Gustav Neckel | |
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| Born | 17 January 1878 Wismar, Germany |
| Died | 28 November 1940 (aged 62) Dresden, Germany |
| Nationality | German |
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| Doctoral advisor | |
| Other advisors | Hermann Paul |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Germanic studies |
| Sub-discipline | Old Norse studies |
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Gustav Neckel (born 17 January 1878 in Wismar,died 24 November 1940 in Dresden) was a German philologist who specialized in Germanic studies.
His parents were Gustav Neckel (1844–1923),an industrialist and businessman,and Amanda, née Paetow (1854–1914).
After completing his Abitur in Wismar in 1896,Neckel studied German philology at Munich (1896–1897),Leipzig (1897–1898) and Berlin (1898–1902),where he earned his doctorate in 1900 under Andreas Heusler. He then worked as a teacher until completing his Habilitation and becoming a lecturer at the University of Breslau in 1909. [1]
Beginning in 1911,he was Professor of Old Norse at Heidelberg University,then in 1919–1920 at Berlin. From summer semester 1920 until 1935 he succeeded Heusler as Professor of Germanic Studies,with emphasis on the Scandinavian languages. From 1935 to 1937 he was founding Head of the Old Norse Division of the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Göttingen,then from 1937 to 1940 Professor of Germanic Philology at Berlin,where he was,however,unable to work due to illness; [2] he had a "nervous condition" from which he had barely recovered when he died suddenly of a pulmonary infection. [3]
Neckel's career was disturbed by conflict with Bernhard Kummer and an accusation that he had seduced a student,which led to his being forced to leave Berlin and move to Göttingen; [4] [5] the chair,the most prominent in the field,came with him and a new division was created for him within the Göttingen Department of Germanic Studies. [6]
Neckel resisted the politicisation of his department at Berlin [7] and was open-minded on race and its relevance to his discipline; [8] nevertheless,the increasingly völkisch point of view in his writings,his initial support for Kummer and Herman Wirth,and his advocacy of the autochthonous theory of the origin of the runes have led some to see a marked decline in the calibre of his scholarly work beginning in the mid-1920s. [9] His former teacher Heusler wrote repeatedly to his friend Wilhelm Ranisch that he seemed "no longer entirely sane" and that he seemed to have developed "an unhealthy ambition,not to say megalomania". [10]
Neckel's research focused on early Germanic studies and Old Norse. He published the standard German edition of the Elder Edda. Continuing the approach of Jacob Grimm and of Heusler,he saw all Germanic sources,regardless of period or geographic location,as contributing to the picture of a unified Germanic culture. [11] This culture he believed ethically superior to the medieval Christianity which overtook it,particularly in its respect for women. [11] Heusler and others have considered conflict between ideologues within the Nazi regime,specifically between the Amt Rosenberg,the Ministry and the Ahnenerbe,at least partly to blame for his banishment to Göttingen. [3] [6] [12]
The Poetic Edda is the modern name for an untitled collection of Old Norse anonymous narrative poems in alliterative verse. It is distinct from the closely related Prose Edda, although both works are seminal to the study of Old Norse poetry. Several versions of the Poetic Edda exist: especially notable is the medieval Icelandic manuscript Codex Regius, which contains 31 poems.
German studies is the field of humanities that researches, documents and disseminates German language and literature in both its historic and present forms. Academic departments of German studies often include classes on German culture, German history, and German politics in addition to the language and literature component. Common German names for the field are Germanistik, Deutsche Philologie, and Deutsche Sprachwissenschaft und Literaturwissenschaft. In English, the terms Germanistics or Germanics are sometimes used, but the subject is more often referred to as German studies, German language and literature, or German philology.
Otto Eduard Gotfried Ernst Höfler was an Austrian philologist who specialized in Germanic studies. A student of Rudolf Much, Höfler was Professor and Chair of German Language and Old German Literature at the University of Vienna. Höfler was also a Nazi from 1922 and a member of the SS Ahnenerbe before the Second World War. Höfler was a close friend of Georges Dumézil and Stig Wikander, with whom he worked closely on developing studies on Indo-European society. He tutored a significant number of future prominent scholars at Vienna, and was the author of works on early Germanic culture. Julia Zernack refers to him as the "perhaps most famous and probably most controversial representative" of the "Vienna School" of Germanic studies founded by Much.
The Frankfurter Wachensturm on 3 April 1833 was a failed attempt to start a revolution in Germany.
In historical Germanic society, nīþ was a term for a social stigma implying the loss of honour and the status of a villain. A person affected with the stigma is a nīðing . Middle English retained a cognate nithe, meaning 'envy', 'hate', or 'malice'.
Wolfgang Krause was a German philologist and linguist. A professor at the University of Göttingen for many years, Krause specialized in comparative linguistics, and was an authority on Celtic studies, Tocharian languages, Germanic studies, Old Norse and particularly runology.
Helmut de Boor was a German medievalist.
Bernhard Kummer was a Germanist who was appointed to a professorship in the Nazi era and whose writings have been influential among postwar neo-Nazis. He was a prominent representative of Nordicism, the view that the so-called Nordic race was inherently culturally advanced, and in books including his best known work, Midgards Untergang, he argues that the conversion of the Germanic peoples from their native Germanic paganism, particularly the Christianisation of Scandinavia, was detrimental to European culture.
Friedrich Maurer was a German philologist who specialized in Germanic studies.
Wilhelm Ebel was a scholar of Early Germanic law, known for editing and translating a number of law codes. During the Third Reich he was a committed Nazi, with military, administrative, and research service in the SS, and his academic career was interrupted by imprisonment after the end of World War II.
Andreas Heusler was a Swiss philologist who specialized in Germanic studies. He was a Professor of Germanic Philology at the University of Berlin and a renowned authority on early Germanic literature.
Edward Schröder was a Germanist and mediaevalist who was a professor at the University of Göttingen and published editions of numerous texts.
Eugen Mogk was a German academic specialising in Old Norse literature and Germanic mythology. He held a professorship at the University of Leipzig.
Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann was a German folklorist, anthropologist and ethnologist. She was an academic teacher, from 1946 at the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin in East Berlin and from 1961 at the University of Marburg.
Walter Hinck was a German Germanist and writer. He was professor of German literature at the University of Cologne from 1964 to 1987.
Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf is a Professor of German Literature at the University of Münster, Germany, and holds a chair in German Literary History with special focus on Modernity and Contemporary Literature. Her fields of research include Autobiography/Autofiction, Literary Theory, Rhetoric, Literary and Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, the relation of Religion, Politics and Literature as well as Law and Literature.
Friedrich Gustav von der Leyen was a German philologist who specialized in Germanic studies.
Klaus von See was a German philologist who specialized in Germanic studies.
Eugen Fehrle was a German philologist who specialized in classical and Germanic philology.
Eddica minor. Dichtungen eddischer Art aus den Fornaldarsögur und anderen Prosawerken. is a German-language book of Eddic poetry compiled by Andreas Heusler and Wilhelm Ranisch in 1903. Unlike the Eddic poetry published in the Poetic Edda, the poems in Eddica minora were extracted by the authors mostly from the Legendary sagas.
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