Hans Robert Jauss - Early Years and Education

Early Years and Education

Jauss was born in Göppingen, Württemberg, Germany, and died on 1 March 1997 in Constance, Germany. His family came from a long line of teachers. His religious background was pietism. Jauss’s Gymnasium studies took place in Esslingen and Geislingen between 1932 and 1939. As a young soldier in the Second World War, Jauss spent two winters on the Russian Front in the SS (SS-Nr. 401.359) and the Waffen-SS. In 1942, he was a member of the "SS-Freiwilligen-Legion Niederlande". In 1943, he was Obersturmführer in the "11th SS-Freiwilligen-Legion Nordland". In 1944, he was Hauptsturmführer in the SS reserve. Subsequently, he was part of the "33rd Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS Charlemagne".

In 1944, he was able to begin his studies and complete his first semester in Prague. In November 1948 at Heidelberg, the twenty-seven year old Jauss, after postwar imprisonment, began studies in Romance Philology, Philosophy, History and Germanistik (history and culture of the Germanic peoples). Teachers at that time who made an impact on his thought included Martin Heidegger and Hans Georg Gadamer. He was to remain there until 1954. In these years he made study trips to Paris and Perugia.

The themes of past and the present, time and remembrance, were already engaging Jauss’s research from the time of his doctorate at the University of Heidelberg in 1952. His dissertation, under the direction of Gerhard Hess, was entitled Zeit und Erinnerung in Marcel Prousts «À la recherche du temps perdu».

In 1957, with the treatise Untersuchungen zur mittelalterlichen Tierdichtung, he obtained his habilitation for Romance Philology at the University of Heidelberg.