Max Wehrli

Max Wehrli ( born September 17, 1909 in Zurich, † December 18, 1998 ) was a Swiss literary critic and specialist in German.

Life

Max Wehrli studied from 1928 to 1935 German and Greek at the Universities of Zurich and Berlin (summer semester 1931). Among his teachers were at this time Emil Ermatinger, Albert Bachmann, Ernst Howald (all Zurich ), Arthur Hübner and Nicolai Hartmann ( both Berlin). In 1935 he received his doctorate in Zurich with the work Johann Jakob Bodmer and the history of literature, in 1937 he qualified with the study of history in The Baroque Lohenstein Arminius. Since the habilitation and after the war he was first a lecturer in 1946 titular professor and from 1947 as the successor of Robert Faesi Associate Professor of older German literature. In 1953 he was appointed professor of the history of German literature from the beginnings to 1700. With his appointment, the Chair was officially expanded to include a subject, which is expected at all other universities to Neugermanistik, since the earliest publications, however, was one of Wehrli's core interests: the 16th and 17th centuries. The summer semester 1955 Max Wehrli spent as a visiting professor at Columbia University in New York. 1965 to 1967 he was dean of his faculty and 1970 to 1972 Rector of the University of Zurich. 1973, a year before his retirement, he became president of the Swiss University Rectors' Conference, which he chaired until 1977.

At Max Wehrli's students include: Martin Bircher, Harald Burger, Peter Maurice Daly, Eleonore Frey- Staiger, Alois Maria Haas, Urs Herzog, Paul Michel, Klara upper Müller, Peter Rust Wood, Sibylle Rust wood and Rosmarie Zeller- Thumm.

Fields of work

The big project Max Wehrli was to design a context for understanding the pre-modern German -language literary tradition before they, constituted as an autonomous, all genres and types of literature comprehensive system in the 18th century. His teaching and research areas included in this framework, the High Middle Ages, the Baroque, Zurich as a city of culture from the Middle Ages to the modern era, poetics, and especially the history of literature. Finally, it is known his interest in contemporary literature. In addition, Max Wehrli served as editor or co-editor of numerous scientific series, encyclopedias, manuals and Commemorative. These is also his work as editor and translator of literary works of the Middle Ages and the Baroque, some of which were included in the series " Manesseplatz Library of World Literature" and thus made available to the general public.

Research priorities

Three areas of research are highlighted:

Poetology

Max Wehrli's early publication "General Literature " from 1951, in which he referenced the state of German literature of his time collectively, and critically, is divided into two main chapters of " Poetics " and " literary history ". These two interests ' may as well be understood to be characteristic of literary research work. They can not, however, combine with each other easily, but produce a stress field: In the " poetics " summarizes Wehrli 1951, shaped by the work-immanent interpretation of his time questioning of the relationship between form and content, part and whole, which are considered as non-resolvable unit. Wehrli criticized in the chapter " Literary History " this position as ahistorical, because it assumed too much from a closed single text and Tradiertheit the forms considered too little. Instead, he asked to look at eras or styles as independent " poetic sizes " and to analyze their internal relationships and dynamics. The systematic analysis of the " poetics " of a single text thus gains its legitimacy only in that they " poetics " of an era or a literary movement is taken at the same time as part of the. This leads to a dialectical interplay of historical and a systematic approach, the Wehrli will call in his later writings " poetically ". In particular, in his last book, "Literature in the German Middle Ages. A poetic introduction " (1984, current edition 2006) are systematically develops the educational and media history, literature sociological- institutional, philosophical and theological, rhetorical, aesthetic, hermeneutic and form-critical contexts in which the historicity of the literature can be described.

History of Literature

With the attitude to always make the " indispensable historical character " of literary works into the center of observation, Max Wehrli borders explicitly the idea from that art is something about temporal and " aesthetic perfection is possible only against history " - admit it, so Wehrli, " just nothing Vergänglicheres than the supposedly timeless art ." The understanding conditions for such past work looks Wehrli in his concept of the poetically - hermeneutical debate, the dialectical encounter between the own actual situation of the recipient and the historical strangeness of the object. " The risk of each literary understanding is to realize living present terms and at the same time to see the object entirely of itself in its historical contingency. It is the works of the past, especially the medieval literature as the stranger, quite another to see his time law following and they learn at the same time in a willing listening as a Private, Captive, perhaps updates. "To the teleology suspected, each chronologically structured representation of a historical course is subject to necessary Wehrli is a differentiation contrary dictum: Objectively it would be " pointless to speak of progress or decline and to value after". It is, however, indispensable Methodically that literary historiography in the act of planning and organization of the material an inner historical context construct - just as he the author of the literary history darbiete each: " A sense of history is also for literature, at least not scientifically named. We can use it more than postulate on the basis of the finding that the historical patterns in all darkness and Chaotik have repeatedly Personality of trains and a direction. " The high priority to be accorded the categories of totality, the synthesis and the continuum in Wehrli's methodological remarks, due at the same time a drastic relativism: literary history as a reconstruction of a historical context can never take full scholarship. You take a " dubious status " between science and art, whose legitimation by the subjective selection and coherence foundation is always questionable.

Era

Max Wehrli's historical poetological access requires a specific epoch understanding. The expansion of the discipline Older German Literature to the Literature to 1700 at the University of Zurich is in addition to individual preference, especially scientific program. It's about the problem, to bring the older German literature in an understanding of the context; to a classification of the early literary sources that are only discontinuous and fragmentary tangible, only from close ties to a likewise fragmentary about perfect Latin Tradition Field and from heterogeneous references to oral vernacular tradition evolve, and that are initially far from being an institutionalized, autonomous represent literature system. It called for the methodical program to always meet the literature in the interplay of historical situation and systematic classification, an analytical view, which had to exceed the professional historical- administrative boundaries of university operation necessary. The specific epochal term results from the research topic of "History of development, integration, transformation of such - never autonomous, always open - [ Literature ] system. It is the story of the closing ranks of isolated monuments, the different approaches and attempts at a causal relationship, or at least a meaningful constellation, the formation of certain traditions with their specific form types and functions, always in counter-play for pan-European Latin and other vernacular languages ​​in Europe. The decisive factor is not the idea of a national spirit, or else a mysterious size, but the simple fact that a literary system according to types, rhetorical forms, metric systems and word meanings is borne required by a simultaneously building up language ( in every sense ). " This period of German literature is not completed until the 18th century, or even later after going back for the scientific Latin. In this sense, the technical part of the older German literature at the University of Zurich was programmatically set from the beginnings to 1700.

Awards and Affiliations

The scientific work of Max Wehrli has been recognized with numerous honors and awards at home and abroad: Honorary Member of the Modern Language Association of America (1964 ), corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in Heidelberg ( 1977), Göttingen (1981 ) and Munich (1983 ), carriers of the Gold medal of the Goethe Institute (1970), the Canton of Zurich (1972 ) and the Gottfried -Keller- works price of the Martin Bodmer Foundation (1979). Moreover, it was Max Wehrli 1955 Visiting Professor at Columbia University, New York, in 1986 he received from the University of Munich an honorary doctorate.

Writings

• Johann Jakob Bodmer and the history of literature. Zurich, Phil I champagne, Diss Frauenfeld, Leipzig 1936.
• The baroque view of history in Lohenstein Arminius. Frauenfeld, Leipzig 1938.
• Literary Studies. Bern 1951.
• Gottfried Keller's relationship to his own work. Basel 1963.
• Medieval narrative forms: essays. Zurich in 1969.
• History of German literature from the beginnings to the end of the 16th century. Stuttgart 1980.
• Literature in the German Middle Ages: a poetic introduction. Stuttgart 1984.
• Fritz Wagner and Wolfgang Maaz (ed.): Max Wehrli: Humanism and Baroque. Hildesheim, Zurich 1993.
• Fritz Wagner and Wolfgang Maaz (ed.): Max Wehrli: present and memory. Collected Essays. Hildesheim, Zurich 1998.

Editions and translations

• German Baroque poetry. Selection and afterword by Max Wehrli. Manesseplatz, Zurich 1977, ISBN 3717515322nd
• German poetry of the Middle Ages. Selection and translation of Max Wehrli. Zurich in 1955. 6th Edition 1988.
• Jacob Bidermann: Cenodoxus. Edited by Max Wehrli. . Dusseldorf 1958 ( Reprint from: The German drama from the Baroque to the present Volume 1 Edited by Benno von Wiese. . )
• Jacob Bidermann: Philemon Martyr. Latin and German. Edited and translated by Max Wehrli. Olten, Cologne 1960.
• Jacob Balde. Seals. Latin and German. Edited and translated by Max Wehrli. Olten, Cologne 1963.
• History of Doctor Johann Faust. Edited and translated by Max Wehrli. Zurich in 1986.
• Hartmann von Aue: Iwein. Transferred from the Middle High German, with annotations and afterword by Max Wehrli. Zurich 1988.