Götting, Franz

Germanist, librarian, director of the Hessian State Library

Born: 03.08.1905 in Menden (Westphalia)

died: 05.05.1973 in Wiesbaden

Götting was director of the Hessian State Library for almost 25 years and shaped Wiesbaden's cultural life during this time. After leaving school, he studied in Münster, where he later completed his doctorate after further years of study in Vienna. From 1935 he worked as an archivist and librarian at the Goethe Museum in Frankfurt (Freies Dt. Hochstift).

In November 1945, he was entrusted with the management of the scientific library in Wiesbaden. He was also head of the first post-war cultural association, the Wiesbadener Kulturbund.

Together with Johannes Maaß, Götting was one of the founders of the Wiesbaden Adult Education Center (Volkshochschule Wiesbaden e.V.) and was chairman of the association from 1956-68. He was also a member of the city's cultural deputation.

He felt a particular affinity with Goethe. Various publications in the Goethe calendar of the Frankfurt Goethe Museum ("Dora Stock, eine deutsche Malerin um 1800", 1938) and in the yearbook "Goethe" bear witness to this. His "Chronicle of Goethe's Life" went through numerous editions. The Wiesbaden Goethe Society elected him as its second chairman.

On the 150th anniversary of the founding of the State Library, Götting and his colleague Rupprecht Leppla wrote a history of the library and the institutions once associated with it, the Picture Gallery and the Natural History Museum, thus creating an important document of cultural policy in Nassau and Wiesbaden (1963). Other publications included "Die Bibliothek von Goethes Vater" (Nassauische Annalen 64/1953) and "Johann Isaac von Gerning 1767-1837" (Nassauische Lebensbilder, vol. 5, 1955).