| Born: | 04-05-1917 |
| Faculty: | Philosophical School |
| Category: | Expelled student |
Paul HOFFMANN, born on April 5th, 1917 in Willendorf i.d. Wachau/Lower Austria (entitled residency ("heimatberechtigt") for Vienna/Austria, citizenship 1938: Austria), son of Dr. Paul Hoffmann (1885-1970, farmer/estate manager) and Jolantha Hoffmann, née Garszky (1888-1985) and lived in the dormitory in Vienna's 9th district, Porzellangasse 30. He attended the Kremsmünster Abbey Gymnasium and the Gymnasium in Krems, Lower Austria, where he also successfully passed the graduation (Reifepruefung/Matura) in 1935. He then began to study German language and literature with a minor in history at the University of Vienna. He was last enrolled in the spring term of 1938 at the Philosophical School in the 3rd year of his studies and attended lectures in German studies, history and geography.
Although "Roman Catholic", he was considered a "Mischling 1st degree" by the National Socialists (since his father had belonged to the Jewish Community at birth, but had already left in 1915) and had to terminate his studies and was forced to leave the University of Vienna.
The family managed to escape by ship to New Zealand in 1939, where Paul Hoffmann spent the next 12 years helping out on his parents' dairy farm. As soon as it was possible, he enrolled at the University of Auckland as an external student and studied German, Latin and English, graduating with an M.A. in 1947.
On February 3rd, 1948, he married his Austrian childhood friend Eva Henriette Bichler (?-2014) in Auckland/New Zealand, and was naturalized in New Zealand on July 14th, 1948.
In 1951 he returned to Vienna with his wife and two small children. He caught up on his interrupted doctoral studies, submitted a dissertation in 1957 on the "Religious Late Work of Karl Wolfskehl," whom he had met in New Zealand, and became a "Dr. phil." in 1958. For a living he wrote freelance texts for radio (ORF) and applied - unsuccessfully - for various positions of Lecturer in German but the advanced age and the reference of twelve years of farm work in his curriculum vitae were not conducive to an academic career.
Eventually he obtained a position at Victoria University of Wellington and so returned from Vienna to New Zealand at the end of 1959, where, with the interruption of a one-term Fulbright Visiting Professorship at the University of Illinois at Urbana, IL/USA, he taught until 1970, from 1963 as a full professor and director of the newly founded German Department, which he helped to establish. In 1970 he returned to Europe when he was appointed full professor of German philology at Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen/Germany, where he then taught and researched until his retirement in 1985.
Prof. Dr. Paul Hoffmann died on May 2nd, 1999 in Tübingen/Germany.
Lit: Archive of the University of Vienna/enrollment forms ("Nationale") PHIL 1935-1938, graduation registry ("Promotionsprotokoll") PHIL 1956-1966; Ilse AICHINGER, Zao ZHANG u. Delbrück HANSGERD (eds.), Dem Dichter des Lesens. Gedichte für Paul Hoffmann [Festschrift zum 80. Geburtstag], Tübingen 1997; Hansgerd DELBRÜCK, Paul Hoffmann, in: James N. Bade (ed.), Im Schatten zweier Kriege. Deutsche und Österreicher in Neuseeland im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert, Bremen 2005, 201-206; Paul HOFFMANN, Der verfremdende Blick. Als Germanist in Neuseeland - und zurück, in: Renate Meissner (ed.), Exil in Neuseeland (=Erinnerungen Bd. 7.1), Vienna 2022, 184-211; www.ancestry.de; www.myheritage.at.
Herbert Posch
