- Rudolf Schottlaender
Rudolf Schottlaender (born
August 5 ,1900 inBerlin ,German Empire ; diedJanuary 4 ,1988 inEast Berlin ,East Germany ) was a German philosopher, classical philologist, translator and political publicist of Jewish descent.Biography
Rudolf Schottlaender studied philosophy with
Edmund Husserl ,Martin Heidegger andNicolai Hartmann in Freiburg im Breisgau. There, he became acquainted with Günther Stern (the later authorGünther Anders ) and married Stern's sister Hilde shortly afterwards (the first of three marriages). Schottlaender also studied withKarl Jaspers . Despite his active interest forphenomenology as a student, Schottlaender referred more to the stoics and toBaruch Spinoza , in whose spirit he left Judaism in 1921.During the
Weimar Republic , Schottlaender was a private scholar. With his translation of the first part of "A la recherche du temps perdu", which was published by "Die Schmiede" under the title of "Der Weg zu Swann", he was the first German translator ofMarcel Proust . He survived the Nazi regime and the persecution of the Jews, hiding in Berlin.After 1945, he taught Latin and Greek as a secondary school teacher in
West Berlin . In between (1947-1949), he taught philosophy at theDresden University of Technology ("Technische Hochschule Dresden"), but as a pugnacious democrat and humanist, he came in conflict with the authorities of theSoviet occupation zone . As a result, he went back to West Berlin and worked as a secondary school teacher again. There, he became the victim of aslander campaign because of his efforts concerning overcoming theCold War and got into professional difficulties. In 1959, he was offered a chair as professor for Latin literature, with special consideration of the Greek. (He was unable to teach philosophy there because he was a non-Marxist and because of hisDresden experiences.) After the building of theBerlin Wall in August of 1961, he had to move from West Berlin to East Berlin with his family in order to continue this work. He was given emeritus status in 1965.Besides numerous philological and philosophical works, Schottlaender published brilliant translations (new translations of
Sophocles which were very effective on the stage, the publication of an edition ofPetrarch , among others) and fundamental discussions of questions concerning Judaism andantisemitism . In his politicalessay s and articles, which he predominantly published in the West, he saw himself as a mediator between the systems. Because of his positions critical toEast Germany , he was put under close surveillance by the Ministry for State Security ("Ministerium für Staatssicherheit" orStasi ). He inspired leading minds of the developing opposition in East Germany.Works
*"Trotz allem ein Deutscher", autobiography, Herder-Verlag 1986
External links
*PND|118815539
* [http://www.schottlaender-proust.com/ Biography, with emphasis on the Proust translation]
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