Max Gottschald

Max Gottschald (born August 19, 1882 in Erfurt , † February 18, 1952 in Oberalbertsdorf near Zwickau ) was a German philologist and name researcher .

Life

Max Gottschald was born in Erfurt on August 19, 1882, the son of the Thuringia inspector , captain of the reserve and former mayor Franz Heinrich Gottschald (1825-1891). His mother Marie b. Hoellje had married her husband shortly after the death of his first wife (Caroline nee Heinert, 1832–1879) and had a daughter (Emma Henriette Wilhelmine) in 1884 as the second child.

Gottschald completed preschool and sexta in Erfurt, but since he had already lost both parents in 1891 at the age of nine, he had to attend the grammar school in Wesel from 1892 to 1896, entrusted to the care of his almost completely blind grandmother . After his grandmother's death, he was appointed a guardian. In 1896 he was a student at the Obertertia in Höxter , where he passed the school leaving examination in 1901.

There Max Gottschald met his teacher Erich Volckmar (* 1857 in Ilfeld), who had been a teacher at the König-Wilhelm-Gymnasium since 1886 and had just published his work on the place names of the Höxter district, which is still to be considered today . Volckmar recognized his pupil's talent, encouraged his interest in language and aroused in him the need to dedicate himself to personal names from now on. Gottschald's desire to go to school was also likely to have been significantly influenced by his teacher.

Since his guardian had embezzled almost the entire modest financial legacy, the high school graduate was only able to obtain an academic education with great privation. From 1901 to 1905 Gottschald studied classical philology and German at the University of Leipzig . The extremely hard-working student, who is interested beyond his specialist area, attended lectures and exercises in art history, philosophy, geography, religious studies and the history of Eastern Europe and the Middle East in addition to his main subjects including pedagogy, school history and psychology.

After the state examination in December 1905, Gottschald was a test teacher at the Kgl. High schools in Bautzen and Zittau . Easter 1907 he came as a non-permanent teacher at the König-Albert-Gymnasium in Leipzig, where he was appointed and sworn in as permanent academic teacher on April 1, 1909. A few days later, on April 15, 1909, on the basis of a ministerial decision of February 1909, he was appointed to the Kgl. High school in Plauen . Gottschald had now found a position that allowed him to gain professional experience, to start a family and to devote himself to his scientific studies.

In 1912 Max Gottschald married Hedwig Gerth, the daughter of a Dresden high school professor. Four children were born to the couple, two sons (1915, 1918) and two daughters (1920, 1925). Gottschald taught Latin , Greek and German , and occasionally history and religion. From autumn 1912 until he was called up, he managed the high school library , which was astonishingly rich in scientific literature and whose treasures he himself made the most intensive use of. In 1913 he was promoted to senior teacher .

His military service turned out to be less glorious because, although he was a loyal supporter of the emperor, as a scientifically interested person he had no need for military action. Thus, his military career was reduced to a minimum of service assignments and was mainly characterized by clerk services and hospital stays and ultimately an unsuitability procedure.

From May 1917 he was able to give lessons again and in 1920 took the post of student council . In the post-war years he developed a variety of activities at the grammar school and in the city of Plauen. He organized book exhibitions, gave lectures on literary and art-historical topics, took part in the work of the General German Language Association and , as managing director of the "Association of Friends of the Humanistic Gymnasium" founded in 1922, decidedly dealt with plans , especially under the Zeigner government . to change the essence of this type of school through radical innovations. That the decisive advocate of classical grammar school education, Max Gottschald, after the dissolution of the association in 1933 and since 1937 the conversion of the humanistic grammar school into a state high school for boys (Deutschritterschule), of all things, during his term of office as vice rector, he, the longest-serving teacher , 1936–1938, had to represent the official school policy and had to join the NSDAP , brought him into strong emotional conflicts, so that he became mentally ill several times during these years and had to be taken on leave.

His second son, Burkhard, who wanted to study theology , was one of the first victims of the Second World War. He fell off Warsaw on September 21, 1939. He dedicated the 2nd edition of his "German onenology" to him.

During the heavy bombing raids on Plauen, the family's apartment was so badly damaged that it was decided in 1945 to leave the city and find shelter in an emergency quarter of the Inner Mission in nearby Fasendorf . At the age of 63, Max Gottschald, especially since he was a member of the NSDAP, had no chance of being accepted into the school service.

When his eldest son, Gerth, returned from the war and was offered the parish of Oberalbertsdorf near Langenbernsdorf , the family moved to the spacious rectory, where Gottschald could pursue his scientific studies at leisure in the middle of his extensive library. The philologist, highly esteemed in professional circles but also known to a large readership, died here on February 18, 1952.

Onomastic work

In the twenties Gottschald had already made a name for itself through a number of commenting school editions by Greek and Latin authors before he was able to draw lasting attention to himself in 1932 with his “German onomnology”. In the thirties and forties he was one of the leading exponents of anthroponomics.

Gottschald's name is inextricably linked with “Trübner's German Dictionary”, which was published by Alfred Götze since 1939. With the articles on around 850 headwords, Gottschald, as an experienced lexicographer in volumes I – III, is the most important author of the company, which aims for comprehensibility and good legibility of the presentation.

Max Gottschald's “German onomastics ” has been able to maintain its place in onomastic literature to this day . On the one hand, this is thanks to the author's conception, which meets both the theoretical and practical requirements, and on the other hand, the interventions by the editors Eduard Brodführer and - completely redesigned in the introduction and layout - Rudolf Schützeichel, which have become necessary as a result of the scientific development . The book of names in particular, the lexical part of which, treated the Brodführer in preparation for the 3rd edition “with the greatest piety that we owe the honored author”, has proven itself. The following are likely to have contributed significantly to the continued popularity of the work: 1. Gottschald's sovereign knowledge and evaluation of the specialist literature published to date, 2. his general overview of German family names, mainly obtained from address books, 3. his understanding of the proportion and the in-depth understanding of later studies The role of the old German or Germanic first names in the development of German family names and the clear presentation of their structure, 4. His endeavor to offer above all the options for explaining names that are to be verified (observance of so-called cross-interpretations) and to avoid apodictic judgments (“So can the name, it does not have to be interpreted that way ”) and ultimately the endeavor to investigate the diverse influences of foreign names on German family names.

Gottschald has given Slavic names their due place. He was well aware of the associated risk: “As far as the Slavic names, which I have included in large numbers, are concerned, I know how dubious it is, even with the greatest caution, when a non-Slavist enters this area. But even if the possibility of erroneous interpretations is even greater here than usual, the finding remains as a benefit: This is an East German name, and before it can be traced back to an old German name that has only been constructed, which has often enough happened it can be proven that he is down to earth also in the west. "

Gottschald relies primarily on the well-known works of Franz Miklosich , KV Broniš , Gustav Hey , Paul Kühnel , Aleksander Brückner , Arnošt Muka and others, who made a significant contribution to the development and consolidation of Slavic-onomastic research.

Of course, Gottschald's etymologies as a whole can no longer keep up with the results of Slavic-onomastic research. Here and there he overshoots the mark with his derivations from Slavic or overlooks other possibilities of interpretation. It is also regretted that Gottschald did not conduct any archival studies, not even on the German personal names of the Vogtland . Nevertheless, due to his solid philological training, in which he could not escape the roots of the old Slavic anthroponymy in Indo-European, his awareness of the problem and his foresight was able to systematically include Slavic language material and thus its importance for the development with considerable success for his time to put German family names in perspective.

Last but not least, Max Gottschald's extensive onomastic knowledge and his insights into German-Slavic or Slavic-German feudal relationships benefited the etymologies of Trübner's dictionary. By including proper names in his “word stories” wherever possible, he realized a methodological principle at an early stage that is still largely a desideratum in lexicography.

Fonts

• German name customer. Our family names according to their origin and meaning. Munich 1932; 3rd edition, obtained from Eduard Brodführer, Berlin 1954; Reprint (declared as the 4th edition) ibid 1971.
• The German personal names. Berlin 1940.
• German spelling dictionary. 2nd, improved edition. Berlin, 1953.

literature

• Volkmar Hellfritzsch : On the life and work of Max Gottschald. In: Hengst, K .; Kruger, D .; Walther, H. (ed.): Word and name in German-Slavic language contact. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1997.

Web links

• Literature by and about Max Gottschald in the catalog of the German National Library