His parents were Gustav Neckel (1844–1923), an industrialist and businessman, and Amanda,née Paetow (1854–1914).
After completing hisAbitur in Wismar in 1896, Neckel studied German philology atMunich (1896–1897),Leipzig (1897–1898) andBerlin (1898–1902), where he earned his doctorate in 1900 underAndreas Heusler. He then worked as a teacher until completing hisHabilitation and becoming a lecturer at theUniversity of Breslau in 1909.[1]
Beginning in 1911, he was Professor of Old Norse atHeidelberg University, then in 1919–1920 at Berlin. From summer semester 1920 until 1935 he succeeded Heusler as Professor of Germanic Studies, with emphasis on the Scandinavian languages. From 1935 to 1937 he was founding Head of the Old Norse Division of the Department of Germanic Studies at theUniversity of Göttingen, then from 1937 to 1940 Professor of Germanic Philology at Berlin, where he was, however, unable to work due to illness;[2] he had a "nervous condition" from which he had barely recovered when he died suddenly of a pulmonary infection.[3]
Neckel's career was disturbed by conflict withBernhard Kummer and an accusation that he had seduced a student, which led to his being forced to leave Berlin and move to Göttingen;[4][5] thechair, the most prominent in the field, came with him and a new division was created for him within the Göttingen Department of Germanic Studies.[6]
Neckel resisted the politicisation of his department at Berlin[7] and was open-minded on race and its relevance to his discipline;[8] nevertheless, the increasinglyvölkisch point of view in his writings, his initial support for Kummer andHerman Wirth, and his advocacy of the autochthonous theory of the origin of therunes have led some to see a marked decline in the calibre of his scholarly work beginning in the mid-1920s.[9] His former teacher Heusler wrote repeatedly to his friend Wilhelm Ranisch that he seemed "no longer entirely sane" and that he seemed to have developed "an unhealthy ambition, not to say megalomania".[10]
Neckel's research focused on early Germanic studies and Old Norse. He published the standard German edition of theElder Edda. Continuing the approach ofJacob Grimm and of Heusler, he saw all Germanic sources, regardless of period or geographic location, as contributing to the picture of a unified Germanic culture.[11] This culture he believed ethically superior to the medieval Christianity which overtook it, particularly in its respect for women.[11] Heusler and others have considered conflict between ideologues within the Nazi regime, specifically between theAmt Rosenberg, the Ministry and theAhnenerbe, at least partly to blame for his banishment to Göttingen.[3][6][12]
^Gustav Neckel,Vom Germanentum: Ausgewählte Aufsätze und Vorträge, ed. W. Heydenreich and H.M. Neckel, Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1944, OCLC 185170177,p. xiii(in German)
^Julia Zernack, "Neckel, Gustav (Karl Paul Christoph)",Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde 2nd ed. ed. Heinrich Beck, Dieter Geuenich andHeiko Steuer, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002,ISBN3-11-017272-0, Volume 21, pp. 47-49,p. 47(in German)
^abBernard Mees,The Science of the Swastika, Budapest/New York: Central European University Press, 2008, 978-963-9776-18-0,p. 178.
^Julia Zernack, "'Wenn es sein muß, mit Härte'—Die Zwangsversetzung des Nordisten Gustav Neckel 1935 und die 'Germanenkunde im Kulturkampf'" inGermanistik und Politik in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Zwei Fallstudien: Hermann Schneider und Gustav Neckel, ed. Klaus von See and Julia Zernack, Frankfurter Beiträge zur Germanistik 42, Heidelberg: Winter, 2004,ISBN3-8253-5022-3, pp. 113–208,p. 151(in German)
^The circumstances are still obscure and described by his friend Wilhelm Heydenreich simply as his having beenOpfer einer gegen ihn gerichteten feindlichen Strömung, der er in seinem überarbeiteten Zustand nicht gewachsen war (Vom Germanentum,p. xxii - rendered by Mees,p. 179 as "victim of a hostile current directed against him that he was not a match for given his overworked condition"). Mees regards the allegations as a pretext. See also Fritz Heinrich, "Bernhard Kummer (1897–1962): The Study of Religions Between Religious Devotion for the Ancient Germans, Political Agitation, and Academic Habitus" inThe Study of Religion Under the Impact of Fascism, ed. Horst Junginger, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008,ISBN978-90-04-16326-3, pp. 229–62,p. 251 and notes 93, 94.
^Marie-Luise Bott, "'Deutsche Slavistik' in Berlin? Zum Slavischen Institut der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität 1933–1945" inDie Berliner Universität in der NS-Zeit, Volume 2Fachbereiche und Fakultäten, ed. Rüdiger vom Bruch with Rebecca Schaarschmidt, Stuttgart: Steiner, 2005,ISBN3-515-08658-7,p. 277, note 6(in German)
^Klaus Düwel and Heinrich Beck, ed.,Andreas Heusler an Wilhelm Ranisch: Briefe aus den Jahren 1890–1940, Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1989,ISBN3-7190-1022-8, cited in Fritz Paul:nicht mehr im vollen Besitz seiner Geisteskräfte;krankhaften Ehrgeiz, um nicht zu sagen: Größenwahn. According to Mees,pp. 175-76, Heusler "had come to the conclusion by 1933 that Neckel had simply gone mad".
^abReallexikonpp. 47-48, quoting:Die germanische Gesellschaft von Fürsten, Bauern und Sklaven, die wir aus denSagas so genau kennenlernen [...], sie ist die germanische Gesellschaft der ZeitAttilas, der Zeit desArminius und schon früherer Zeiten, die überall wesentlich dasselbe Gesicht zeigte. - "The Germanic society of lords, farmers and slaves which we come to know so well from the sagas . . . , that is the Germanic society of the time of Attila, the time of Arminius and even earlier times, which everywhere evinced essentially the same features".
Julia Zernack, "Gustav Karl Paul Christoph Neckel". InInternationales Germanistenlexikon 1800–1950, ed. Christoph König. 3 vols. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003.ISBN3-11-015485-4. Volume 2, pp. 1311–12.
Germanistik und Politik in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Zwei Fallstudien: Hermann Schneider und Gustav Neckel. Ed.Klaus von See and Julia Zernack. Frankfurter Beiträge zur Germanistik 42. Heidelberg: Winter, 2004.ISBN3-8253-5022-3.
