We are in Germany in 1933: After the assimilation of the military, civil service, and the judiciary, Adolf Hitler and his followers move their attention to the universities, first dismissing Jewish and then left-leaning faculty and threatening everyone else with firing them or cutting their research support unless they align with the new government’s priorities.
The Nazis select the liberal University of Frankfurt as one of their first targets, eliminating resistance by appointing a Nazi official as political Commissar at the institution. We may safely assume that Hans Hermann Glunz, appointed chair of English at Frankfurt in 1934, had certainly heard of the faculty meeting during which the Nazi leader let everyone know that there would no longer be any research and teaching as usual. It is difficult to know what Glunz thought about the assimilation of his university and threats against and firings of some of his colleagues. While he appears to have conformed with the regime in his public statements and memberships in political organizations, he did not align his research agenda with the regime’s goals.
Glunz would publish, in 1938, a politically neutral monograph (Die Literarästhetik des Mittelalters) on the gradual process of transformation, in medieval poetry, from the medieval poet-artifex (skilled craftsman following traditional principles) to the ‘modern’ poet-creator (author of innovative and original narratives), focusing on Wolfram of Eschenbach, the Romance of the Rose, Chaucer, and Dante. He also used his experience and status to critique scholarship which blindly applied the country’s ideologies to medieval studies, specifically the study of Geoffrey Chaucer. Reviewing for the Deutsche Literaturzeitung in 1941, Glunz determined that Will Héraucourt’s 1939 book, Chaucer’s World of Values: The World of Values during an Epochal Tectonic Shift (German title: Chaucers Wertwelt: Die Wertwelt einer Zeitwende), suffered from “the simplistic adaptation” of philological methodology to fit “any philosophical direction currently hitting the headlines.”
A 1933 book by Hans Hermann Glunz
Glunz’s cautiously phrased attack against “any philosophical direction” was clearly directed against the incursion of ideology-infused studies produced on behalf of Hitler’s government. Aligning with Third Reich goals, traditional English studies was seen as outdated by the new authorities, and the field was consequently newly justified by some of its practitioners as a “science of foreign cultures,” Auslandswissenschaft or Kulturwissenschaft. As one eager opportunist, Robert Spindler, exclaimed in 1939: “Every scholar of English studies today asks of himself the question about the great cultural achievements of the English people: How did they come about, what are their consequences, and how should we Germans judge and react to them?”
As a result, some classes and studies began to focus on “The English Way of Thinking as an Expression of a Völkish Spirit” or “The History of the English Language as Reflected in Culture and Race,” and the universities of Berlin and Marburg developed cohorts of scholars applying what was termed the “national-psychological method.” This approach promised a comprehensive reading of the entire contemporary English language based on analogies drawn between specific linguistic traits and individual traits of an imagined English national character. Its pseudo-scientific outcomes amounted to little more than a repetition of predetermined traditional ethnographic clichés, mostly about the British upper middle class. The desired outcomes were generalizable similarities (acceptable because English/England were considered Germanic) and differences (despite multiple similarities, Germans had preferable national character traits, including a penchant for research).
In some cases, these national-psychological findings extended to famous writers. Max Deutschbein, for example, a professor at the University of Marburg and founding father of the application of the paradigm of Englandkunde to English studies, determined that, Shakespeare’s and Milton’s language (metaphors, sentence structure, semantics, etc.) were found to have more in common with the most widely known German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe than with twentieth-century English writers. They were, Deutschbein claimed, “representatives of the German spirit,” a smart strategic move meant to increase the authority with which German academics could bolster the relevance of their scholarship on these celebrated English writers.
Will Héraucourt, one of Deutschbein’s Marburg students, took it upon himself to see if Geoffrey Chaucer might not also really be German(ic) at heart. To prove his claim, Héraucourt first attempted to lessen the impact of French sources on Chaucer, maintaining that French scholars had somehow “pirated” the English poet for themselves, that the poet’s ancestors had lived on the island for several generations, and that knighthood, a concept visible throughout Chaucer’s poetry, had its origins in the Germanic comitatus, not at the French courts. As he moves on to the center of his argument, he contends that the medieval author is guided in his views by a system of cardinal medieval values/virtues (Prudentia, Justitia, Fortitudo, Temperantia) and corresponding subvirtues that already exist in German(ic) texts like Beowulf and have only been slightly modified by the fourteenth century.
A 1939 article by Will Héraucourt
Héraucourt then proceeds to investigate all uses of these virtues and subvirtues in Chaucer’s texts, diagnosing that, for example, the writer’s use of “goodnesse, bountee, and good entente” is truly “Germanic;” that the justice system under Edward III, which punished even the intent of killing the king is comparable to German post-1933 law, which also punished dangerous intent as such; that the poet’s Germanic leanings make him condemn sins like luxurie (“Man of Law’s Tale”) or use the French entente exclusively ironically (“Merchant’s Tale” and “Nun’s Priest’s Tale”); that Germany’s Third Reich Code of Civil Procedure is similar to Chaucer’s use of the terms trouthe and sooth; that all instances in which the poet’s characters are worried about their reputation are due to the French externalization of honour and that only morally sound Germanic characters like Griselda reject outward displays of courtliness and nobility; and that Chaucer’s use of the semantic field involving “freedom, franchise, and largesse” demonstrates his preference for an internalized Germanic “frankness” instead of an externalized French public “generosity.”
Similarly predetermined binary observations continue throughout the study, culminating in this revealing statement:
[Chaucer] reaches for Germanic words; perseveraunce is much too stale and, in addition, it is being used in a disparaging sense; Chaucer uses it unwillingly and sparingly. The same is true for the romance word constaunce. One should be less surprised about Chaucer’s use and introduction of so many words from Romance languages and more about how rarely he uses these words.
According to Héraucourt, all of this is happening because Chaucer lives during a period of epochal change in English identity, “the awakening” of “national spirit,” a moment during which the powerful “basic stock” of Germanic “ethical notions” overcomes “the French tendrils” added since the Norman invasion. The implication is, of course, that Britain’s Germanic roots will not be suppressed by foreign influence, just like Héraucourt’s Germany lives through a kairotic moment during which its racial origins lead to a national revival and a tectonic shift back to its medieval Northern Germanic origins and values. With these results, Héraucourt confirmed for Middle English the claims of his thesis advisor, who had stated, as early as 1933, that “Those who thoroughly investigate Germanic folk traditions and Germanic culture will easily admit that the special English character traits – and these are the ones which influence language and style – are the ones with which we have to credit the old Germans.”
Héraucourt, who actively aligned with Third Reich paradigms in his scholarship and participated in the Dozentenlager (indoctrination camps for academics), attained a chair of English Studies at the University of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia), served in the army and was wounded on the Western front, but survived the war. His study on Chaucer’s values remained on reading lists and in bibliographies through the late 1980s, without any recognition of its unscientific and ideological premises. Fascinatingly, the national-psychological method he and his thesis advisor Deutschbein practiced during the Third Reich found some post-war followers in the German Democratic Republic.
Hans Hermann Glunz also aligned with the regime to receive professional advancement. However, his scholarship remained neutral and he opposed the simplistic application of ideology to medieval studies in his review of Héraucourt’s book. He was sent to the Eastern front, where he died in 1944. His monograph on medieval literary aesthetics, treating German, French, English, and Italian texts, was too interdisciplinary to find appreciation among academic disciplines largely focused on engaging with individual nations and their linguistic and cultural traditions.
Richard Utz is Interim Dean and Professor in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Institute of Technology.
By Richard Utz
We are in Germany in 1933: After the assimilation of the military, civil service, and the judiciary, Adolf Hitler and his followers move their attention to the universities, first dismissing Jewish and then left-leaning faculty and threatening everyone else with firing them or cutting their research support unless they align with the new government’s priorities.
The Nazis select the liberal University of Frankfurt as one of their first targets, eliminating resistance by appointing a Nazi official as political Commissar at the institution. We may safely assume that Hans Hermann Glunz, appointed chair of English at Frankfurt in 1934, had certainly heard of the faculty meeting during which the Nazi leader let everyone know that there would no longer be any research and teaching as usual. It is difficult to know what Glunz thought about the assimilation of his university and threats against and firings of some of his colleagues. While he appears to have conformed with the regime in his public statements and memberships in political organizations, he did not align his research agenda with the regime’s goals.
Glunz would publish, in 1938, a politically neutral monograph (Die Literarästhetik des Mittelalters) on the gradual process of transformation, in medieval poetry, from the medieval poet-artifex (skilled craftsman following traditional principles) to the ‘modern’ poet-creator (author of innovative and original narratives), focusing on Wolfram of Eschenbach, the Romance of the Rose, Chaucer, and Dante. He also used his experience and status to critique scholarship which blindly applied the country’s ideologies to medieval studies, specifically the study of Geoffrey Chaucer. Reviewing for the Deutsche Literaturzeitung in 1941, Glunz determined that Will Héraucourt’s 1939 book, Chaucer’s World of Values: The World of Values during an Epochal Tectonic Shift (German title: Chaucers Wertwelt: Die Wertwelt einer Zeitwende), suffered from “the simplistic adaptation” of philological methodology to fit “any philosophical direction currently hitting the headlines.”
Glunz’s cautiously phrased attack against “any philosophical direction” was clearly directed against the incursion of ideology-infused studies produced on behalf of Hitler’s government. Aligning with Third Reich goals, traditional English studies was seen as outdated by the new authorities, and the field was consequently newly justified by some of its practitioners as a “science of foreign cultures,” Auslandswissenschaft or Kulturwissenschaft. As one eager opportunist, Robert Spindler, exclaimed in 1939: “Every scholar of English studies today asks of himself the question about the great cultural achievements of the English people: How did they come about, what are their consequences, and how should we Germans judge and react to them?”
As a result, some classes and studies began to focus on “The English Way of Thinking as an Expression of a Völkish Spirit” or “The History of the English Language as Reflected in Culture and Race,” and the universities of Berlin and Marburg developed cohorts of scholars applying what was termed the “national-psychological method.” This approach promised a comprehensive reading of the entire contemporary English language based on analogies drawn between specific linguistic traits and individual traits of an imagined English national character. Its pseudo-scientific outcomes amounted to little more than a repetition of predetermined traditional ethnographic clichés, mostly about the British upper middle class. The desired outcomes were generalizable similarities (acceptable because English/England were considered Germanic) and differences (despite multiple similarities, Germans had preferable national character traits, including a penchant for research).
In some cases, these national-psychological findings extended to famous writers. Max Deutschbein, for example, a professor at the University of Marburg and founding father of the application of the paradigm of Englandkunde to English studies, determined that, Shakespeare’s and Milton’s language (metaphors, sentence structure, semantics, etc.) were found to have more in common with the most widely known German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe than with twentieth-century English writers. They were, Deutschbein claimed, “representatives of the German spirit,” a smart strategic move meant to increase the authority with which German academics could bolster the relevance of their scholarship on these celebrated English writers.
Will Héraucourt, one of Deutschbein’s Marburg students, took it upon himself to see if Geoffrey Chaucer might not also really be German(ic) at heart. To prove his claim, Héraucourt first attempted to lessen the impact of French sources on Chaucer, maintaining that French scholars had somehow “pirated” the English poet for themselves, that the poet’s ancestors had lived on the island for several generations, and that knighthood, a concept visible throughout Chaucer’s poetry, had its origins in the Germanic comitatus, not at the French courts. As he moves on to the center of his argument, he contends that the medieval author is guided in his views by a system of cardinal medieval values/virtues (Prudentia, Justitia, Fortitudo, Temperantia) and corresponding subvirtues that already exist in German(ic) texts like Beowulf and have only been slightly modified by the fourteenth century.
Héraucourt then proceeds to investigate all uses of these virtues and subvirtues in Chaucer’s texts, diagnosing that, for example, the writer’s use of “goodnesse, bountee, and good entente” is truly “Germanic;” that the justice system under Edward III, which punished even the intent of killing the king is comparable to German post-1933 law, which also punished dangerous intent as such; that the poet’s Germanic leanings make him condemn sins like luxurie (“Man of Law’s Tale”) or use the French entente exclusively ironically (“Merchant’s Tale” and “Nun’s Priest’s Tale”); that Germany’s Third Reich Code of Civil Procedure is similar to Chaucer’s use of the terms trouthe and sooth; that all instances in which the poet’s characters are worried about their reputation are due to the French externalization of honour and that only morally sound Germanic characters like Griselda reject outward displays of courtliness and nobility; and that Chaucer’s use of the semantic field involving “freedom, franchise, and largesse” demonstrates his preference for an internalized Germanic “frankness” instead of an externalized French public “generosity.”
Similarly predetermined binary observations continue throughout the study, culminating in this revealing statement:
[Chaucer] reaches for Germanic words; perseveraunce is much too stale and, in addition, it is being used in a disparaging sense; Chaucer uses it unwillingly and sparingly. The same is true for the romance word constaunce. One should be less surprised about Chaucer’s use and introduction of so many words from Romance languages and more about how rarely he uses these words.
According to Héraucourt, all of this is happening because Chaucer lives during a period of epochal change in English identity, “the awakening” of “national spirit,” a moment during which the powerful “basic stock” of Germanic “ethical notions” overcomes “the French tendrils” added since the Norman invasion. The implication is, of course, that Britain’s Germanic roots will not be suppressed by foreign influence, just like Héraucourt’s Germany lives through a kairotic moment during which its racial origins lead to a national revival and a tectonic shift back to its medieval Northern Germanic origins and values. With these results, Héraucourt confirmed for Middle English the claims of his thesis advisor, who had stated, as early as 1933, that “Those who thoroughly investigate Germanic folk traditions and Germanic culture will easily admit that the special English character traits – and these are the ones which influence language and style – are the ones with which we have to credit the old Germans.”
Héraucourt, who actively aligned with Third Reich paradigms in his scholarship and participated in the Dozentenlager (indoctrination camps for academics), attained a chair of English Studies at the University of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia), served in the army and was wounded on the Western front, but survived the war. His study on Chaucer’s values remained on reading lists and in bibliographies through the late 1980s, without any recognition of its unscientific and ideological premises. Fascinatingly, the national-psychological method he and his thesis advisor Deutschbein practiced during the Third Reich found some post-war followers in the German Democratic Republic.
Hans Hermann Glunz also aligned with the regime to receive professional advancement. However, his scholarship remained neutral and he opposed the simplistic application of ideology to medieval studies in his review of Héraucourt’s book. He was sent to the Eastern front, where he died in 1944. His monograph on medieval literary aesthetics, treating German, French, English, and Italian texts, was too interdisciplinary to find appreciation among academic disciplines largely focused on engaging with individual nations and their linguistic and cultural traditions.
Richard Utz is Interim Dean and Professor in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Institute of Technology.
See also: The Chaucerian: How a German school teacher became the world’s most prolific Chaucer scholar, and then was promptly forgotten
Top Image: British Library MS Royal 17 D. VI, f.93v
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