Talk:Hans Robert Jauss

Waffen SS
This is not an edit, but a query. There is no discussion as yet on the "Hans Robert Jauss" page, and since I can't figure out how to start a discussion, this will have to do.

It seems to me irresponsible to limit the discussion of Jauss merely to his reception aesthetics. Like Paul de Man, like Heidigger, Jauss' past implicates him with the Nazis. He volunteered for the Waffen SS and served from 1939 to 1945. He "only" served two winters on the Russian Front perhaps because by 1943, the German forces were, effectively, in retreat from Russia. He himself has said that units in which he served were implicated in atrocities, but never when he was a part of them. The Waffen SS was an elite part of the SS, and was supposed to be much more ideologically committed than the regular SS. The Russian front was a theatre of atrocities, committed by both the SS and by regular Wermacht troops. So how did Jauss escape from seeing or participating in them?

Jauss' aesthetics could also stand a more serious going over than the author of this article gives them, since they have been seen as, in essence, anti-humanist.

Theonemacduff 03:25, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * You can edit the article. Tyrenius 03:46, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * 100 points for that. I studied my Latin (and other things) at the U. of C. from 1982 to 1990, and it was an open secret that Jauss used to be with the Waffen-SS, although no-one talked about it. Still, I don´t have any sources on it. To omit this here is a crime, though. (There were other things, too, like his Assistent always carrying Jauss` briefcase and filling out his tax forms; but that´s just a rumour and doesn `t belong here.) --328cia (talk) 01:30, 11 November 2008 (UTC)