Helmut de Boor (born 24 March 1891 in
Bonn
The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...
, died 4 August 1976 in Berlin) was a German medievalist.
Life and career
Helmut de Boor was the third child of the Byzantine studies scholar
Carl Gotthard de Boor. He was educated in
Breslau and attended the Universities of
Freiburg
Freiburg im Breisgau (; abbreviated as Freiburg i. Br. or Freiburg i. B.; Low Alemannic: ''Friburg im Brisgau''), commonly referred to as Freiburg, is an independent city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. With a population of about 230,000 (as o ...
,
Marburg
Marburg ( or ) is a university town in the German federal state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district (''Landkreis''). The town area spreads along the valley of the river Lahn and has a population of approxima ...
and
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
.
[Prof. Dr. phil. Helmut de Boor]
Professorenkatalog der Universität Leipzig / catalogus professorum lipsiensis He earned his doctorate from Leipzig in 1914 and following service in World War I,
[Cyril Edwards, "Censoring Siegfried's Love Life: The >Nibelungenlied< in the Third Reich" in ''Mythos - Sage - Erzählung: Gedenkschrift für Alfred Ebenbauer'', ed. Johannes Keller and Florian Kragl, Göttingen: Vienna University Press/V&R, 2009, , pp. 87–103]
p. 91
[''Internationales Germanistenlexikon: 1800 - 1950'' Volume 1, A–G, ed. Christoph König, Birgit Wägenbauer, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003]
p. 233
his ''
Habilitation'' from the
University of Breslau
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...
in 1919,
[ in German studies, ]Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...
and Philology
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...
. Both his dissertation and his ''Habilitationsschrift'' are on the Faroese ballads which relate to the ''Nibelungenlied
The ( gmh, Der Nibelunge liet or ), translated as ''The Song of the Nibelungs'', is an epic poem written around 1200 in Middle High German. Its anonymous poet was likely from the region of Passau. The is based on an oral tradition of Germani ...
'', which he was later to edit.
While working on his Habilitation, he was a tutor in Old Norse at Breslau. He then held academic positions in German Studies at the University of Gothenburg
The University of Gothenburg ( sv, Göteborgs universitet) is a university in Sweden's second largest city, Gothenburg. Founded in 1891, the university is the third-oldest of the current Swedish universities and with 37,000 students and 6000 st ...
(1919–22), Old Norse at the University of Greifswald
The University of Greifswald (; german: Universität Greifswald), formerly also known as “Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University of Greifswald“, is a public research university located in Greifswald, Germany, in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pom ...
(1924–26), and Old Norse at Leipzig (1926–30). From 1930 to 1945, he was professor of German Language and Literature at the University of Bern
The University of Bern (german: Universität Bern, french: Université de Berne, la, Universitas Bernensis) is a university in the Swiss capital of Bern and was founded in 1834. It is regulated and financed by the Canton of Bern. It is a compreh ...
.[
After World War II, he became professor of German Language and Literature at Marburg (1945–49), and then held the chair in Older German Language and Literature and Old Norse at the ]Free University of Berlin
The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in political science and t ...
until 1958/59, when he retired.[
De Boor was a very productive scholar.][Wyss, p. 187.] He revised Karl Bartsch's standard edition of the ''Nibelungenlied
The ( gmh, Der Nibelunge liet or ), translated as ''The Song of the Nibelungs'', is an epic poem written around 1200 in Middle High German. Its anonymous poet was likely from the region of Passau. The is based on an oral tradition of Germani ...
'' and co-wrote a widely used grammar of Middle High German
Middle High German (MHG; german: Mittelhochdeutsch (Mhd.)) is the term for the form of German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High German and into Early New High German. Hig ...
, but throughout his career occupied himself with the philology of Old Norse as well as of German.[ He wrote above all about heroic literature. After leaving Switzerland he began work on a complete history of German literature, originally intended as a short handbook for student use; it became a multi-volume work of which he wrote only the first three volumes, dealing with the early Middle Ages and Middle High German poetry.
]
Under the Nazis
De Boor became a member of the Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...
in 1937.[Edwards]
p. 92
He regarded Nazism as a natural reaction of the younger generation in Germany which had been most heavily affected by the aftermath of World War I.[Julian Schütt, ''Germanistik und Politik: Schweizer Literaturwissenschaft in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus'', Zürich: Chronos, 1996, ]
p. 91
He was collegial with Jewish faculty at Bern and initially his closest friend there was Fritz Strich, a Jewish scholar, who however cut off contact with him in 1934 on suspicion that de Boor had told his daughter to boycott Strich's lectures on anti-semitic grounds.[ He travelled frequently to Germany and after the Anschluß also to Austria to lecture on ''Germanentum''. He sent a paper to Thomas Mann advocating a Germanic religion based on 'kinship and law'. Neighbours complained about his entertaining large numbers of young Germans at his home who were not all students, flying the swastika, and driving an ostentatious red and orange car paid for by the German embassy.][ In 1944 he was awarded the War Merit Cross, apparently for his services racially vetting Germans invited to speak in Switzerland. A file containing his reports on the politics of his university colleagues was found in the furnace room at the embassy in 1945. In December 1945, effective early the following year, he was expelled from Switzerland despite protests from students, colleagues, and acquaintances.][Edwards]
pp. 93-94
Personal life
In 1920 de Boor married Ellen von Unwerth, widowed daughter of Theodor Siebs.[
]
Selected publications
* ''Die färöischen Lieder des Nibelungenzyklus''. (dissertation, 1914, published 1918)
* ''Die färöischen Dvörgamoylieder''. (''Habilitationsschrift'', 1919)
* ''Schwedische Literatur''. Breslau 1924.
* "Die religiöse Sprache der Vǫluspá und verwandter Denkmäler". (1930)
* ''Das Attilabild in Geschichte, Legende und heroischer Dichtung''. Bern 1932.
* "Zum Althochdeutschen Wortschatz auf dem Gebiet der Weissagung". (1944)
* "Die nordischen, englischen und deutschen Darstellungen des Afpelschussmotivs". (1947)
* (with Roswitha Wisniewski) ''Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik''. Berlin 1956.
* ''Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart''. Volumes 1–3. Munich 1949–1962.
* (Ed.) ''Das Nibelungenlied''. Ed. Karl Bartsch. 10th and 11th revised editions, 1940, 1949.
References
External links
*
Works by Helmut de Boor
at the German National Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Boor, Helmut de
1891 births
1976 deaths
German medievalists
Leipzig University alumni
University of Breslau alumni
University of Gothenburg faculty
University of Greifswald faculty
Leipzig University faculty
University of Bern faculty
University of Marburg faculty
Free University of Berlin faculty
Nazi Party members
German male non-fiction writers
Recipients of the War Merit Cross