Otto Höfler

Otto Höfler was born in Vienna on 10 May 1901 to a highly educated upper middle class family. His father, Alois Höfler, was Professor of Philosophy and Pedagogy at the University of Vienna. Alois was a passionate admirer of Richard Wagner, and the author of a book on the Germanic god Odin. Otto's mother, Auguste Dornhöffer, was from Bayreuth and also a Wagner admirer.^[3][a]

Höfler studied German and Nordic philology at the University of Vienna from 1920 to 1921 under Rudolf Much; the latter gaining notoriety for his study of Tacitus's Germania.^[5] Höfler joined the Wiener Akademischer Verein der Germanisten, a völkisch group of German academics in 1921. He joined the Austrian Nazi Party in 1922 after hearing Hitler speak in Vienna.^[6] Sometime in 1922, Höfler also became a member of the SA.^[7]

Between September 1921 and April 1922, Höfler was a guest student at Lund University in Sweden, where he studied modern Scandinavian languages and Nordic philology.^[8] He also studied at Kiel (under Andreas Heusler), Marburg, Basel, and completed his PhD at the University of Vienna in 1926 with the dissertation Altnordische Lehnwortstudien, which examined loanwords in Old Norse.^[3] Höfler's scholarly interests encompassed a wide array of intellectual disciplines that included history, philology, religion, cultural morphology, folklore studies, and historical linguistics.^[9]

From 1928 to 1934, Höfler was a lecturer in German at Uppsala University.^[3] At Uppsala, Höfler befriended the fellow philologists Stig Wikander and Georges Dumézil, who all remained lifelong friends and intellectual collaborators.^[10] He completed his habilitation at the University of Vienna in 1931 with the dissertation Kultische Geheimbünde der Germanen, which examined secret societies of the early Germanic peoples.^[3] It had a major influence on the future research of Wikander and Dumézil, who would later examine similar societies among Indo-Iranians and Indo-Europeans.^[10]

From 1935 he lectured at the University of Kiel, where he had been appointed chair of German philology, a promotion that was facilitated and influenced by both Walther Wüst—curator of the SS Ahnenerbe—and SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, who was impressed by Höfler's research.^[11] Höfler was considered an "ideal candidate for the SS" for having provided expert opinions and lectures at SS training camps.^[12] In that same year he became a member of the selection committee for the Reichsberufswettkampf, an organization associated with the SS.^[13]

From 1938, Höfler was Professor and Chair of Germanic Philology and Ethnology at the University of Munich.^[3] Much like his appointment at Kiel, Wüst and Himmler made the necessary political maneuvers on Höfler's behalf to ensure he obtained his prestigious post at Munich. Also in 1938, Höfler became a leader of the SS Ahnenerbe, an organization he had joined in 1937,^[13] and which was also partially responsible for him receiving his position in Munich.^[14]

Höfler's ongoing research centered on early Germanic culture, particularly early Germanic religion and literature. German historian, Frank-Rutger Hausmann wrote that as a main player among the German Cultural Institutes, Höfler provided language courses for "Danish Gestapo agents".^[12] Höflers Deutsche Heldensage (1941), which examined Medieval German literature, was highly influential, and republished in 1961. Höfler argued in favor of cultural continuity between modern Germans and early Germanic peoples.^[3]

Sometime in 1945, Höfler was fired from the University of Munich and was subsequently prohibited from teaching. In 1950, he received a license to teach Scandinavian studies. In 1954, Höfler was appointed Associate Professor of Nordic Philology and Germanic Antiquity at the University of Munich. Although nominally Associate Professor, Höfler was for all practical purposes a full Professor during this time. Among his notable students at Munich were Heinrich Beck and Otto Gschwantler.^[15]

In 1957, Höfler was appointed Professor and Chair of German Language and Old German Literature at the University of Vienna.^[3] Gschwantler accompanied him as an assistant, and would eventually become a full professor. A talented and highly popular teacher, Höfler taught and supervised a generation of very influential scholars at Vienna, including Helmut Birkhan, Hermann Reichert, Peter Wiesinger, Erika Kartschoke, Edith Marold, Klaus Düwel, Waltraud Hunke and Wolfgang Lange. A group of Höfler's most dedicated students, which included Gschwantler, Birkhan, Wiesinger and Kartschoke, were affectionately known as the Drachenrunde. Highly sociable, Höfler played an important role at the university as a host of seminaries and parties at his vineyard, and arranged memorable excursions to Ravenna and other places, which were attended by his students and fellow professors and friends, such as Richard Wolfram and Eberhard Kranzmayer [de].^[15][16][17]

Höfler retired from teaching 1971, but continued to teach and research.^[3] After his retirement, Höfler worked on refining his earlier theories, and authored extensive studies on Dietrich von Bern and Siegfried, the two most important characters in Medieval German literature. He argued that Siegfried was derived from the Germanic chieftain Arminius, who defeated the Roman army in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD.^[3]

Höfler died in Vienna on 25 August 1987.^[3]

 

Otto Höfler lecturing his predecessor Dietrich Kralik and students during an excursion to the Mausoleum of Theodoric in Ravenna, Italy

 

Otto Höfler congratulating the family of his student Otto Gschwantler as Gschwantler is awarded the Sub auspiciis Praesidentis by President Adolf Schärf for outstanding scholarship

Höfler's scholarship and legacy are controversial.^[2] Höfler had a major influence on Georges Dumézil's trifunctional hypothesis of Indo-European society. He worked closely with Dumézil and scholars such as Stig Wikander, Émile Benveniste and Jan de Vries on developing study on Indo-European mythology, and has been credited with having significantly contributed to reviving the field of comparative mythology.^[10]

According to archaeologist, Neil Price, Höfler's early career may have been shaped by the political changes of the times, but the actual content of his works were of high quality and not tainted by political bias.^[18][b] Historian Elizabeth A. Rowe says that though criticized by some, Höfler's key theories have never been refuted.^[19][c] Price argues Höfler's research has continued to be of great relevance up to the present day.^[19]

On the other hand, Julia Zernack [de] argues that Höfler’s work is "an example of the self-subjugation of Germanic scholarship to völkisch-nationalistic and National Socialistic ideologies."^[20] Jan Hirschbiegel argues that Höfler's work served less to uncover new academic knowledge than to create an ideological foundation for the National Socialist state,^[21] that Höfler's cultic group of Odin's warriors was meant as spiritual predecessor of the National Socialist "death cult" and its "death symbolism",^[22] and that Höfler never distanced himself from the völkisch elements of his earlier work.^[23]

Wolfgang Behringer and Klaus von See similarly point to his Kultische Geheimbünde der Germanen as, in Behringer's words, a "sensationalist apology for the SS".^[24] Courtney Marie Burrell writes that while several of Höfler's ideas have become popular or achieved consensus in scholarship as of 2023, the scholars who have accepted them ignore the ideological background of Höfler's theories, the essentially unprovable nature of his main theses, and the objections of other folklorists.^[25]

• Kultische Geheimbünde der Germanen, Frankfurt am Main, 1934
• Das germanische Kontinuitätsproblem, Hamburg 1937
• Die politische Leistung der Völkerwanderungszeit, 1937
• Friedrich Gundolf und das Judentum in der Literaturwissenschaft, 1940
• Deutsche Heldensage, 1941
• Germanisches Sakralkönigtum, 1952
• Balders Bestattung und die nordischen Felszeichnungen, 1952
• Zur Diskussion über den Rökstein, 1954
• Das Opfer im Semnonenhain und die Edda, 1952
• Der Sakralcharakter des germanischen Königtums, 1956
• Goethes Homunculus, 1963
• Verwandlungskulte, Volkssagen und Mythen, 1973
• Theoderich der Große und sein Bild in der Sage, 1975
• Siegfried, Arminius und der Nibelungenhort, 1978
• Kleine Schriften, 1992

 

• Helmut Birkhan
• Robert Nedoma
• Rudolf Simek
• Herwig Wolfram
• Walter Steinhauser
• Franz Rolf Schröder
• Hans Kuhn (philologist)
• Werner Betz
• Kurt Schier
• Dietrich Kralik
• Blanka Horacek
• Friedrich Ranke
• Dennis Howard Green

• Otto Höfler at the website of the University of Vienna

 

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