Eduard Norden and his Students: A Contribution to a Portrait, Based on Three Archival Finds

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Albert I. Baumgarten

Abstract

This article is based on three archival sources - German originals and translations included, as appropriate - concerning Eduard Norden (1868-1941), the Berlin specialist in Latin literature. The first is a letter Norden wrote to his student Elias Bickerman (1897-1981) in December 1926, commenting on a paper Bickerman had written on Tacitus and rejecting Bickerman’s conclusions after careful consideration. The second source is Bickerman’s portrait of Norden, written for the Berlin student newspaper in October 1927, when Norden was elected Rector of the Friedrich-Wilhelm University. Bickerman introduced Norden to the students, illustrating his method and its important implications. The last document is a translation of parts of the Hebrew eulogy delivered in 1945 by Moshe Schwabe (1889-1956) of the Hebrew University in memory of Hans (Yohanan) Lewy (1901-1944), Norden’s other outstanding student.


The article examines and interprets these documents in each other’s light. Based on these sources, it elaborates the contrast between Norden’s approach to philology, history and the world of the Weimar era, and that championed by Werner Jaeger (1888-1961) in Paideia (3 vols.: German, 1933–1947), popular at the time. Lewy disapproved of the political message implicit in Paideia as too supportive of racist Nazism. At a more fundamental professional level, Jaeger’s analysis could descend into a fog of words, while Norden and his students favored a more disciplined philological method. Careful analysis of terms and their universe of meaning was to be their basis for synthesis. This aspect of Norden’s approach, praised by Bickerman, was then practiced by him and Lewy. They saw it as especially helpful, when writing the history of religious concepts, in distinguishing received traditions from new ideas and innovations. Norden taught them how to be successful philologists of religion.

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