Remedy or disease? : Romantic perspectives on music

Around 1800, aesthetic debate suddenly places music at the very top in the hierarchy of the arts, even superseding poetry: This has become a commonplace not only in scholarly discourse. The protagonists of this re-arrangement of the artistic disciplines are Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, E.T.A. Hoffmann and Ludwig Tieck. In their programmatic texts, they state that music is to be free and absolute and stress its metaphysical quality and its close relation to the supernatural. Furthermore, music is supposed to be no longer dependent on the other arts, and music releases the listener or the musician from prosaic everyday life. As Wackenroder writes in Die Wunder der Tonkunst, […] [a]ll sickening thoughts which, according to Wackenroder, are the illness of mankind vanish with a piece of music, making our mind sane again. Literary romanticism here recurs to a long tradition that reaches back to the classical ages in Greece and Arabia: Music is used as a remedy for curing illnesses of various kinds. In classical antiquity, Apollo is the god of music, poetry and dancing as well as the god of healing. He was also named “Iatros” (physician) or Apollo Medicus. […] Orpheus as a bard and demigod was also said to be capable of curing diseases by means of his music. […] Thus, music in history is part of treating physical illness on the one hand, but on the other hand is more and more considered to provide a remedy especially for mental deficiencies. Music is meant to improve nervous disorders and sometimes it is even prescribed as a regular medicine. As we will see in Hoffmann’s text Die Genesung, there is a connection between the ritual healing processes in the temples of Aesculapius and the setting of the forest in which the old man regains his health

“Der Burschen Herrlichkeit”? Viejas y nuevas formas de examinar la historia de los estudiantes universitarios alemanes (1810-1945). Un informe de investigación

This research report attempts to show the basic lines of student history research in relation to the period from 1810 to 1945. It is thus primarily concerned with the period that is referred to in university history research as the “classical phase” (Peter Moraw). After an overview of fundamental questions about the era, it gives an overview of the history of student fraternities, whose importance cannot be overestimated. However, since student history is not limited to fraternity history, it then describes the relationship between student and fraternity history since the 19th century as a kind of elective affinity. In this context, particular attention is paid to the not always easy relationship between professional researchers and laypersons interested in student history, often members of student fraternities. The following part is devoted to the “Sonderweg theory” in student history, i.e., the thesis that student fraternities were a particularly characteristic form of expression of the “German Sonderweg”. Finally, the last part deals in detail with more recent tendencies in student historiography since the late 1990s, especially on Catholic student life, student violence, Jewish students and anti-Semitism, as well as female students and gender-historical approaches. As an important desideratum, genuine cultural aspects of student history are identified. Nonetheless, student history has nowadays developed into a flourishing branch of university history.Este informe de investigación intenta mostrar las líneas básicas de la investigación de la historia de los estudiantes en relación con el período de 1810 a 1945. Por lo tanto, se ocupa principalmente del período al que se hace referencia en la investigación de la historia universitaria como la “fase clásica” (Peter Moraw ). Después de un repaso  de las cuestiones fundamentales de la época, da un repaso a la historia de las fraternidades estudiantiles, cuya importancia no puede subestimarse. Sin embargo, dado que la historia del estudiante no se limita a la historia de la fraternidad, describe la relación entre la historia del estudiante y la fraternidad desde el  siglo XIX como una especie de afinidad electiva. En este contexto,  se presta  especial  atención a la relación no siempre fácil entre investigadores profesionales y laicos interesados en la historia estudiantil, a menudo miembros de fraternidades estudiantiles. La siguiente parte está dedicada a la “teoría del Sonderweg” en la historia estudiantil, es decir, la tesis de que las fraternidades estudiantiles fueron una forma de expresión particularmente característica del “Sonderweg alemán”.  Finalmente,  la última parte trata en detalle las tendencias más recientes en la  historiografía  estudiantil desde fines de la década de 1990, especialmente sobre la vida estudiantil católica, la violencia estudiantil, los estudiantes judíos y el anti-semitismo, así como las estudiantes y los enfoques históricos de género. Como desiderátum importante, se identifican los aspectos culturales genuinos de la historia estudiantil. No obstante, la historia estudiantil se ha convertido hoy en día en una floreciente rama de la historia universitaria

Dr. Käthe Leichter: An Austrian Socialist, Pioneer of Social Science, and Jewish Nazi Victim and her Connections to Heidelberg University

In December 2022, Heidelberg University opened its new center for doctoral candidates, the Käthe Leichter Forum. To mark the occasion, this text, which is based on the lecture given at the inauguration ceremony, introduces the Austrian namesake and guides us through the stages of her eventful and impressive biography. Particular attention is paid to the connection that existed between Leichter and Heidelberg. For Heidelberg University history, Käthe Leichter (1895-1942) is paradigmatic of the vicissitudes of a "century of extremes" (Eric Hobsbawm): Leichter, a pioneer both as a woman and as a Jew, obtained her doctorate under the eminent scholar Max Weber, before the university leadership revoked her title two decades later under the Nazi rector Paul Schmitthenner because she had fallen into political disgrace as a socialist resistance fighter. As a Jewish member of the opposition, the social scientist, women's rights activist and politician Leichter was soon threatened by other consequences of Nazi ideology: in 1940 she was deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp and murdered in the Bernburg killing center in 1942

Noch einmal: Zur Geschichte der Leipziger Philologie

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