Hermann Usener

Hermann Usener (1834-1905) was a German scholar in the fields of philology and comparative religion. He became professor at the University of Bonn

A large-scale thinker^[1], he was influential in areas such as concept formation in religion.^[2], as well as in scholarship and through his students.^[3]^[4] One such was Friedrich Nietzche: after initial support, Usener wrote him off as a scholar after The Birth of Tragedy was published.

His works include:

Analecta Theophrastea (1858 dissertation at Bonn)
Alexandri Aphrodisiensis problematorum lib. III. et IV. (1859)
Götternamen
Scholia in Lucani bellum civile (1869)
Anecdoton Holderi (1877)
Legenden der heiligen Pelagia (1879)
De Stephano Alexandrino (1880)
Jacob Bernays, Gesammelte Abhandlungen (1885) editor
Acta S. Marinae et S. Christophori (1886)
Epicurea (1887)
Altgriechischer Versbau (1887)
Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen (1889)
Die Sintfluthsagen untersucht (1899)
Dionysius of Halicarnassus edition, begun 1904, with Ludwig Radermacher

His students included Hermann Diels^[5], Paul Natorp, Hans Lietzmann^[6], Albrecht Dieterich and Richard Reitzenstein^[7], and Aby Warburg^[8]

Reference

Roland Kany, Hermann Usener as Historian of Religion. In: Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 6 (2004) S. 159-176.

Notes

^ [1]:He combined a comparative procedure, drawing on diverse ethnological material for the study of social and religious matters in the ancient world with a more phenomenological or hermeneutic procedure, centered on social psychology and cultural history.
^ See Antje Wessels, Zur Rezeption von Hermann Useners Lehre von der religiösen Begriffsbildung.
^ [2]:...Hermann Usener at Bonn, who combined comparative ethnological analysis with phenomenological hermeneutics, trained an impressive list of pupils.
^ Camille Paglia [3] identifies 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.
^ PDF, p.4 and later; [4].
^ [5]
^ [6]
^ [7], [8].

[1] [1]:He combined a comparative procedure, drawing on diverse ethnological material for the study of social and religious matters in the ancient world with a more phenomenological or hermeneutic procedure, centered on social psychology and cultural history.

[2] See Antje Wessels, Zur Rezeption von Hermann Useners Lehre von der religiösen Begriffsbildung.

[3] [2]:...Hermann Usener at Bonn, who combined comparative ethnological analysis with phenomenological hermeneutics, trained an impressive list of pupils.

[4] Camille Paglia [3] identifies 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.

[5] PDF, p.4 and later; [4].

[6] [5]

[7] [6]

[8] [7], [8].

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