Walther von Wartburg

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Walther von Wartburg (-Boos) (born May 18, 1888 in Riedholz , Canton Solothurn , † August 15, 1971 in Basel ) was a Swiss Romance scholar and linguist . His life's work is the multi-volume French Etymological Dictionary (FEW) .

life and work

After studying at the Universities of Bern , Zurich , Florence and the Sorbonne in Paris , he received his doctorate in Zurich in 1912 with the thesis “The expressions for the errors of the facial organ in Romance languages ​​and dialects. A semasiological investigation « and in 1921 became a private lecturer in Bern. After an appointment to Lausanne , he taught at the University of Leipzig from 1929 to 1939 , where he gave his inaugural lecture in 1931 on the interlocking of descriptive and historical linguistics. From 1940 to 1959 he was professor of French linguistics at the University of Basel . In between, he built in 1947 in East Berlin at the Humboldt University , the Romance again, the importance he rated highly for the preservation of Western culture tradition in the East.

His life's work is the very extensive French Etymological Dictionary , a lexicon of origin, history and the change in meaning of all words in the French vocabulary, including Gallo-Roman languages such as B. Occitan or Franco-Provençal .

In 1943 the working group Pro Helvetia , from 1952 the Swiss National Science Foundation supported the ambitious project and in 1993 also the French Center National de la Recherche Scientifique . The FEW was completed in 2002 and consists of 25 volumes with 160 fascicles and over 17,000 pages. The current short edition is the Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, revised by Oscar Bloch (1932, new edition 2008, ISBN 978-2-13-056621-2 ).

From 1962 to 1965 he was president of the international Société de Linguistique Romane .

Walther von Wartburg was an honorary doctor from the Universities of Lausanne and Leeds . In 1963 he was accepted into the German order Pour le mérite for science and the arts . Since 1954 he was a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences . In 1965 he was elected a corresponding member of the British Academy .

His son Wolfgang was also a humanities scholar.

Work on the FEW

When he started working at FEW, Wartburg's wife and mother-in-law were his only assistants. They helped him to transfer the contents of over 1000 dialect dictionaries onto pieces of paper. The Romanist Kurt Baldinger wrote about the later period :

«Wartburg's house on the Bruderholz near Basel has become a research center with an international reputation. Wartburg himself slept in a small room that looked more like a monk's cell and contained only huge boxes of notes with well over a million notes and a meager bed. "

Works

Monographs

  • The expressions for the mistakes of the facial organ in the Romance languages ​​and dialects. A semasiological investigation . Doctoral thesis Zurich. Revue de dialectologie romane 3 (1911) and 4 (1912); Reprint in one volume: Soc. Intern. de Dialectologie Romane, Hamburg 1912.
  • To name the sheep in the Romance languages. A contribution to the question of the provincial differentiation of the later Latin . Habilitation thesis Bern. Academy of Sciences / G. Reimer, Berlin 1918.
  • French Etymological Dictionary . A representation of the Gallo-Roman vocabulary . Bonn 1922-2002.
  • The influence of the Germanic languages ​​on the French vocabulary . Inaugural Address. University of Leipzig. 1930.
  • The interlocking of descriptive and historical linguistics . Hirzel, Leipzig 1932.
  • with Oscar Bloch : Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française . Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1932.
  • Evolution et structure de la langue française . A. Francke, Bern 1934.
    • Spanish: Evolución y estructura de la lengua francesa . Gredos, Madrid 1966.
  • La posizione della lingua italiana nel mondo neolatino. tre conferenze. H. Keller, Leipzig 1936.
  • Bibliography des dictionnaires patois galloromans . Droz, Geneva 1934. Later editions in collaboration with Hans-Erich Keller and Robert Geuljans; 1969 edition re-titled: Bibliographie des dictionnaires patois galloromans (1550-1967) .
  • The emergence of the Roman peoples . Max Niemeyer Verlag, Halle / Saale 1939.
    • French: Origines des peuples romans . Translated by Claude Cuénot de Maupassant. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1941.
  • Posizione della lingua italiana . GC Sansoni, Florence 1940.
  • Introduction to the problems and methodology of linguistics . M. Niemeyer, Halle (Saale) 1943; 2nd edition 1962 in collaboration with Stephan Ullmann.
    • French: Problèmes et méthodes de la linguistique . Translated by Pierre Maillard. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1946.
    • Spanish: Problemas y métodos de la lingüística . Translated by Dámaso Alonso and Emilio Lorenzo. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, "Instituto Miguel de Cervantes", Madrid 1951.
    • English: Problems and Methods in Linguistics . Blackwell, Oxford 1969.
    • Italian: Problemi e metodi della linguistica . Il mulino, Bologna 1971.
  • Raccolta di testi antichi italiani . A. Francke, Bern 1946.
  • with Paul Zumthor : Précis de syntaxe du français contemporain . A. Francke, Bern 1947.
  • The outsourcing of the Romance language areas. A. Francke, Stuttgart 1950.
    • Spanish: La fragmentación linguística de la Romania . Editorial Gredos, Madrid 1952.
    • French: La fragmentation linguistique de la Romania . Through u. exp. Edition. Translated by J. Allières u. G. Straka. Klincksiek, Paris 1967.
    • Italian: La frammentazione linguistica della Romània . Translated by Alberto Vàrvaro. Salerno Editrice, Rome 1980.
  • with R. Hallig: System of terms as a basis for lexicography. Attempt of an organizational scheme . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1952; 2., new berb. and exp. 1963 edition.
  • with his wife Ida von Wartburg-Boos: The Divine Comedy. Translated into German by Ida and Walther von Wartburg, commented by Walther von Wartburg . 1965.

Essays

  • Romanic place names in Switzerland until 1913 . In: Karl Vollmöller (Ed.): Romanischer Jahresbericht 13 (1915).
  • with Theodor Frings: French and Franconian . In: Festschrift Karl Jaberg . Niemeyer, Halle an der Saale 1937. pp. 65–82. (Reprint: anthology Frings . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1951).
  • The Localization of the Capitulare de Villis . Translated by William Roach, in: Speculum 15.1 (1940).
  • Extent and significance of the Germanic settlement in Northern Gaul in the 5th and 6th centuries as reflected in the language and place names . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1950. Issue 36 of lectures and writings (German Academy of Sciences in Berlin) .
  • The Greek colonization in southern Gaul and its linguistic witnesses in Western Romanic . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1953. Issues 1 and 2 of the Journal of Romance Philology , Vol. 68.

Collections of articles and bibliography

  • Walther von Wartburg: Of language and people. Collected Essays. With a bibliography of the author's publications, compiled by Kurt Baldinger and Alfred Thierbach. Francke, Bern [1956].
  • Hans-Erich Keller (Ed.): Etymologica. Walther von Wartburg on his seventieth birthday, May 18, 1958 . M. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1958.

Honor studies

  • Jean-Pierre Chambon, Georges Lüdi (eds.): Discours étymologiques. Actes du colloque international organisé à l'occasion du centenaire de la renaissance de Walther von Wartburg, Bâle, Freiburg i. Br., Mulhouse, May 16-18, 1988 . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1991.

literature

On the role of Walther von Wartburg in Berlin and at the Berlin Academy of Sciences, cf.

  • Kurt Baldinger : Walther von Wartburg (1888–1971). Contributions to life and work, along with a complete list of publications . Max Niemeyer, Tübingen 1971. Special issue of the magazine for Romance philology , vol. 87.
  • Jürgen Storost : 300 years of Romance languages ​​and literatures at the Berlin Academy of Sciences. Lang, Frankfurt a. M. 2000, Part 1, pp. 476-484.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kurt Baldinger : Linguistics as a personal experience. In: Mario Wandruszka , Hans-Martin Gauger (Hrsg.): Ways in linguistics. Gunter Narr Verlag, Tübingen 1991 ( Tübingen Contributions to Linguistics. Vol. 362), p. 30.
  2. ^ Past Members: Walther von Wartburg. Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, accessed August 15, 2020 .
  3. ^ Fellows: Walther von Wartburg. British Academy, accessed August 15, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Linguistics as a personal experience. In: Ways in Linguistics , 1991, p. 33
personal data
SURNAME Wartburg, Walther von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wartburg-Boos, Walther von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss linguist
DATE OF BIRTH May 18, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Riedholz , Switzerland
DATE OF DEATH 15th August 1971
Place of death Basel