Peter Wapnewski (* 1922)

The insanity of National Socialism had finally subsided and so it was inevitable that a discipline like German philology had to particularly reappraise its view of itself. "Its adaptability can give the discipline validation, rejuvenation or loss of substance" wrote Peter Wapnewski on the subject 40 years ago, and we have to be grateful to philologists like him that the substance was not lost at all but was indeed re-discovered and German philology consequently revived.

Peter Wapnewski was born in Kiel on 7 September 1922 and studied arts and humanities in Berlin, Freiburg and Jena on a "Chivalrous tour through faculties and subjects" between 1943 and 1945. He studied Old German Philology and Classical Archeology at Hamburg from 1945 to 1949 and was awarded a doctorate in 1949 for his paper Die Übersetzungen mittelhochdeutscher Lyrik im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (The translations of Middle High German lyric poetry in the 19th and 20th centuries) before qualifying as a lecturer in 1954 at the University of Heidelberg with a work on Wolfram's Parzival. He lectured at Tübingen from 1956 to 1958, and was appointed Professor of German Philology in Heidelberg in 1959 and at the Free University of Berlin in 1966. In 1969 he moved to Karlsruhe ("Berlin was threatening to become provincial" he said at the time) and in 1980 became the founding principal of Berlin's science college, so helping Berlin out of its provincial existence. Finally, he was called to the Technische Universität Berlin in 1982, where he taught until being granted emeritus status in 1990.

"Uns ist in alten mæren wunders vil geseit
von helden lobebæren, von grôzer arebeit."
(The myths of old recall many wonders,
of gallant heroes and of supreme efforts.)

Anyone who begins quoting these verses actually tells us a great deal that is admirable about the Nibelungenlied with its glorious heroes and great tribulations, perhaps almost too much if we think about the myth of the Nibelungen, which discredits the Nibelungenlied. As a result, literature lovers have a more greatly obscured conception of the beauty and the mysteriousness of the poetry than with any other medieval work. Yet essays such as Peter Wapnewski's interpretation of the "tenderest scene of the whole epic poem" (Hagen asking for Rüdiger's shield) give us a new approach for enjoying the Nibelungenlied's appeal, and the same applies with regard to his other examinations of medieval poetry, such as the Rolandslied, Tristan, Parzival, the Minnesang of the troubadours, or the Tagelied of Heinrich von Morungen. Quite correctly, one periodical for the history of literature wrote of him that he had delivered "model studies" and this applies in particular to the studies' structure, for Peter Wapnewski belongs to those academics who do not know why they should write incomprehensibly when they really want to be understood - and who consequently express themselves clearly. Even his pioneering postdoctoral thesis was exemplary for its understandability - and it still is. Moreover, he counts as one of those Germanists who by no means interpret an elegant style of language as a sign of decay in German philology. Thus Peter Wapnewski's Zuschreibungen (Attributions) are to be recommended. Alongside contributions on the Middle Ages, the work also contains texts on more modern literature and music, so providing a read-able cross-section of his entire creative work.

Lit.: Wolframs Parzival. Studien zur Religiosität und Form. Heidelberg 1955. - Deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Ein Abriß von den Anfängen bis zum Ende der Blütezeit. 2nd edition, Göttingen 1971. - Zuschreibungen, Gesammelte Schriften. Hildesheim and Zurich 1994.

[F. H.]