Hermann Karl Usener (; 23 October 1834 – 21 October 1905) was a German scholar in the fields of philology and comparative religion.
Life
Hermann Usener was born at Weilburg and educated at its Gymnasium. From 1853, he studied at Heidelberg University, the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, the University of Göttingen, and the University of Bonn.
In 1858, he had a teaching position at the Joachimsthalschen Gymnasium in Berlin. He was Professor from 1861 to 1863 at the University of Bern, then at the University of Greifswald, before becoming professor at the University of Bonn.nomenclator philologorum
The Bonn School of classical philology was led by Usener with Franz Buecheler.
Influence Usener was a large-scale thinker who combined scholarly research with theoretical reflection. His research on the ancient world used a comparative method, drawing on a variety of ethnological material for the study of social and religious matters. His theoretical method was phenomenological or hermeneutical, and centred on social psychology and cultural history.James P. Holoka, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 1996, vol. 7 no. 14: a review of Renate Schlesier, "'Arbeiter in Useners Weinberg.' Anthropologie und Antike Religionsgeschichte in Deutschland nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg", in Hellmut Flashar, ed., Altertumswissenschaft in den 20er Jahren: Neue Fragen und Impulse (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1995), p. 329-380. He was influential most of all through his work on the formation of religious concepts, which influenced thinkers such as Albrecht Dieterich, Ludwig Radermacher, Aby Warburg, Walter F. Otto, and Ernst Cassirer.See Antje Wessels, Zur Rezeption von Hermann Useners Lehre von der religiösen Begriffsbildung (De Gruyter, 2003, no. 51 in the series “Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche Und Vorarbeiten”). In his book “The Names of Gods” (Götternamen, 1896), Usener introduced the concept of a momentary god.momentary god This phrase entered the English-speaking world, to describe deities who seem to exist only for a specific purpose, time and place.Momentary Gods, in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Part 16. Kessinger Publishing, 2003. Pages 777–778. .
He also trained an impressive list of students, Hugh Lloyd-Jones, ‘’Bryn Mawr Classical Review’’, 2004, vol. 2 no. 43: a review of Suzanne Marchand, "From Liberalism to Neoromanticism: Albrecht Dieterich, Richard Reitzenstein, and the Religious Turn in Fin-de-Siècle German Classical Studies”, in Ingo Gildenhard, Martin Ruehl, eds., ‘’Out of Arcadia: Classics and Politics in Germany in the Age of Burckhardt, Nietzsche and Wilamowitz’’ (London: Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2003), BICS Suppl. 79. and belonged to a long dynasty of students of Winckelmann.Camille Paglia spoke of a 150-year-long dynasty of German scholars following the idealizing Winckelmann, such as Hermann Usener, Werner Jaeger, and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, who bitterly warred over the character and methodology of classical studies. See Camille Paglia, “Erich Neumann: theorist of the Great Mother”, in ‘’Arion’’, vol. 13, no. 3 (2010). One such student was Friedrich Nietzsche: after initial support, Usener turned against him as a scholar after reading The Birth of Tragedy. Other students included Hermann Diels,PDF, p. 4 and later Paul Natorp,Paul Natorp (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Hans Lietzmann,Bauer-Appendix 2 Albrecht Dieterich, Richard Reitzenstein,Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2004.02.43 and Aby Warburg., .: Critics have stressed the importance of Warburg's professor Herman Usener, the great classical philologist and scholar of comparative religion, whose Götternamen investigated the etymologies of deities' names in order to shed light on the changing psychology of religious beliefs; Warburg's iconological project, with its ambition to illuminate historical psychology, strives for an analogous goal. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, the leading German classical scholar of the following generation, studied at Bonn 1867-9; but tended to disagree with Usener. Their correspondence has been published.
Family Hermann Usener's parents were Georg Friedrich Usener (20 August 1789–15 April 1854), Landesoberschultheiß in the Amt of Weilburg and his wife Charlotte Henriette Caroline Vogler (1798–1855), daughter of Georg Vogler, a physician and member of the Princedom of Nassau's medical council. On 4 September 1866, Usener married Caroline (Lily) Dilthey in Marburg (25 February 1846–14 March 1920). She was the sister of the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey and the archaeologist Karl Dilthey. In 1899, his daughter married the classical philologist Albrecht Dieterich. Usener's son, Karl Albert Hermann (1876–1928) was an Oberleutnant.
Works Analecta Theophrastea (1858 dissertation at Bonn) Alexandri Aphrodisiensis problematorum lib. III. et IV. (1859) Scholia in Lucani bellum civile (1869) Anecdoton Holderi (1877) Legenden der heiligen Pelagia (1879) De Stephano Alexandrino (1880) Philologie und Geschichtswissenschaft (1882) Jacob Bernays, Gesammelte Abhandlungen (1885) editor Acta S. Marinae et S. Christophori (1886) Epicurea (1887) Altgriechischer Versbau (1887) Das Weihnachtsfest (Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen, part 1) (1889) Christlicher Festbrauch (Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen, part 2) (1889) Die Sintfluthsagen untersucht (1899) Götternamen: Versuch einer Lehre von der Religiösen Begriffsbildung (1896) Dionysius of Halicarnassus edition, begun 1904, with Ludwig Radermacher Vorträge und Aufsätze, 1907.
References
Sources Roland Kany, Hermann Usener as Historian of Religion. In: Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 6 (2004) S. 159-176.
External links