Anton Hilckman
Anton Joseph Maria Hilckman (4 March 1900 – 25 January 1970) was a German folklorist, and professor of comparative cultural studies at the University of Mainz from 1946 to 1968.
Biography
Anton Hilckman grew up as the only child of the merchants August and Antonie Hilckmann in Bevergern. He attended the Gymnasium Dionysianum in Rheine from 1911 to 1918 and, after graduating from high school, studied national economics in Münster and Freiburg im Breisgau, where he received his doctorate in political science in 1921. Subsequently, he worked mainly as a publicist and private scholar, but also continued his studies in Münster and Milan in mathematics, natural sciences, history, and philosophy, earning a second doctorate in philosophy in 1936 at the Milanese Catholic University of the Sacred Heart (on Feliks Koneczny). He drew on Koneczny's work in his later work on the method and systematics of cultural studies.[1]
In the interwar period Hilckmann published in philosophical-theological journals in Europe, in Germany among others in Hochland, Allgemeine Rundschau and Philosophisches Jahrbuch. A federalist Catholic, Hilckmann criticized nationalism. He rejected National Socialism as "narrow-minded" and an "outwardly bajuvarized Teuto-Borussian barbarism," but welcomed Italian fascism in the sense of a "Christian rebirth of Italy." With his essay Probleme des Panfaschismus: Ist der deutsche Faschismus antirömisch? ("Problems of Panfascism: Is German Fascism Anti-Roman?", 1931), he sparked a journalistic controversy between National Socialists and fascists.
After the National Socialist "seizure of power," Hilckmann was monitored by the Gestapo. He temporally settled in Novi Ligure, Italy, starting in 1935. After a private denunciation, he was arrested in Salzburg in 1940. He was already the target of a campaign in which he was accused of treason because of articles from the 1920s, after the SA chief Viktor Lutze, who came from Bevergern, complained about him to the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and Culture. Hilckmann is also said to have made disparaging remarks about the NS regime to a craftsman on several occasions.[2]
On April 16, 1941, he was sentenced to three years in prison by the Special Court of Bielefeld for violation of the "Heimtückegesetz". He was also deprived of his doctorate by the University of Freiburg in 1942. After three years of imprisonment and an odyssey through changing prisons, Anton Hilckman was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in April 1943, to the Buchenwald concentration camp on February 6, 1945, and from there 11 days later to the Langenstein-Zwieberge camp near Halberstadt, where, like H. G. Adler, Ivan Ivanji, and others, he was able to hide from the death marches and was liberated on April 11.
In 1946, Anton Hilckman was appointed associate professor and full professor of comparative cultural studies at the University of Mainz. It was the first ever institute for this discipline in Germany. In order to create a journalistic forum for the science of cultures, Hilckman founded the series Archiv für Vergleichende Kulturwissenschaft ("Archive for Comparative Cultural Studies") in 1967, in which primarily articles on the philosophy of history and cultural studies appeared.
In total, Hilckman published nearly 400 papers, which were published in 16 different languages.
In 1964 Hilckman donated his birthplace to the town of Bevergern with the stipulation that it should serve to cultivate the idea of local history and historical memory. The Heimatverein Bevergern implemented this idea and set up a museum about local history in the house. This current Heimathaus Bevergern was inaugurated in 1966 on the occasion of the 600th anniversary of the town. In 2006, a street in Bevergern was named after Hilckman in his honor ("Anton-Hilckman-Straße").
In 1967, Hilckman was awarded the Rottendorf Prize for services to the Low German language.
Works
- Vom Sinn des Glückes / Prosper Adam (1947)
- "Orient et Occident. Une Philosophie de l'histoire," La Vie Intelectuelle (1948; under the pen name J.M. Antoine)
- Frankreich gestern und heute (1951)
- "Feliks Koneczny und die vergleichende Kulturwissenschaft", Saeculum (1952)
- Bevergern in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (1952; with Albert Freude)
- "Une philosophie de l'histoire inductive: expose de la doctrine de Feliks Koneczny", Actes du XI-me Congrès International de Philosophie, Vol. 8 (1953)
- Vom Sinn der Freiheit und andere Essays. Gedanken über Sinn und Ziel des Menschseins in Leben und Geschichte (1959)
- Über politische Bildung und politische Mündigkeit (1961)
- Die Wissenschaft von den Kulturen. Ihre Bedeutung und ihre Aufgaben. Gesammelte Aufsätze und Vorträge (1967)
- Sollen die niederdeutschen Dialekte sterben? (1967)
Notes
- ↑ Grott, Bogumił (1998). "Die Zivilisationstheorie von Feliks Koneczny," Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 50 (4), pp. 356–59.
- ↑ Kißener, Michael (2005). "Kontinuität oder Wandel? Die erste Professorengeneration der Johannes Guttenberg-Universität Mainz". In: Michael Kißener, Helmut Mathy (eds.), Ut omnnes unum sint. Gründungspersönlichkeiten der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität. Steiner: Stuttgart, p. 117.
References
- Botzke, Christian & Tomasz Stępień, (2010). "Hilckman, Anton Joseph Maria". In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). 31. Bautz: Nordhausen, pp. 636–48.
