Johannes Hoffmeister (philosopher)

Hoffmeister was born on 17 December 1907 in Heldrungen.

He completed his doctorate in 1929 under Friedrich Gundolf at Heidelberg University, writing his dissertation on Caspar von Barth. He soon after began his editorial work on Hegel. He was tasked with deciphering the previously unpublished manuscripts on “Jenenser Realphilosophie” (Lectures 1803/04) stored in the Berlin State Library. The Moses Mendelssohn Foundation (Berlin) financed this work for two years, following a suggestion by Richard Kroner, the president of the International Hegel Congress. Collaborating with the leading Hegel editor Georg Lasson Hoffmeister had the manuscript published in 1931 and 1932 as part of Lasson's “Sämtliche Werke” (Complete Works) edition.

From 1932, Hoffmeister was a tutor and lecturer at Felix Meiner in Leipzig. Funded by the “German Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Research”, the predecessor of the German Research Foundation (DFG), he published various Hegel editions from 1933 onwards. In January 1936, he became an assistant lecturer at the University of Leipzig's Institute of Philosophy. After he had to give up this position in February 1938 due to personal differences with Hermann Glockner, he took up a position as lexicon editor at the Brockhaus publishing house.

In 1936, Johannes Hoffmeister published Dokumente zu Hegels Entwicklung ("Documents on Hegel’s Development"), a seminal work that compiled and analyzed early manuscripts and correspondence of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

During the Nazi regime, Hoffmeister belonged to several National Socialist associations. He joined the SA in Leipzig on 1 November 1936. From 1 January 1939 to 31 March 1941, he was supported by the NSDDB's promotion of young talent. In March 1939, he took part in a “philosophical workshop” organized by the Amt Rosenberg at Buderose Castle. On November 23, 1939, he applied for membership of the NSDAP and was accepted on January 1, 1940 (with membership number 7.939.387).

He was able to pursue his academic career goals in February 1939 when he became a “trainee assistant” at the Institute of Philosophy in Leipzig. In the spring of 1941, he habilitated in Modern German Literature at the University of Bonn.

Hoffmeister was a soldier from March to October 1941. From 1942 to 1944, he taught German literature as a lecturer at the Sorbonne University in occupied Paris. He was subject of internment in an American prisoner of war camp in northwest France until the summer of 1945 when he was released from captivity due to illness. He returned to teaching at Bonn University in 1946, where he was appointed Associate Professor of Modern German Language and Literature in 1948 and gave lectures on Renaissance and Baroque literature, Romanticism, Hölderlin, and other topics. In 1953 he began a “New Critical Hegel Edition” which was supported by the DFG. His students included the two Hegel scholars Otto Pöggeler and Friedhelm Nicolin, and others, including Richard Müller, Karl Otto Brogsitter and Kurt Müller-Vollmer.

Hoffmeister died on 19 October 1955 in Bonn.

Hoffmeister edited several volumes of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's writings and lecture manuscripts and made these Hegel editions available in print for the first time. They still form the basis of Hegel studies in many cases. His four-volume collection of Hegel's correspondence (Briefe von und an Hegel, 1951–1954) and his compilation of contemporary testimonies to Hegel's life and influence remain standard reference materials. The editions of the Lectures on the History of Philosophy{{Cite journal |last=Komasinski |first=Andrew James |date=2021 |title=Putting Ruist and Hegelian Social Thought in Dialogue |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27050837 |journal=Philosophy East and West |volume=71 |issue=3 |pages=724–746 |doi=10.1353/pew.2021.0049 |jstor=27050837 |issn=0031-8221}}{{Cite web |last=Williams |first=Robert R. |title=Georg W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy 1825-6: Volume I: Introduction and Oriental Philosophy, Robert F. Brown (ed., tr.), Oxford UP, 2009, 323 pp., $125.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780199568932. |url=https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/lectures-on-the-history-of-philosophy-1825-6-volume-i-introduction-and-oriental-philosophy/ |website=Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews}} (1940) and the Berliner Schriften 1818-1831 (1956) are of great importance for the history of Hegel philology. His work represents an important step on the way to the “Gesammelte Werke”, which have been published since 1968.

Hoffmeister edition of the Hegel Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, (revising the work of Georg Lasson), was used for the 1975 translation of the work into English by H. B. Nisbet.{{Cite web |last=Walker |first=Nicholas |title=Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, Vol. I: Manuscripts of the Introduction and the Lectures of 1822-3 |url=https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/lectures-on-the-philosophy-of-world-history-vol-i-manuscripts-of-the-introduction-and-the-lectures-of-1822-3/ |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20240810094948/https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/lectures-on-the-philosophy-of-world-history-vol-i-manuscripts-of-the-introduction-and-the-lectures-of-1822-3/ |archive-date=2024-08-10 |access-date=2025-05-19 |website=Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews |language=en-US}}

In 1955, Johannes Hoffmeister published a second edition of the comprehensively revised dictionary of philosophical terms. The first edition, for which Hans Leisegang had done the preparatory work, was published in 1944. This edition was based on the Wörterbuch der philosophischen Grundbegriffe (Dictionary of Basic Philosophical Terms) by Friedrich Kirchner. Hoffmeister had already begun a revision in the 1930s.

Hoffmeister also made significant contributions in other areas of Goethe research. These include an interpretation of Goethe's “Fairy Tale”. A book on Hölderlin and a biography of Hegel remained unfinished. A collection of lectures (held in a prisoner-of-war camp) on Meister Eckhart, Kant, Goethe, Schiller, Hegel and Hölderlin is contained in the book “Heimkehr des Geistes” (1946).

• Goethe und der deutsche Idealismus. Leipzig 1932.
• Hölderlin und die Philosophie. Habilitation. Leipzig 1932.
• Friedrich Hölderlin, 1770–1843. Institut Allemand, Paris 1943.
• Goethes „Urworte-Orphisch“. Eine Interpretation. Tübingen 1930.
• Die Problematik des Völkerbundes bei Kant und Hegel. Tübingen 1934.

• Hegels sämtliche Werke. 18 Bände. 1905- (Herausgeber als Nachfolger von Georg Lasson);
• darin: Jenenser Realphilosophie. Aus dem Manuskript hrsg. von Johannes Hoffmeister. Meiner, Leipzig 1931–1932 (Hegel: Sämtliche Werke ; 19. 20 / Philosophische Bibliothek ; [Neue Ausg.] 66 a. b. 67: [vielm. c!]).
• Hegel. Neue Kritische Ausgabe im Rahmen der Philosophischen Bibliothek bei Felix Meiner, Hamburg, ab 1953.
• Briefe von und an Hegel. Band 1–3, 1951–1954.
• Dokumente zu Hegels Entwicklung. Stuttgart 1936.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Die Wahlverwandtschaften. Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten. Das Märchen. Die guten Weiber. Novelle. Reise der Söhne Megaprazons. Bruchstück eines Romans in Briefen. Hrsg. von Joh. Hoffmeister. Mainzer Presse, Mainz/Weimar 1932 / Insel, Leipzig 1939 (Welt-Goethe-Ausgabe).
• Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Das Märchen. Mit Einführung und Anhang. Iserlohn 1948.
• Heinrich von Kleist: Der zerbrochene Krug. Schulausgabe. Köln 1950.

• als Hrsg.: Wörterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe. (= Philosophische Bibliothek. Band 225). Begründet von Friedrich Kirchner. Vollständig neu bearbeitet. Meiner, Hamburg 1944, {{DNB-IDN|580216144}}.
• als Hrsg.: Wörterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe. (= Philosophische Bibliothek. Band 225). 2. Auflage. Verlag von Felix Meiner, Hamburg 1955, {{DNB-IDN|452069270}}.

• Friedhelm Nicolin, Otto Pöggeler (Hrsg.): Johannes Hoffmeister zum Gedächtnis. Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1956, {{DNB-IDN|452230233}}. (mit Bibliographie)

• {{German National Library portal|118774697}}
• [https://www.bsz-bw.de/depot/media/3400000/3421000/3421308/00_0107.html Wörterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe] (Jürgen Weber)

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Category:1907 births

Category:1955 deaths

Category:Nazi Party members

Category:Academic staff of the University of Bonn

Category:20th-century German philosophers

Category:Germanists

Category:Hegel scholars

Category:Heidelberg University alumni

Category:People from Kyffhäuserkreis