springborn (Ed.): A Romanist in the Resistance. Letters to family and other documents . Weidler, Berlin 2004
  • PLN. The passions of the halyconic soul. Novel. Rütten and Loening, Berlin 1980 / Klostermann, Frankfurt 1983 (first 1946)
  • Elisabeth Fillmann, Peter Jehle, Peter-Volker Springborn (Eds.): Werner Krauss. Letters 1922–1976. Klostermann, Frankfurt 2002 ( GoogleBooks ).
  • Basic problems of literary studies. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1968

literature

  • Bernd-Rainer Barth :  Krauss, Werner . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Wolfgang Boerner:  Krauss, Werner. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , p. 719 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Ottmar Ette u. a. (Ed.): Werner Krauss. Paths, works, effects. Spitz, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-8305-0023-8
  • Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht : On the life and death of the great Romanists. Karl Vossler, Ernst Robert Curtius, Leo Spitzer, Erich Auerbach, Werner Krauss . Hanser, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-446-20140-8 , pp. 175-208
  • Hermann Hofer u. a. (Ed.): Werner Krauss. Literature, history, writing. Francke, Tübingen 2003, ISBN 3-7720-3334-2
  • Peter Jehle: Enlightenment research as critical science. On some aspects of Werner Krauss's way of working . In: Michael Ewert, Martin Vialon (Ed.): Convergences. Studies on German and European literature. Festschrift for E. Theodor Voss. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, ISBN 3-8260-1791-9 , pp. 174-187
  • Peter Jehle and Peter-Volker Springborn (eds.): A Romanist in the Resistance: Letters to the Family and Other Documents / Werner Krauss . Weidler Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89693-721-9
  • Lendemain's magazine, issue n ° 69/70, On the Franco-German relationship: Werner Krauss . Sybille Dümchen Verlag, Berlin 1993: Various articles that deal with Werner Kraus. Authors and a. Michael Nerlich, Horst F. Müller, Karlheinz Barck, Ricarda Huch ...
  • Jochen Lengemann : The Hessen Parliament 1946–1986 . Biographical handbook of the advisory state committee, the state assembly advising the constitution and the Hessian state parliament (1st – 11th electoral period). Ed .: President of the Hessian State Parliament. Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-458-14330-0 , p. 309 ( hessen.de [PDF; 12.4 MB ]).
  • Jochen Lengemann: MdL Hessen. 1808-1996. Biographical index (= political and parliamentary history of the state of Hesse. Vol. 14 = publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse. Vol. 48, 7). Elwert, Marburg 1996, ISBN 3-7708-1071-6 , p. 226.
  • Utz Maas : Persecution and emigration of German-speaking linguists 1933–1945. Entry on Werner Rudolf Krauss (accessed: April 13, 2018)
  • Gert Rosiejka: The Red Chapel. "Treason" as an anti-fascist resistance. Introduction by Heinrich Scheel. Results, Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-925622-16-0
  • Jürgen Storost: 300 years of Romance languages ​​and literatures at the Berlin Academy of Sciences. Lang, Frankfurt 2000, Part 1, pp. 499-519

Web links

Commons : Werner Krauss  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Resistance fighters: On the anniversary of Werner Krauss' death . In: Marburg News , August 24, 2006
  2. ^ Marburg News 2006
  3. ↑ Contemporary witness Dr. Knud Schmidt-Dippel reported . ( Memento from June 19, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Jost Hermand : Role Models - Partisan Professors in Divided Germany . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne Weimar Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-412-22365-6 , p. 65.
personal data
SURNAME Krauss, Werner
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Krauss, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Romanist and politician (KPD, SED), MdL
DATE OF BIRTH June 7, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH August 28, 1976
Place of death Berlin