Wolfgang Schadewaldt

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Wolfgang Schadewaldt (born March 15, 1900 in Berlin , † November 10, 1974 in Tübingen ) was a German literary scholar , classical philologist and translator. As a full professor at the University of Tübingen , he held the chair for Classical Philology ( Graecistics ) and the survival of antiquity.

Life

The son of a doctor studied classical philology , archeology and German with Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and Werner Jaeger in his hometown of Berlin . After doctorate (1924) and habilitation (1927), Schadewaldt was a lecturer at Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität from 1927 . In 1928 he was appointed professor at the University of Königsberg and in 1929 moved to the University of Freiburg , where, under the influence of Martin Heidegger , with whom he was also friends, he temporarily supported the rector's office and the National Socialist- oriented university policy as dean. However, he already announced his resignation as dean in the spring of 1934 and moved to the University of Leipzig as Erich Bethes' successor in the fall . Schadewaldt was co-editor of the philological journal Hermes from 1933 to 1944 and the journal Die Antike , which was supposed to bring knowledge about antiquity to a wider audience, from 1937 to 1944. In 1941 he returned to the Berlin University, where he held the chair for classical philology held. As a member of the Wednesday Society, Schadewaldt had been in contact with men of the resistance since 1942 .

In 1942 he was accepted into the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin. In the Academy Schadewaldt had until 1950 the following functions: He was a member of the Institute of Greek-Roman archeology and headed the company Polybius -Lexikon that Inscriptiones Graecae and the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum , and he was in the academician of the German Commission , the Goethe Dictionary , and the Commission for the History of Religion in Late Antiquity .

From 1950 and until 1972 he taught at the University of Tübingen , although he had retired in 1968 .

Schadewaldt was the initiator and editor of the Goethe dictionary . He found his final resting place in the Tübingen mountain cemetery . The Egyptologist Dorothea Arnold is his daughter.

science

Wolfgang Schadewaldt is considered to be one of the most important German classical scholars and most effective mediator of ancient Greek literature in the 20th century. Egil A. Wyller described him as “a master of those who know. “In his works, Schadewaldt dealt with all genres of ancient Greek poetry, the epic , poetry , drama and also with philosophy and historiography . Schadewaldt marked a high point in Homer research . In addition to numerous individual works, his analyzes of all these subject areas are collected in the six-volume edition of his Tübingen lectures , which he gave between 1950 and 1972.

The group of Schadewaldt's pupils is significant, including the first representatives of the Tübingen Plato School . This internationally known direction of the Plato interpretation was founded by Schadewaldt's students Hans Joachim Krämer and Konrad Gaiser and later continued by Gaiser's successor Thomas A. Szlezák . Schadewaldt's students also include Wolfgang Kullmann and Hellmut Flashar , who studied with him in Berlin, and the ancient historian Alexander Demandt .

Translations

Schadewaldt is known to a wider public as the translator of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey , which, along with the translations by Johann Heinrich Voss , are considered to be the best translations of both epics into German. In contrast to Voss, Schadewaldt dispensed with the hexameter in his translation , which he justified as follows:

“The Greek in the old language of the epic has a large number of very long words that in later Greek, but especially in German, have much shorter words next to them. (...) The German translator of the hexameter is therefore usually finished with the verse earlier and is forced to bring the verse to the same length as in Greek, to stretch it out and to stretch it. Either he has to add fillers in German that are not there or help himself in other ways. "

Schadewaldt translated the Odyssey (1957) into prose, while his 1975 posthumous translation of the Iliad uses free rhythms . By dispensing with the strict form of the hexameter, Schadewaldt managed to come very close to Homer's literal sense, the sentence order and the laconic form of the original. In addition to Homer's works, Schadewaldt u. a. also dramas by Aeschylus , Sophocles and Carmina Burana . Schadewaldt combined the outstanding translation work with the theater maker Hansgünther Heyme , who realized the performance of the works in Cologne.

Memberships and honors

Fonts

Editor (selection)
  • Sophocles King Oedipus , translated and published, with afterword; and three essays: The King Oedipus of Sophocles in a more recent interpretation with history of effects and literature references; Shakespeare's King Lear and Sophocles King Oedipus ; The broken jug of Heinrich von Kleist and Sophocles King Oedipus ; Insel Taschenbuch 15, ISBN 3-458-31715-5 .
Monographs
  • Monologue and self-talk (1926)
  • Iliasstudien (1938, 2nd edition 1943, 3rd edition 1966)
  • The Homecoming of Odysseus (1946)
  • Legend of Homer the Wandering Singer (1942, 1959)
  • Sophocles and Sorrow (1948)
  • Sappho. World and poetry. Being in Love (1950)
  • Greek Star Tales (1956)
  • Hellas and Hesperia. Collected writings on antiquity and modern literature (1960)
  • Goethe studies. Nature and Antiquity (1963)
  • Tübingen lectures
    • Volume 1: The beginnings of philosophy among the Greeks , edited by Ingeborg Schudoma, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, ​​1978
    • Volume 2: The beginnings of historiography among the Greeks , edited by Ingeborg Schudoma, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, ​​1982
    • Volume 3: The early Greek poetry , edited by Ingeborg Schudoma, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, ​​1989
    • Volume 4: The Greek Tragedy , edited by Ingeborg Schudoma, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, ​​1991
Translations (selection)
  • Aristophanes: The frogs . Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1971 ( Insel-Bücherei No. 962)
  • Aristophanes: Lysistrata . Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1972 (Insel-Bücherei No. 967)
  • Carmina Burana , 1953
  • Homer: Odyssey , Hamburg, Rowohlt, 1958
  • Homer: Ilias , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1975
  • Sophocles: Aias , Frankfurt am Main, Insel, 1993
  • Sophocles: Antigone , Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1974
  • Sophocles: Elektra , Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig 1994
  • Sophocles: The women of Trachis , Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig 2000
  • Sophocles: Oedipus on Colonus , Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig 1996
  • Sophocles: Philoktet , Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig 1999
  • Star telling. The mythology of the constellations , Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig 2002

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Fred Oberhauser, Axel Kahrs : Literary Guide Germany , Insel Verlag, 2008.
  2. ^ Egil A. Wyller: Der late Plato , Meiner, Hamburg 1970, p. VII
  3. ↑ Homer: Ilias , transmission by Wolfgang Schadewaldt, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, ​​1975, p. 425
  4. ^ German Academy of Sciences: Yearbook of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin 1946-1949. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1950, p. 11
personal data
SURNAME Schadewaldt, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German literary scholar, classical philologist and translator
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 10, 1974
Place of death Tübingen