ABSTRACT
The Poetik und Hermeneutik group was founded by the German scholars Hans Robert Jauss, Clemens Heselhaus, and Hans Blumenberg at Giessen University. The group intended to promote an intellectual change in the humanities. The Giessen scholars planned to establish a research group, a meeting ground for philosophers and literary scholars willing to apply hermeneutic methods to the study of poetic texts. The initiative was inspired by the ideas of the influential philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer who had unsuccessfully tried to form such a group. After the end, Poetics and Hermeneutics group ultimately disbanded because, it ran out of steam. Perhaps, there was another reason that the group's members felt that they had done their job. Furthermore, many members of the younger generation had moved on, developing their own style of thought in literary studies and philosophy. They worked on new projects and published some of their major works after the group's dissolution.
