Werner Richter (Germanist)

Werner Richter (* 5. May 1887 in Berlin , † 19th September 1960 in Bonn ) was a German specialist in German and science administrator.

Life

Richter studied German at the Universities of Berlin, Marburg and Basel and completed his habilitation in Greifswald in 1913 . Between 1916 and 1919 he taught as a professor in Constantinople and then returned to Greifswald to take over the German department there.

From 1920 to 1932 Richter worked as a ministerial advisor, later ministerial director in the Prussian Ministry of Education , where he played a decisive role in reforming the university constitution in the Weimar Republic, alongside long-time minister Carl Heinrich Becker . At the same time, he taught as an honorary professor at Berlin University from 1921 and was appointed full professor there in 1932. Richter was a member of the right-wing liberal German People's Party during the Weimar Republic . From 1930 to 1933 he was also a member of the central executive committee of this party. In 1930, Richter described his political position in a letter as "sitting to the left of the German People's Party, so much so that I sometimes have to fear that I might fall off this bench to the left."

After the National Socialists came to power, Richter was dismissed because of his Jewish origins. Richter began to study theology in Basel and emigrated to the USA in 1939, where he had received a call to Elmhurst College in Illinois . He also lectured at Yale, Madison, Berkeley, and theol Universities. Institutions. In 1948 he returned to Marburg and Munich as a visiting professor. A year later he was appointed to the chair for older German studies in Bonn, where he also read on philosophy, education and theology. In the following years he was committed to the reconstruction of German science and was involved in the re-establishment of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation . From 1951 to 1953 he was rector of Bonn University and from 1954 to 1958 he was finally president of the DAAD.

Fonts (selection)

• Liebeskampf 1630 and Schaubühne 1670. A contribution to the history of German theater in the 17th century (dissertation, published 1910)
• The Lanzelet of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven (1934)
• Reeducating Germany (1945)
• The Future of the German University (1949)
• German and Anglo-Saxon university ideals (1953)
• What does cultural policy mean and to what end (1955)
• Science and Spirit in the Weimar Republic (1958)

Honors

• Honorary Senator of the Technical University of Berlin
• Large Federal Cross of Merit with Star (1957)

literature

• Reinermann, Lothar:  Richter, Werner. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , p. 539 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of German-speaking emigration after 1933. Volume 2. Part 2. Munich a. a. 1983, ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 968.
• Richter, Werner. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 18: Phil – Samu. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. De Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 2010, ISBN 978-3-598-22698-4 , pp. 241-245.
• Siegfried Mielke (Ed.) With the collaboration of Marion Goers, Stefan Heinz , Matthias Oden, Sebastian Bödecker: Unique - Lecturers, students and representatives of the German University of Politics (1920-1933) in the resistance against National Socialism. Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86732-032-0 , p. 375 f. (Short biography).

Web links

• Literature by and about Werner Richter in the catalog of the German National Library
• Werner Richter , Internationales Biographisches Archiv 29/1962 of July 9, 1962, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Michael Grüttner u. a., The Berlin University between the World Wars 1918–1945, Berlin 2012 (History of the University of Unter den Linden, Vol. 2), p. 88.