Life and achievements
Early life
Erich Auerbach was born in Berlin in 1892 into a middle-class Jewish family which was keen on educating the young and encouraging a life of the mind. He continued his post-high school education in Germany, which was characterized by German academia's intellectual philological traditions. As a combatant during the First World War, Auerbach was exposed to real-life situations, influencing his perception of history and culture. After the war, he completed his doctorate at the University of Greifswald in 1921. His initial academic appointment was as a librarian at the Prussian State Library, and his first teaching position was at the University of Marburg.
While at Marburg, Auerbach's scholarship was in history and literature; he specialized in Dante. During this time, he developed his passion for how literature portrayed reality in various cultures and epochs. However, his academic career was brought to a halt by the rising of the Nazi regime in Germany. Having been expelled from Germany in 1935, Auerbach moved to Istanbul, Turkey, where he was able to take up a post at Istanbul University. His years in Turkey can be considered the most creative as he wrote his magnum opus – Mimesis.
Legacy
Erich Auerbach made a significant impact on the field of comparative literature. His way of interpreting literary works historically while considering the differences in language and culture brought a new approach to the art of criticism. Mimesis has continued to be one of the most influential literary criticisms studied extensively because of its content on the construction of reality in literature. His talent to walk through the line between the ancient and the contemporary, the classical and the modern, enabled Auerbach to link various literary traditions that had not been connected before.
Another area that Auerbach shaped is modern critical theory. Other scholars like Edward Said and Fredric Jameson have acknowledged Auerbach's work as having a formative influence on their own work. His views about exile and displacement and his depiction of reality align with the current debates in literary criticism and post-colonial theory. Auerbach's humanism and his approach to the interpretation of literature in which history was the key to understanding it has remained pertinent in contemporary scholarly discourse.
Milestone moments
Nov 9, 1892
Birth in Berlin
Erich Auerbach was born in Berlin, Germany, to a middle-class Jewish family; his parents were educated.
He grew up in Berlin, one of Europe's most intellectual cities, and thus, he had early exposure to different cultures and literature.
In his childhood, Auerbach was raised in a scholarship culture, which helped him develop an early interest in languages and literature.
He later joined the famous Französisches Gymnasium in Berlin, where he received his classical education, which enabled him to pursue further studies in philology and literature.
The early years of Auerbach were filled with the tradition of academics in his family, leading him to an academic career in humanities.
Jul 18, 1929
Professorship at the University of Marburg
Auerbach got a position as a professor of Romance philology at the University of Marburg in 1929.
This greatly boosted his academic ladder as it significantly increased the same field.
While at Marburg, Auerbach concentrated on studying European literature, especially Dante's Inferno.
His work on Dante, including Dante: The Poet of the Secular World, made him a medieval and Renaissance literature critic.
During his stay at Marburg, Auerbach was surrounded by the academic environment and discussed with such scholars as Rudolf Bultmann and Hans-Georg Gadamer.
Such connections provided a rich intellectual interaction and shaped Auerbach's developing outlook on literature, language, and historical background.
Mar 5, 1935
Forced Exile from Nazi Germany
Auerbach lost his academic position at the University of Marburg in 1935 because of Nazi's anti-Semitic laws.
He was a Jewish scholar, and under the new racial policies, he could not continue as the dean of the faculty.
It became a turning point in his life and career when he was forced to leave the work he loved.
In order to escape the situation, Auerbach moved to Istanbul, Turkey, and got a job teaching at Istanbul University.
While this was necessary, it paved the way for some of his most outstanding work in scholarship, as we shall see later on.
May 28, 1946
Publication of Mimesis
In 1946, Erich Auerbach published Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, a work to become a classic of comparative literature.
Composed when Arendt was in political exile in Germany, Mimesis is a history of Western literature and how it depicts the real world, from Homer to Virginia Woolf.
Mimesis is divided into twenty chapters, each focused on interpreting literary works from various historical and cultural periods.
Auerbach's innovation was that he tried to integrate the philological approach with historical perspective, thus providing the reader with an understanding of how literature absorbs the new reality of life.