Werner Schur

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Werner Schur (full name Paul Adolf Werner Schur , born August 5, 1888 in Dorpat , † December 19, 1950 in Heidelberg ) was a German ancient historian who taught at the University of Breslau from 1922 to 1945 . His research focus was the middle and late Roman Republic .

Life

Werner Schur was the eldest son of the mathematician Friedrich Schur (1856–1932) and Laura geb. Schmidt, daughter of the legal scholar Carl Adolf Schmidt (1815–1904). He grew up with his two younger brothers Axel Schur (1891–1930) and Dietrich Schur in Dorpat, where his father taught as a full professor of pure mathematics at the university there since the winter semester of 1888/89 . After further appointments by the father, the family moved to Aachen in 1892 , to Karlsruhe in 1897 and to Strasbourg in 1909 .

Werner Schur studied ancient history and classical philology at the University of Heidelberg after graduating from the Grand Ducal Humanistic Gymnasium in Karlsruhe (August 1, 1907) . November 4, 1908, he moved to the Kaiser-Wilhelm University of Strasbourg where he in 1913 with a dissertation on the Aeneassage Dr. phil. received his doctorate . He later paid tribute to his academic teacher and doctoral supervisor Karl Johannes Neumann in an extensive obituary. After his dissertation went to press, Schur took part in the First World War as a volunteer . On his return he moved to Breslau, where his parents lived after they were expelled from Strasbourg. His father taught from 1919 to 1924 as a full professor of mathematics at the University of Breslau . At this university , Schur completed his habilitation in 1922 with Ernst Kornemann for the subject of ancient history and has taught there since then as a private lecturer .

In 1929 Schur was made an unofficial adjunct professor and in 1939 an extraordinary professor. Several times he represented chairs at other universities, for example in the winter semester 1936/37 and summer semester 1937 in Giessen as well as in Cologne and Bonn ; however, there was no appeal. During the Second World War , he temporarily represented the professor and director of the Department of Ancient History at the University of Wroclaw. Towards the end of the war, he fled the city in March 1945 during the battle for Breslau and came to Heidelberg, where he lived as a private scholar until his death.

Scientific work

Werner Schur's publications were judged rather negatively in the professional world. Hans Schaefer cited Schur's books Sallust als Historiker (1934) and Das Zeitalter des Marius und Sulla as examples of his way of working and remarked piously to them: “He was not so much a man of new questions as of the learned summary in which he wrote the In contrast, Ronald Syme accused him of uncritically adopting the hypotheses of others (namely Jérôme Carcopino ), inability to select and use relevant evidence, as well as dryness and lack of reliability. Karl Christ wrote about the same book: “His view of history was structured very simply. Marius was after him the representative of the "democratic", Sulla the "aristocratic" side. The Augustan principate was then supposed to bring about the synthesis of the two «leadership ideas».

Political attitude

Werner Schur was politically conservative. During the Weimar Republic he was a member of the Stahlhelm , during the National Socialist era he joined the SA and from the end of September 1937 the NSDAP . In his scientific publications he occasionally made references to the present, for example in his book Die Orientpolitik des Kaiser Nero (1923) between the humiliation of the Armenian king Tiridates by the Romans and the Treaty of Versailles . After the seizure of power of the Nazis he praised in his 1934 published books Augustus and Sallust as a historian , the leadership principle as a guarantee of stability and success in foreign policy; at the same time he justified the defeats of Germanicus in Germania with racist slogans.

Fonts (selection)

  • The Aeneassage in later Roman literature . Strasbourg 1914 (dissertation)
  • Emperor Nero's policy on the Orient . Leipzig 1923 ( Klio supplements 15). Reprinted in Aalen 1963
  • Scipio Africanus and the establishment of Roman world domination . Leipzig 1927 ( The Legacy of the Elderly , Row 2.13)
    • Italian translation by Angelo Treves : Scipione l'africano e la fondazione dell'impero mondiale di Roma . Milan 1937. Numerous reprints
  • Caesar . Lübeck 1932 ( Coleman's small biographies 1)
  • Augustus . Lübeck 1934 ( Coleman's little biographies 39)
  • Sallust as a historian . Stuttgart 1934. Reprint Ann Arbor 1980
  • The age of Marius and Sulla . Leipzig 1942 ( Klio supplements 46). Reprinted in Aalen 1962

literature

  • Hans Schaefer : Werner Schur (1888–1951) † . In: Historical magazine . Volume 178 (1954) 216
  • Jörg-Peter Jatho, Gerd Simon: Giessen historian in the Third Reich . Giessen 2008, ISBN 978-3-88349-522-4 , pp. 35-37

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Date of death according to information from the Heidelberg City Archives, November 21, 2016. The year of death indicated by Schaefer is therefore incorrect. Jatho / Simon also have 1950, see section “Literature” .
  2. ↑ On Werner Schur's parents and siblings see Rudolf Fritsch :  Schur, Friedrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3 , p. 759 ( digitized version ).
  3. ^ Karl Johannes Neumann . In: Annual report on the progress of classical antiquity . Volume 214, Nekrologe = Biographisches Jahrbuch für Altertumskunde . Volume 47 (1927), pp. 94–110.
  4. ↑ So Jatho / Simon ( section “Literature” ) p. 35. Hans Georg Gundel : The Classical Philology at the University of Giessen in the 20th Century , in: Heinz Hungerland (ed.), Ludwigs University - Justus Liebig University, 1607–1957: Festschrift for the 350th anniversary . Gießen 1957, pp. 192–221, here p. 205. Full text (PDF; 2.3 MB); there Schur is erroneously referred to as the chair holder for 1936.
  5. ↑ Hans Schaefer: Werner Schur (1888–1951) † . In: Historical magazine . Volume 178 (1954) 216.
  6. ↑ Ronald Syme: Review of Werner Schur: The age of Marius and Sulla . In: Journal of Roman Studies . Volume 34 (1944), pp. 103-109, especially 108 f .: “Schur suffers from a general incompetence to choose and reveal the relevant evidence. ... The book is arid but woolly, dullness unredeemed by exactitude. "
  7. ^ Karl Christ: Sulla. A Roman career . Munich 2002, ISBN 978-3-406-49285-3 , p. 182.
  8. ↑ Jatho / Simon ( section “Literature” ) p. 35 (membership in Stahlhelm, SA and NSDAP, membership number 5752384, entry on September 27, 1937; according to Jatho / Simon, p. 31 on September 28, 1937).
  9. ↑ Quotations from Jatho / Simon 36 f.
  10. ↑ Werner Schur: The Orient Policy of the Emperor Nero . Leipzig 1923, p. 33; quoted from Jatho / Simon 35 f.
personal data
SURNAME Schur, Werner
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schur, Paul Adolf Werner (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German ancient historian
DATE OF BIRTH August 5, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Dorpat
DATE OF DEATH December 19, 1950
Place of death Heidelberg