Philipp August Becker

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Philipp August Becker (born June 1, 1862 in Mulhouse , † November 21, 1947 in Leipzig ) was a German Romance studies .

Life

Philipp August Becker was born on June 1, 1862 in Mülhausen (Alsace) as the son of master coppersmith Johann August Becker and Mäder, born in Amalie. Becker first began studying Protestant theology in Neuchâtel , then devoted himself to studying Romance and German philology in Strasbourg with Gustav Gröber and in Paris with Gaston Paris and Ferdinand de Saussure . After Philipp August Becker in 1888 at Gröber with studies the history of Vers libres in modern French poetry (Halle aS 1888) doctorate was, he was awarded the same year a lectureship for French at the Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg , where he is in Habilitation in Romance Philology in the winter semester of 1890/1891 .

In 1893 he accepted the professorship for French literature at the Loránd Eötvös University in Budapest (from 1896 as a full professor), before taking on a full professorship for Romance Philology at the University of Vienna in 1905 (as a colleague of Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke ). Subsequently, Becker worked from 1917 to 1930 as a professor of Romance Philology at the University of Leipzig , then until 1934 as an honorary professor at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. Most recently he read from 1945 to 1947 as professor emeritus in Leipzig. In 1919 he was accepted as a full member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences .

Philipp August Becker married Charlotte, the daughter of pastor Jean Iltis and granddaughter of the church historian Johann Karl Ludwig Gieseler , on September 8, 1898 . The couple had two daughters and two sons. Becker died on November 21, 1947 at the age of 85 in Leipzig.

Act

Philipp August Becker is one of the best connoisseurs of French literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance who ever taught in Germany. He combined philological meticulousness with the finest understanding of art. His post- doctoral thesis “On the origin of the Romance meter from the Middle Latin” , published in 1890, was just as groundbreaking for his time as his studies on the old French heroic epic, which even before Joseph Bédier did away with the idea of ​​its “popular” origin.

In his later work he made a name for himself as a thorough connoisseur and sensitive interpreter of French Renaissance poetry , as in “Clement Marot, his life and his poetry” , 1926, “Bonaventure des Periers as a poet and narrator” , 1924 or “Mellin de Saint-Gelais : A Critical Study ” , 1924, as well as the courtly epic, “ The paired eight-syllable in French poetry ” , 1934. Becker's research on verse theory also remains groundbreaking for later research.

Other works

  • Jean Lemaire, the first humanist poet in France , Strasbourg 1893
  • The saga circle in the south of France and its problems , Halle as 1898
  • History of Spanish Literature , Strasbourg 1904
  • Outline of Old French Literature , Heidelberg 1907
  • The Roland song , Stuttgart 1938
  • Dalfin d'Alvernhe , the troubadour, Leipzig 1941
  • On the history of Romance literature. Selected studies and essays , Munich 1967

literature

  • Ursula Hillen, pioneer of Romance philology. Philipp August Becker in conversation with Gustav Gröber and Ernst Robert Curtius , Frankfurt a. M. 1993
  • Main questions of Romance studies. Festschrift for Philipp August Becker on June 1, 1922 , Heidelberg 1922 (with list of publications)
  • Karl Mras : Philipp August Becker, In: Almanach of the Vienna Academy of Sciences 99, 1950, pages 247-250
  • Theodor Elwert:  Becker, Philipp August. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 721 ( digitized version ).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Becker, Philipp August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Romanist
DATE OF BIRTH June 1, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Mulhouse
DATE OF DEATH November 21, 1947
Place of death Leipzig