Agathe Lasch

Der Agathe-Lasch-Hörsaal (© Stefan Kayser)

Lecture Hall B in the cupola of the main building of the University of Hamburg on Edmund-Siemers-Allee has been named the "Agathe Lasch Lecture Hall". Since the spring of this year, the lecture hall directly below (Lecture Hall B) has been called the "Ernst Cassirer Lecture Hall«. The University wants to underscore the close connection between its history and the names of great scholars and scientists as well as how much the university owes these great men and women. The naming ceremony for the "Agathe Lasch Lecture Hall" took place last year on 4 November. Prof. Dieter Möhn from the Germanisches Seminar gave the ceremonial speech ("The History of Language. The Philologist Agathe Lasch"). Dieter Möhn is Agathe Lasche's third successor as Professor of Low German at the University of Hamburg.

In the 1920's and early 1930's, Agathe Lasch (1879 to 1942?) contributed significantly to the University of Hamburg's rank and international reputation. She had already made a name for herself in German Literature when she came as an assistant to the German Seminar in Hamburg in 1917. In 1909, she had completed her doctoral thesis in Heidelberg with her acclaimed "History of Written Language in Berlin". She subsequently worked as a professor at a woman's university in the United States, where she wrote her major work, a grammar of Middle Low German. It remains one of the standard works on Low German philology.

In Hamburg, Agathe Lasch worked on two dictionaries, the Hamburg Dictionary and the Dictionary of Middle Low German. In 1919, the German Seminar became part of the newly-founded University of Hamburg. Agathe Lasch completed her habilitation thesis in the same year, was named professor in 1923 and in 1926 called to the newly-created chair for Low German, becoming the first woman at the University of Hamburg to have such a position.

The take-over by the National Socialists meant the end of Agathe Lasch's teaching and research activities at the University. The "Law Reinstating Career Civil Service," passed in April 1933, prohibited the employment of Jews in public service. A petition by Swedish university professors at first delayed the application of the law to Agathe Lasch. However, in 1934, Lasch was let go. Following the prohibition to work, Lasch was prohibited from publishing. She moved to Berlin in 1937 in order to be with her family. Everyday she had to face the prospect of being rounded up. This happened on 12 August 1942, from which time she disappeared without a trace.

The lecture by Prof. Möhn as well as the words of honor by President Jürgen Lüthje at the ceremony will soon be published in the series "Hamburg University Speeches, Sequels."

unihh - Heft 1, 2000