Wolfgang Steinitz

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wolfgang Steinitz (in the foreground in the middle) on a boat tour in Moscow in 1949

Wolfgang Steinitz (born February 28, 1905 in Breslau ; † April 21, 1967 in Berlin ) was a German linguist and folklorist.

As the rediscoverer of buried socially critical folk song traditions, he was the most important pioneer of the German folk revival in the Federal Republic and the GDR . At the same time, his research on the language and culture of the West Siberian people of the Khanty is considered to be one of the most important testimonies to the tradition and tradition of this threatened Siberian ethnic group . Steinitz also left an extensive body of work in other areas of linguistics and language education.

Life

Youth and emigration

Wolfgang Steinitz was one of five children of Kurt and Else Steinitz (née Jakobssohn) from Breslau. Kurt's father was a wealthy lawyer who, against his will, chose his son as his successor in his law firm. Kurt Steinitz had finally followed his father's wish and expected the same from his son Wolfgang, who, however, was supposed to resist. Else and Kurt were of Jewish origin, but were strongly secularized. They left the Jewish community shortly after Wolfgang was born.

Even as a teenager, Wolfgang was collecting and documenting oral tradition. His father wanted him to study law; until 1925 he was formally enrolled for this in Breslau. From 1923 to 1928 he studied Finno-Ugric linguistics and ethnology at the universities of Breslau and Berlin with full passion . He received an assistant position at the Hungarian Institute in Berlin under Ernst Lewy . In 1924 he made his first trip to Finland, where his violin helped the otherwise shy Steinitz to establish contact. In September 1926 he first traveled from Finland to Leningrad, where he arrived on September 20.

In December 1926 he met Inge (actually Minna Karolina Dorothea) Kasten, his future wife, in Breslau. She was a committed communist. In 1927 he also joined the KPD and finally became head of agitprop of the communist youth movement in the Silesian district . He was also active as a communist in Berlin. On June 1, 1929, his father Kurt died unexpectedly and early. Then he traveled to Helsinki "on a secret mission"; Inge Kasten followed in 1929. They married on April 22, 1930. He appears to have been spying in Helsinki.

As his notes show, he wanted to become a professional revolutionary, which Inge talked him out of. Ultimately, he was militarily inexperienced and unsuitable. He was reported and had to flee Finland hastily in June 1930. From September 1930 to January 1931 he was in Tartu , Estonia , where he and Inge must have had a happy time. In Tartu they met Paul Ariste and his wife Mäggi. At the end of September they moved to Riga. Then Inge and Wolfgang returned to Berlin, right in the middle of the last act of the National Socialists' seizure of power. Steinitz was very politically active there, especially in Dahlem and Zehlendorf . In 1932 their first son Klaus was born.

In the KPD he belonged to the wing loyal to Stalin and Thalmann and supported the Stalinization. In April 1933 Steinitz lost his position at the Hungarian institute due to his Jewish origins.

The staunch anti-fascist emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1934 and received a position as professor for Finnish-Ugric languages ​​at the Leningrad Institute of the Northern Peoples , a training center for members of the indigenous peoples of the Russian north and Siberia , in a double existence as a scholar and a communist-Jewish emigrant. His thesis was printed in Finland; the title was awarded to him in absentia on December 14, 1934. His first appraiser, Ernst Lewy, had also left Germany because of the National Socialists and was in the Basque Country at the time .

During his stay in Leningrad Steinitz kept secret the fact that he was a communist for most of the time; for Stalin had leading communists persecuted. The first show trial took place in 1936 . In this situation he lived as a foreign specialist who was far removed from politics. However, he remained a member of the KPD and was not transferred to the KPdSU . Inge brought Klaus from Germany in February / March 1935. In the course of the Stalin Purges , Steinitz was released in 1937 and had to leave the country - in retrospect, luck for the family.

Steinitz was able to emigrate to Sweden. From 1943 he got an assistant position at Stockholm University . He worked in the Free Germany movement .

Return to Germany and years in the GDR

After the end of the war, he drove back to Germany at the first opportunity in January 1946. Steinitz assumed many different scientific and political functions in the GDR. Due to the changed political situation, Slavic studies were given a much higher priority than before. Although he was actually a Finno-Ugrist, as a "makeshift Slavist", as he himself said, he played an essential role in the redesign of the subject that now shifted the focus to contemporary Soviet literature. It involved the students in the decision on the curriculum, which was very unusual for the time, but also ensured greater political control of the institute. He brought with him his textbook on the Russian language , which was written in Sweden and remained authoritative for a long time.

In addition, he headed the Finnish-Ugric Institute at East Berlin's Humboldt University . At times he was one of the most politically exposed scientists in the GDR: from 1954 to 1958 he was a member of the Central Committee of the SED and from 1954 to 1963 Vice President of the German Academy of Sciences in the GDR. In 1955 and 1956 he spoke to the plenary session of the Central Committee and named grievances in science, such as the exaggeration of Soviet science, which he warned against with reference to Lysenko , as well as the domineering treatment of scientists classified as "bourgeois". Steinitz 'request to speak caused Walter Ulbricht to interject and drew Steinitz' tactical self-criticism.

tomb

The secret speech Khrushchev was a severe shock to the convinced defender of the Soviet Union and was the beginning of his critical turning that ultimately led to his increasing distance from politics of the GDR. The Hungarian uprising of 1956 also shook him badly. Although incriminating material was gathered against him in two investigations, there was no repression against him. Even fleeing to the West was out of the question for the staunch communist. His membership in the Central Committee ended in 1958. In 1957 his mother Else committed suicide. Steinitz died in 1967 of complications from a stroke . He is buried in the cemetery of the Dorotheenstadt and Friedrichswerder communities in Berlin-Mitte.

Scientific activity

Ostjacological research

The Finno-Ugrist Steinitz addressed during his Leningrad time especially with the languages and cultures of the Ob-Ugric people of chanting (Ostyaks). His research is based on a six-month stay in a Chantic settlement on the Middle Ob and on statements by Chantic informants who studied at the Heart Institute.

On July 15, 1935, Steinitz set out from Leningrad in the direction of Moscow and later Kazan and Siberia to undertake the research trip that had been planned with Ernst Lewy ten years earlier. He left Inge with her son Klaus, even though she had wanted to travel with him. The purpose of the trip was both the linguistic research of the Chantic language as well as the study of the way of life and customs of the Chants, which had preserved many of their traditions, but at the same time also with numerous social problems as a result of colonization, including the widespread alcoholism, and were faced with the consolidation of Soviet rule.

The time of Steinitz's research was marked by the transition from the early, conservative nationality policy of the “ethnographers”, who assumed that the indigenous peoples already lived a primitive communism, to Stalin's nationality policy, which relied much more on a violent reshaping of indigenous society. Steinitz himself had to end his research trip prematurely. During the time of his trip, the decision was made to no longer write the Chantic language in Latin, but from now on in Cyrillic, which the Finno-Ugrist Steinitz disliked. He was accused of having been involved in the spread of the supposedly too complicated Latin writing, and he was too interested in reports on the "Kasymer events" - probably meaning the Kasym uprising against Soviet rule in 1931-34 . Steinitz strongly denied this accusation, and in his notes he continued to use the Latin spelling of Chantic. Steinitz was still a staunch communist and was interested e.g. B. especially for how modern Soviet subjects such as stories about Lenin found their way into the Khanty folk poetry and were reproduced with traditional forms. One question is to what extent the trip provided the materials for his research and whether the lion's share was contributed by his informants at the Leningrad Institute of the Northern Peoples.

After he had to leave the Soviet Union at the end of October 1937, Steinitz published his research, which is still fundamental to this day, in 1939 in Tartu, Estonia, under the title Ostjakologische Arbeit . A full edition was not published until 1980, 13 years after his death, by his daughter Renate in Budapest .

musical research

Another focus of Steinitz's work was the collection of German folk songs directed against war, oppression and misery, from the songs of the Silesian weavers to soldier songs from the Thirty Years 'War , peasants' complaints, songs about desertion or contemporary events such as the revolution of 1848 . He came into contact with little-known folk song traditions early on, which addressed the misery of the Silesian weavers, for example. Steinitz's German folk songs of a democratic character from six centuries were published in East Berlin in 1954 and 1962. This collection of 180 songs only unfolded its full effect after Steinitz's unexpected death in 1967.

The rediscovered “democratic folk songs” were probably the most influential work for the German folk revival of the 1970s. Interpreters such as Peter Rohland , Hein & Oss Kröher, Liederjan , Zupfgeigenhansel , Hannes Wader and many more preferred to use the Großer Steinitz , as the work was briefly called, to show that it was also a “popular” song, which tended to be right-winged there is a buried tradition directed against war, oppression and terror. Steinitz's work was also an important model for the folk movement in the GDR. In particular, the anti-militarist songs (like King of Prussia, great potentate / How are we so tired of your service ) were in conflict with the ruling party line.

Other work

Steinitz's other legacies also include a textbook of the Russian language that is very popular because of its ease of understanding, as well as the dictionary of contemporary German that he co-founded . In his book Russische Lautlehre he founded the "Steinitzian transcription" of the Cyrillic alphabet, which was later named after him and which was used in the GDR until 1990 and which had some advantages over the Duden transcription that is common today. From 1952 Steinitz founded the Marx-Engels dictionary , of which a sample book appeared in 1963.

His son is the economist Klaus Steinitz .

Works (selection)

  • Russian phonology , Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1953.
  • German folk songs of a democratic character from six centuries. Volume 1, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1954.
  • German folk songs of a democratic character from six centuries. Volume 2, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1962.
  • The great Steinitz - German folk songs of a democratic character from six centuries. Reprint in one volume, Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt 1983, ISBN 3-88436-101-5 .
  • Ostyak Grammar and Chrestomathy: With Dictionary. 2., verb. Harrassowitz, Leipzig 1950.
  • Ostjakological work. Contributions to linguistics and ethnography. Edited by Gert Sauer and Renate Steinitz. Volumes I – IV, Akademiai Kiado u. Akademie-Verlag, Budapest / Berlin 1980.
  • Russian textbook. 10. through Edition. People and Knowledge, Berlin 1961.

literature

  • Jan Peters (Ed.): Twice Stockholm - Berlin 1946. Letters on return. Jürgen Peters and Wolfgang Steinitz. With follow-up questions to Robert Rompe and Jürgen Kuczynski. Leipzig 1989.
  • Peter Nötzoldt: Wolfgang Steinitz and the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin. On the political history of the institution (1945–1968). Phil. Diss. Humboldt University Berlin 1998.
  • Annette Leo : Life as a balancing act: Wolfgang Steinitz. Communist, Jew, scientist. Metropol, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-936411-49-2 .
  • Klaus Steinitz: Wolfgang Steinitz - I was incredibly lucky. A life between science and politics . Ed .: Wolfgang Kaschuba. Karl Dietz, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-320-02905-3 .
  • Wolfgang Steinitz and the West Siberian peoples of the Chanty and Mansi. Special issue of the Lomonossow magazine ( lomonossow.de ).
  • Ewald Lang : Wolfgang Steinitz (1905–1967). From the edge of philology to the center of science policy , in: Gegenworte (BBAW magazine), 14, autumn 2004.
  • German democratic folk songs. Honest, simple songs full of touching clarity. Steinitz as a pioneer of the German-German folk scene . In: Folker! 4/2005 ( folker.de ).
  • Renate Steinitz: A German Jewish family is scattered. In: Eckard John (ed.): The discovery of the socially critical song (on the occasion of the international symposium “The discovery of the socially critical song” on the 100th birthday of the folklorist Wolfgang Steinitz). Waxmann, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8309-1655-8 , pp. 61-72.
  • Michael K. Scholz: Would you like some Scandinavian experience? Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 978-3-515-07651-7 ( books.google.de ).
  • Thomas Kuczynski : The Marx-Engels research at the German Academy of Sciences. Sketches for an unprocessed field of research. In: Contributions to Marx-Engels research. New episode. Special volume 5. The Marx-Engels editions of works in the USSR and GDR (1945–1968). Argument Verlag, Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-88619-691-7 , pp. 418-421.
  • Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk:  Steinitz, Wolfgang . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Utz Maas : Persecution and emigration of German-speaking linguists 1933–1945. Entry on Wolfgang Steinitz (accessed: April 15, 2018).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Annette Leo: Life as a balance act: Wolfgang Steinitz. Communist Jew scientist . 2005, ISBN 3-936411-49-2 , pp. 68-305 .
  2. ↑ Helmut Steiner: An intellectual in conflict with power? In: Klaus Steinitz, Wolfgang Kaschuba (Ed.): Wolfgang Steinitz. I was incredibly lucky. A life between science and politics . Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-320-02905-3 , p. 92-107 .
  3. ^ Fritz Klein: Case study of particular charm. (PDF, 224 kB) To the Wolfgang Steinitz biography. In: UTOPIE Kreativ, H. 186 April 2006, p. 362 , accessed on September 2, 2014 .
  4. ↑ Heinz father: Review of: Wolfgang Steinitz - I had unlikely luck. A life between science and politics. ( Memento of January 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF) 2006, p. 344, accessed on September 2, 2014.
  5. ^ Friedhilde Krause: Wolfgang Steinitz - personal memories from the perspective of a Slavist. (PDF; 1.09 MB) In: Meeting reports of the Leibniz Sozietät, issue 83. 2006, p. 87 , accessed on September 2, 2014 .
  6. ^ German Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Institute for German Language and Literature: Marx-Engels Dictionary. Principles and samples . Berlin 1963.
  7. ↑ About the Marx-Engels dictionary. In: Weimar Contributions . 14, No. 2, Vol. 14, 1968, pp. 343-360.
  8. ↑ Richard Sperl: Marx-Engels Dictionary. To draft a political classic lexicography at the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin. A documentation. In: Worlds of Knowledge. Hanover 2010, p. 153 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Steinitz, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German linguist and folklorist
DATE OF BIRTH February 28, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH April 21, 1967
Place of death Berlin , GDR