Walter Hugo Hermann Baetke (28 March 1884,
Sternberg in der Neumark – 15 February 1978,
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 wel ...
) was a German historian of religion who specialized in
Germanic studies. He was Professor of the
History of Religion
The history of religion refers to the written record of human religious feelings, thoughts, and ideas. This period of religious history begins with the invention of writing about 5,200 years ago (3200 BC). The prehistory of religion involves th ...
at the
University of Leipzig
Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...
.
Life and career
Baetke's father, Wilhelm Baetke, was a police official. Baetke attended a ''
gymnasium'' in
Stettin
Szczecin (, , german: Stettin ; sv, Stettin ; Latin language, Latin: ''Sedinum'' or ''Stetinum'') is the capital city, capital and largest city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in northwestern Poland. Located near the Baltic Sea and the Po ...
.
Kurt Rudolph
Kurt Rudolph (3 April 1929
University of Leipzig – 13 May 2020) was a German researcher of < ...
, "Baetke, Walter Hugo Hermann", ''Internationales Germanistenlexikon: 1800-1950'', ed. Christoph König, Birgit Wägenbaur, ''et al.'', Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003, , Volume 1, pp. 75-77
p. 75
From 1902 to 1907, Baetke studied
Germanic studies,
English studies
English studies (usually called simply English) is an academic discipline taught in primary, secondary, and post-secondary education in English-speaking countries; it is not to be confused with English taught as a foreign language, which ...
,
education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
and
philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
at the Universities of
Halle Halle may refer to:
Places Germany
* Halle (Saale), also called Halle an der Saale, a city in Saxony-Anhalt
** Halle (region), a former administrative region in Saxony-Anhalt
** Bezirk Halle, a former administrative division of East Germany
** Hall ...
and
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
,
[Walter Baetke]
at Professorenkatalog der Universität Leipzig/catalogus professorum lipsiensis graduating from Halle in 1907 with a qualification to teach in higher education and earning a doctorate in English there in 1908 with a thesis on children in the works of
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
's contemporaries and successors.
[ He then worked as a school examiner and at another ''gymnasium'' in Stettin and from 1913 to 1935 was head of a school in ]Bergen auf Rügen
Bergen auf Rügen is the capital of the former district of Rügen in the middle of the island of Rügen in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany. Since 1 January 2005, Bergen has moreover been the administrative seat of the ''Amt'' of Bergen auf ...
.[ After one year teaching the history of ]Germanic religion Germanic religion may refer to:
* Germanic paganism
* Germanic Christianity
* Heathenry (new religious movement)
* Neopaganism in German-speaking Europe
Since its emergence in the 1970s, Neopaganism (') in German-speaking Europe has diversified ...
at the University of Greifswald, he was appointed Professor of the History of Religion at the University of Leipzig in 1936.[ In 1946 he received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Theology and was also appointed to an additional position as Professor of ]Nordic Philology
Scandinavian studies is an interdisciplinary academic field of area studies, mainly in the United States and Germany, that primarily focuses on the Scandinavian languages (also known as North Germanic languages) and cultural studies pertaining to ...
.[ He also headed the university's Institute for the History of Religion.][ From 1947 to 1949, he was Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy.][ He retired in 1955][ but from 1955 to 1959 held an emeritus position as "commissar" of the Institute for the History of Religion and the Old Norse division of the Institute for Germanic Studies.][
His academic work focussed on ancient Germanic religion, on which he published extensively. Already before World War II, he was known as "a critic of romantic excess" in interpretations. In his 1934 ''Art und Glaube der Germanen'', he rejected Herman Wirth's view of the genuineness and importance of the '']Oera Linda Book
The Oera Linda Book is a manuscript written in a form of Old Frisian, purporting to cover historical, mythological, and religious themes of remote antiquity, from 2194 BCE to 803 CE. Among academics in Germanic philology, the document is conside ...
'' and also systematically opposed Bernhard Kummer
Bernhard Kummer (21 January 1897, Leipzig – 1 December 1962, Bad Segeberg) was a Germanist who was appointed to a professorship in the Nazi Germany, Nazi era and whose writings have been influential among postwar Neo-Nazism, neo-Nazis. He wa ...
's views in ''Midgards Untergang''. In 1942 in ''Das Heilige im Germanischen'', he opposed Rudolf Otto's influential viewpoint that the source of religion lay in a "stirring in the heart" of awareness of the numinous, arguing that all religious experience has a social and historical context. In ''Yngvi und die Ynglinger'' (1964) he dismissed the widely accepted view espoused by, for example, Otto Höfler
Otto Eduard Gotfried Ernst Höfler (10 May 1901 – 25 August 1987) 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 Univ ...
that Germanic peoples had sacral kingship
In many historical societies, the position of kingship carries a sacral meaning; that is, it is identical with that of a high priest and judge. The concept of theocracy is related, although a sacred king need not necessarily rule through his re ...
. The issue and his arguments are still debated today: in a re-examination in 2004, Olof Sundqvist substantially agreed, finding that "this paradigm acral kingshipimplies a number of methodological difficulties"; Francis Oakley, however, argued in 2010 that although Baetke successfully rebutted the notion that Scandinavian kings were worshipped, he could not dismiss the evidence that they had some sacral status as mediators with the gods.[Francis Oakley, ''Empty Bottles of Gentilism: Kingship and the Divine in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (to 1050)'', New Haven: Yale University, 2010, ]
p. 146
Personal and political
Baetke joined the conservative German National People's Party in 1926 and was a member until 1932.[ From 1934 until the end of the war, he belonged to the National Socialist People's Welfare organisation.][ However, he never joined the ]Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
or any of its subsidiaries, including the Reich Author's Organisation, and during the war his election to the examining board of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Leipzig and to the Saxon Academy of Sciences
The Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig (german: Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig) is an institute which was founded in 1846 under the name ''Royal Saxon Society for the Sciences'' (german: Königlich Sächsische G ...
both went unratified by the regime.[ In 1946 he joined the ]SPD
The Social Democratic Party of Germany (german: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, ; SPD, ) is a centre-left social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany.
Saskia Esken has been the ...
and subsequently became a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany,[ the official party of the ]Soviet Occupation Zone
The Soviet Occupation Zone ( or german: Ostzone, label=none, "East Zone"; , ''Sovetskaya okkupatsionnaya zona Germanii'', "Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany") was an area of Germany in Central Europe that was occupied by the Soviet Union as a c ...
and later of East Germany
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...
. He was a member of the Confessing Church
The Confessing Church (german: link=no, Bekennende Kirche, ) was a movement within German Protestantism during Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to unify all Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi German E ...
and was a delegate to the conference of the World Council of Churches
The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a worldwide Christian inter-church organization founded in 1948 to work for the cause of ecumenism. Its full members today include the Assyrian Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, most juri ...
in Amsterdam in 1948 from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony
The Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Saxony (''Evangelisch-Lutherische Landeskirche Sachsens'') is one of 20 member Churches of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), covering most of the state of Saxony. Its headquarters are in Dresden, and its b ...
.[
Baetke was married twice: in 1911 to Agnes Kirsten (1885–1945) and in 1948 to Erna Knegendorf (1903–2000). Both his wives were teachers.][
]
Honours
* 1943, ratified 1945: Member, Saxon Academy of Sciences
* 1946: Honorary doctorate in Theology, University of Leipzig
* 1959: Order of Patriotic Merit in silver, German Democratic Republic
* 1946: Named "Distinguished People's Scholar", German Democratic Republic
* 1974: Moritz Wilhelm Drobisch Medal, Saxon Academy of Sciences[
In 1949/50 Baetke lectured at the Universities of Lund and ]Uppsala
Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inha ...
, the first German academic to be invited to do so in Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...
since the war.[
]
Selected works
* ''Art und Glaube der Germanen''. Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1934.
* ''Das Heilige im Germanischen''. Tübingen: Mohr, 1942.
* ''Yngvi und die Ynglinger; eine quellenkritische Untersuchung über das nordische "Sakral-köningtum"''. Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig: Philologisch-historische Klasse: Sitzungsberichte. Berlin: Akademie, 1964.
* ''Wörterbuch zur altnordischen Prosaliteratur''. Berlin: Akademie, 1965. 8th ed. 2008.
Festschrifts
* ''Festschrift Walter Baetke, dargebracht zu seinem 80. Geburtstag am 28. März 1964''. Ed. Kurt Rudolph
Kurt Rudolph (3 April 1929
University of Leipzig – 13 May 2020) was a German researcher of < ...
, Rolf Heller and Ernst Walter. Weimar: Böhlau, 1966.
* ''Altnordistik, Vielfalt und Einheit: Erinnerungsband für Walter Baetke, 1884-1978''. Ed. Ernst Walter and Hartmut Mittelstädt. Weimar: Böhlau, 1989.
See also
* Rudolf Simek
* Edgar C. Polomé
Edgar Ghislain Charles Polomé (July 31, 1920March 11, 2000) was a Belgian-born American philologist and religious studies scholar. He specialized in Germanic and Indo-European studies and was active at the University of Texas at Austin for mu ...
* Jan de Vries (philologist)
References
Sources
* Fritz Heinrich and Kurt Rudolph
Kurt Rudolph (3 April 1929
University of Leipzig – 13 May 2020) was a German researcher of < ...
. "Walter Baetke (1884–1978)". ''Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft'' 9 (2001) 169-84.
External links
Works by and about Walter Baetke
in the German National Library
The German National Library (DNB; german: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek) is the central archival library and national bibliographic centre for the Federal Republic of Germany. It is one of the largest libraries in the world. Its task is to colle ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baetke, Walter
1884 births
1978 deaths
Academic staff of Leipzig University
Academic staff of the University of Greifswald
Old Norse studies scholars
German historians of religion
Germanic studies scholars
Writers on Germanic paganism