Wolfgang Harms (Germanist)

Wolfgang Harms (born January 7, 1936 in Bellavista , Peru ) is a German Germanist and professor emeritus for German philology .

Live and act

Wolfgang Harms grew up in Itzehoe (Holstein). From 1956 to 1962 he studied German and Greek philology and psychology at the Universities of Göttingen , Tübingen and Kiel . In 1963 he received his doctorate in Kiel with a dissertation on the struggle with friends or relatives in German literature up to around 1300 . 1963 to 1968 he was assistant to Friedrich Ohly (from 1964 in Münster ). In 1969 the habilitation took place as a scholarship holder of the German Research Foundation with the thesis Homo viator in bivio. Studies on the imagery of the path . In the same year he was appointed to a chair for older German literature as successor to Werner Simon at the University of Hamburg . There he was accepted into the Joachim Jungius Society in 1973, of which he was president from 1975 to 1978. As the successor to Hugo Kuhn , he was appointed to a chair for German philology at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich in 1979 . Even after his retirement in 2004, he worked as a researcher and teacher in Munich.

Visiting professorships have taken him to various universities in Canada, Egypt, France and Switzerland. In his contacts abroad, Harms particularly encouraged early encounters between young German and foreign university professors in the fields of medieval studies and early modern literary history; for example on bilateral encounters with Poland ( Marian Szyrocki ) from 1981 to 2001, with France ( Jean-Marie Valentin ) in 1990, with the USA and Canada ( Stephen Jaeger ) from 1992 to 2005 and with Switzerland ( Peter Rusterholz ) in 1992. Similar goals also counted numerous trips to the former GDR (1985 to 1990).

In addition to the annotated edition, research and appreciation of early modern leaflets , his work focuses on the following overarching questions: the question of how medieval forms of thought and writing continue to have an impact in the modern era , the question of the interaction between text and image and the question of the relationship between the author , Work and reader. He is not only an author in these fields, but also publisher of anthologies, editions and book series. Among other things, he published the library of the early modern period as well as the journals Antike und Abendland and the archive for cultural history. In publications and when organizing conferences, Harms crosses the boundaries of epochs and academic disciplines, for example on topics such as: cooperative authorship in literature production, the relationship between books and libraries, and the reader's participation in literature, or reception as a conversation of different times. Further fields of work are courtly novels of the high and late Middle Ages, emblems , connections between literature and natural history as well as the history of science .

For Harms, research is basically an opportunity to talk to researchers in more than one subject. With the establishment of Arbitrium. Journal for reviews on German literary studies 1983 (together with Wolfgang Frühwald ) he also created a practical research basis for this.

In 1975 he founded the series Mikrokosmos. Contributions to literary studies and meaning research . From 1973 to 1985 Harms was a member of the German Commission of the German Research Foundation, from 1980 to 1984 in the function of chairman. He was President of the Society for Emblem Studies in Glasgow from 1996 to 2002 .

Fonts (selection)

• Colloquiality of literature: small fonts. S. Hirzel Verlag, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3777614238
• Friedrich Ohly. Visualization of a great philologist . S. Hirzel Verlag, Stuttgart / Weimar 2014, ISBN 3777623857
• with Hans Fromm and Uwe Ruberg (eds.): Verbum et signum. Contributions to Medieval Research on Meaning, II. (Festschrift for Friedrich Ohly) Munich 1975.
• as ed. with Heimo Reinitzer : Natural history and allegorical interpretation of nature. Aspects of the world view between the 13th and 19th centuries. Bern / Frankfurt am Main 1980 (= Mikrokosmos. Volume 7).
• as Ed .: Text and Image, Image and Text. DFG symposium 1988. Stuttgart 1990 (= German symposia. Volume 11).
• Significance as part of the matter in standard zoological works of the early modern period (Konrad Gesner, Ulisse Aldrovandi). In: Hartmut Boockmann, Bernd Moeller , Karl Stackmann (eds.): Life lessons and world designs in the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern age. Politics - Education - Natural History - Theology. Report on colloquia of the commission to research the culture of the late Middle Ages 1983 to 1987 (= treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen: philological-historical class. Volume III, No. 179). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1989, ISBN 3-525-82463-7 , pp. 352-369.
• Imagery as potential in constellations: text and image between authoritative traditions and current intentions (15th to 17th centuries) . De Gruyter, Berlin 2007, ISBN 3110194430
• with Jean-Marie Valentin: Medieval thought and writing models in German literature of the early modern period . Rodopi, Amsterdam 1993, ISBN 9051833466
• with Gilbert Heß, Joachim Camerarius dJ: Symbola et emblemata tam moralia quam sacra. The handwritten emblems from 1587. M. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2009, ISBN 3484971592
• with Klaus Speckenbach, Herfried Vögel: Pictorial speech in the Middle Ages and early modern times: Problems of their legitimation and their function . M. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1992, ISBN 3484106697
• with Michael Schilling: The illustrated leaflet of the early modern era: Traditions, effects, contexts . S. Hirzel Verlag, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 3777615579

Web links

• Literature by and about Wolfgang Harms in the catalog of the German National Library