His voice sounded gentle, and his cheeky blue eyes looked so friendly. Perhaps it is ultimately the most astonishing thing about Jan Assmann: it is precisely this almost irritating gentleness in his performance that has had a decisive influence on the cultural and intellectual landscape of Germany after 1989, and even changed it to this day. After reunification, neither loud historians, philosophers or sociologists, neither Günter Grass nor Jürgen Habermas, but rather a sensitive Egyptologist who liked to wear a bow tie, delivered the groundbreaking formula under which the country would compete in the future and without which hardly any speech by various federal presidents since then has been able to get by .
This article comes from ZEIT No. 09/2024. You can read the entire issue here.
“Cultural memory”: That was the name of the practical magic word that Assmann invented with his wife Aleida in the 1980s and discussed in an interdisciplinary manner in the Heidelberg circle of friends. After his book of the same name from 1993, generations of students and doctoral students from various subjects could and had to pray for it: the theory of a collective memory of societies from various eras and cultures, based on ancient Egypt, which sometimes lives on for centuries beyond historical research in rituals, signs and stories , is subject to change, but is fundamentally important for the soul balance and self-image of these societies – this idea fit perfectly with the situation after the epochal break. Because the traumas of the 20th century, with its dictatorships and its destructive energies, were fresh in the memory at the time, the power of violence and the suffering of the victims were palpable. Especially the burdened, reunited, purified Germany wanted to demonstratively process the past through memory politics for the sake of the future, in a permanent process. Assmann was amazed at the public career of his apparently magical term “cultural memory” and he pushed it forward – in fact, the term is one of the two or three ideas from the German humanities that radiated worldwide after 1945. Coming from an exclusive, so-called orchid field, Jan Assmann became one of its great figures.
More on the topic: Jan Assmann
Jan Assmann: “Music captures the infinite”
Jan and Aleida Assmann: This special freedom
This scholar was not given the role of setting the tone for an era. Born in 1938 as the son of an architect, grew up in the ruins of war-torn Lübeck. As a child, Assmann dreamed of music, composed cantatas and an opera – one of his most beautiful books is about Mozart Magic Flute – and then study archeology just to be on the safe side. In 1976 he became professor of Egyptology in Heidelberg and led several excavations on the Nile. Throughout his life, ancient Egypt remained the starting point of his thinking, which increasingly expanded into universal history – which was above all one thing: experimentally open, without shyness, astonishingly free. Assmann found his years of study in Paris in the 1960s to be a significant influence; He was never suitable for the egocentric Mandarin analogous to the legendary German figures of classical studies around 1900.
Z+: Exclusively for subscribers
CO₂ storage: How Big Oil wants to press its CO₂ into the sea
Biodiversity and Agriculture: How Roast Lamb and Bean Curry Threaten Biodiversity
Bahnhofsviertel Hamburg: Here you can no longer see the need for the trees
More subscription texts
He remained loyal to the land of the pharaohs in his stylistically brilliant books, which were often controversially discussed. They revolved around the European history of Egypt’s impact, right up to Thomas Mann – he always wanted to integrate this culture into the universal heritage of humanity and not let humanistic civilization begin with Jerusalem and Athens. The debates since his book have been heated Moses the Egyptian from 1998, when he contrasted the plural polytheism of the Egyptians with the rather exclusive, supposedly violence-promoting monotheism of Judeo-Christian tradition; later he revised and refined some statements. But now things got very bloody on the Nile and among the polytheist Greeks. Nevertheless, it never made sense to the tolerant Assmann why the monotheistic belief in revelation alone should be the beginning of modernity’s secularized, cosmopolitan path to salvation; Even pagans of all stripes can be peaceful, sometimes better humanists. In his book published in 2018 about the legendary Axial Age around 500 BC, Assmann defended himself against the classically exclusive idea that the path from myth to logos was only taken then with the first founders of religion and that suddenly fate and the old powers no longer ruled: Also In his opinion, the ancient Egyptians had already embarked on the long path to reason.
“Opening is intellectually the decisive factor”: This is how Jan Assmann once described the nature of his thinking. The Assmanns embodied Heidelberg as an intellectual way of life, a scholarly couple with five children who maintained a wide circle of intellectual friends, as was common there in the time of Max and Marianne Weber around 1900. His international career led to countless awards and honorary doctorates, culminating in the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 2018, which he received with his wife. On Monday night, this bridge builder of German educated middle class died into the 21st century.
Newsletter © ZEIT ONLINE
Of course intelligent
By registering you take the Data protection
to note.
Thank you! We have sent you an email.
Check your mailbox and confirm your newsletter subscription.
During his excavations in Luxor, Egypt in the 1970s, Jan Assmann had a record player with him; Over endless weeks in the sand, he and his wife listened to Beethoven’s string quartets in the sweltering heat outside the tent. The ancient Egyptian deities must have liked the classical European sounds, just as this life, this work that spanned thousands of years and cultures, took on such a fascinating form from then on. It will resonate far and wide as Jan Assmann’s music across the desert sand.
Condolence book
Condolence book
Dear readers,
In the comments section of this article we would like to give you the opportunity to share your memories and thoughts with a condolence book. Maintaining piety in the event of a death is important to us, which is why all comments are reviewed before publication.
His voice sounded gentle, and his cheeky blue eyes looked so friendly. Perhaps it is ultimately the most astonishing thing about Jan Assmann: it is precisely this almost irritating gentleness in his performance that has had a decisive influence on the cultural and intellectual landscape of Germany after 1989, and even changed it to this day. After reunification, neither loud historians, philosophers or sociologists, neither Günter Grass nor Jürgen Habermas, but rather a sensitive Egyptologist who liked to wear a bow tie, delivered the groundbreaking formula under which the country would compete in the future and without which hardly any speech by various federal presidents since then has been able to get by .