Otto Lauffer

Otto Lauffer ( born February 20, 1874 in Göttingen- Weende; † August 8, 1949 in Hamburg ) was a German folklorist and cultural historian.

Life

Otto Lauffer was in Weende (today district of Göttingen) born and lived there until 1886 ( until 1877 in the beaten- 5) his childhood.

He studied German, history and art history in Göttingen ( enrolled on August 22, 1891), Berlin, Munich and again in Göttingen ( enrolled April 24, 1894 ). In 1896 he received his PhD Moriz Heyne.

1902 Lauffer Assistant 1907 Director of the Historical Museum in Frankfurt am Main. From 1908 until the opening of 1922 he was founding director of the Museum of Hamburg History, which he continued to channel until 1946.

In the founding year of the University of Hamburg in 1919 Lauffer received the first ethnographic Chair in Germany, where he remained until 1939. His doctoral include the later Nazis Herbert Freudenthal and Ernst Bargheer. 1922/23, he was also Rector of the University. In November 1933, he was one of the signatories of the commitment of the professors at German universities and colleges to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi state.

Lauffer was buried in the cemetery in Hamburg Ohlsdorf ( grave Location: R9 ( 29-30) ) and is managed by the cemetery administration among the more well-known personalities. His legacy is to be found in the State and University Library Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky. Since February 20, 1984 a memorial plaque in Weende to Otto Lauffer.

The Otto Lauffer Road in Weende and the steam launch Otto Lauffer in Hamburg are named after him.

Working life

From the personal union of the offices of the museum director and university professor showed up in the period after the Second World War, the specific focus of the Hamburg folklore, whose focus was originally in the study of material culture.

As focal points of research and teaching, Lauffer dealt with properly ethnographic topics. In addition to this herwirkenden from the construction work of the museum field, he dealt with many other ethnological and cultural-historical areas, especially in the home and industrial research. To date, he is one of the most important research personalities in the whole history of the subject. He has published more than 300 titles. In 1951 he published in his publication people work a careful reckoning with the popular in the era of National Socialism term " allegory research ".