Wilhelm Viëtor

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Wilhelm Viëtor

Carl Adolf Theodor Wilhelm Viëtor (born December 25, 1850 in Cleeberg , Nassau ; † September 22, 1918 in Marburg ) was a German new philologist ( Romance and English ), phonetician , modern language specialist didactic and university professor at the University of Marburg .

Wilhelm Viëtor was one of the best-known actors in the modern language reform movement towards the end of the 19th century. He criticized the desperate state of foreign language teaching , in particular the prevailing non-practical grammar translation method in the newer languages ​​in German schools. He demanded that the main focus should be on what, in his opinion, the real goal - the highest possible oral language competence.

Life

Wilhelm Viëtor came from a Hessian-Nassau family of scholars, theologians and officials. A distant ancestor, Theodor Viëtor , was a Greek professor in Marburg at the beginning of the 17th century. Viëtors father, who was also called Wilhelm, was a Protestant pastor and school inspector in Kirburg . His mother's name was Eva Siebenhaar. At Christmas 1850 Wilhelm Viëtor was born in Cleeberg in Nassau (today part of Langgöns ). He attended high schools in Wiesbaden and Weilburg , in 1869 he passed the Abitur.

He then studied theology at the University of Leipzig at the request of his father . After only one year he moved to Berlin , where he devoted himself to philology , musicology and Sanskrit , and from 1871 he continued his studies in Marburg . After brief teaching at several schools in England from 1872–73 ( Maidenhead and Middleton Lodge), he returned to Marburg for the purpose of doing his doctorate. His dissertation dealt with the old French gesture des Lohérains and was supervised by Edmund Stengel . Viëtor passed the state examination in 1875 and received his doctorate in the same year.

This was followed by further, short positions as a private tutor in Wiesbaden, at the girls' college in Essen and as a language teacher in England. 1876-78 he taught at the Realschule I. order in Düsseldorf , then until 1881 at a higher middle school in Wiesbaden. Viëtor headed the Garnier'sche educational institution in Friedrichsdorf (Taunus) in 1881/82 ; until 1883 he had a position as a German Lecturer at University College Liverpool .

Without habilitation , he followed a call to the Philipps University of Marburg in 1884, where he was the first associate professor of English philology . His chair initially belonged to the Romance-English seminar, of which Viëtor was co-director. He was a member of the "Academic-Neuphilological Association of Marburg", from which the Marburg Burschenschaft Rheinfranken later emerged. In 1894 he was appointed full professor of English philology; in the academic year 1894/95 he was rector of the University of Marburg. An independent English seminar was set up for the summer semester, with Viëtor as director. In 1904/05 he was dean of the philosophy faculty. His students included the English phonetician Laura Soames (1840–1895), the German and phoneticist Ernst Alfred Meyer, and the Anglicists Friedrich Brie (1880–1948) and Gustav Plessow (1886–1953). Viëtor received the honorary title of secret councilor in 1916 .

Grave of Wilhelm Viëtor in the main cemetery in Marburg (2017)

Viëtor was from 1886 with Karoline (called Lina), b. Hoffmann (1860–1929) married. The couple had four sons, including the lawyer Ludwig Viëtor (1889–1973) and the geologist and paleontologist Walter Viëtor (1892–1957). A prolonged illness and grief over the loss of his youngest son in World War I led to his death on September 22, 1918.

Create

Wilhelm Viëtor made one of his first major steps in the field of linguistics in 1875 with the publication on the dialect of his home region. With his English school grammar, which appeared four years later, he broke with the previous traditions for the first time, in which it included a separate chapter on phonetics on the one hand and the theory of inflection on the other hand was accompanied by phonetic transcription. He initially turned even their own system of phonetic spelling , so he used from the fourth edition of 1906 of the International Association Phonétique (API) published International Phonetic Alphabet .

His best-known work, the pamphlet The Language Lessons Must Reverse , which he initially published in 1882 under the pseudonym Quousque Tandem (“How much longer ?”) Due to its relative unfamiliarity, triggered a wave of protests with his biting criticism and radical demands , but at the same time garnered applause from at least as many reformists and set a fruitful debate in motion. His reform proposals were grouped around the main goal of acquiring linguistic competence. They ranged from the reduction of the abundance of material, the integration of phonetics into the lessons, to the reduction of grammar to the essentials, to the requirement that foreign language lessons be taught in one language, namely in the target language.

However, the author's obscurity quickly changed with further publications. The German Association of New Philologists was founded in 1886 with Viëtor's participation . A year later, the journal Phonetic Studies , which he founded, was published , which was replaced in 1893 by the more well-known Die Neueren Sprachen , which became a mouthpiece for the reformers.

Through his teaching activities as a professor of English philology at the University of Marburg, he was able to influence teacher training and to pass on his basic foreign language didactic convictions to his students.

In addition to further editions of his textbooks, Viëtor also published editions of literary texts as reading material for English lessons, published reviews and essays on foreign language didactic or linguistic topics. He also rendered great services to the design of the Marburg holiday courses founded in 1896 by the Romanist Eduard Koschwitz .

Viëtor has served on a number of occasions as Chairman and Honorary Member of the API and Honorary Member of the Modern Language Association of Great Britain and Ireland.

Publications (selection)

  • The Rhine-Franconian colloquial language in and around Nassau , Wiesbaden: Niedner, 1875
  • The manuscripts of the gesture of Loherain , Halle: Lippert, 1876 , zugl .: Marburg, phil. Diss., 1875
  • Language lessons must turn around! A contribution to the question of overburdening Quousque Tandem , Heilbronn: Gebr. Henninger, 1882
  • Elements of the phonetics and orthoepy of German, English and French with regard to the needs of teaching practice , Heilbronn, 1884
  • Family tree of the Vietor family from Lich in Hessen , who later lived in Nassau , Buchdr. d. Orphanage, Halle a. S. 1885 digitized
  • The pronunciation of the words contained in the dictionary for German spelling for use in Prussian schools , Heilbronn: Henninger, 1885
  • The pronunciation of written German , Reisland, Leipzig 1885; 4th edition: Reisland, Leipzig, 1898 ; 6th edition with the fifth almost identical edition: Reisland, Leipzig, 1905
  • The pronunciation of English according to the German-English grammars before 1750 , Philologentag zu Hannover, 4. – 6. October, 1886, Marburg: Elwert, 1886
  • Viëtor / Dörr, English Reading Book Lower Level , Leipzig, 1887
  • Introduction to the Study of English Philology , Marburg, 1887
  • Phonetic Studies. Journal for Scientific and Practical Phonetics , edited by vWVietor, Bde.1–6, Marburg 1888–1893
  • King Lear, parallel text of the first quarto and the first folio , (part 1 of Shakespeare reprints), rev. ed., Marburg: Elwert, 1892
  • The newer languages. Journal for modern language teaching , published by vWVietor. Vol. 1-25, 1893-1918
  • Le bone Florence of Rome , ed. by Wilhelm Vietor, Marburg: Elwert, 1893
  • How is the pronunciation of German to be taught? : a lecture , 1st edition: Elwert, Marburg 1893; 4th edition, Elwert, Marburg 1906
  • The Northumbrian rune stones: contributions to textual criticism; Grammar and glossary , Marburg: Elwert, 1895
  • German reading book in phonetic transcription (at the same time in the official spelling). As an auxiliary book for acquiring a model pronunciation , 2 vols. Leipzig: Teubner, 1899/1902 ( 1st volume 1899 , 2nd volume 1902 , 1st volume 3rd revised edition 1907 )
  • The Anglo-Saxon rune box from Auzon near Clermont-Ferrand , Marburg: Elwert, 1901
  • The methodology of modern language teaching. A historical overview in four lectures by Wilhelm Viëtor , Leipzig: BG Teubner, 1902
  • Sketches of Living Languages , ed. v. W. Viëtor, Leipzig: Teubner, 1903
  • A Shakespeare phonology, with a rime-index to the poems as a pronouncing vocabulary , Marburg and London: Elwert and David Nutt, 1906
  • A Shakespeare reader in the old spelling and with a phonetic transcription , Marburg: Elwert, 1906
  • Viëtor / Roman (ed.), King Henry V. , Marburg: Elwert, 1908
  • The end of the school reform , Marburg: Elwert, 1911
  • German pronunciation dictionary . OR Reisland, Leipzig 1912. (1st delivery 1908); 2nd edition: OR Reisland, Leipzig 1915; 3rd revised edition, obtained from Ernst A. Meyer: OR Reisland, Leipzig 1921 ; Reprints of this 3rd edition: Outlook: Bremen 2011, ISBN 978-3-86403-131-1 ; Europäische Hochschulverlag, Bremen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8457-2009-8 ; 4th and 5th revised edition, expanded by an appendix, obtained from Ernst A. Meyer: OR Reisland, Leipzig 1931.
  • Hamlet, Parallel Texts of the First and Second Quartos and the First Folio , (part 2 of Shakespeare Reprints), Marburg: Elwert, 1913

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see Hessisches Staatsarchiv Marburg (HStAMR), Best. 915 No. 5710, p. 587 ( digitized version ).
  2. ↑ a b c d e Alexander Nebrig:  Viëtor, Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 26, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-428-11207-5 , p. 803 f. ( Digitized version ).
  3. ↑ a b c Joachim Lerchenmüller: Wilhelm Viëtor. In: Christoph König (Ed.): Internationales Germanistenlexikon 1800–1950. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2003, pp. 1946–1947.
personal data
SURNAME Viëtor, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Viëtor, Carl Adolf Theodor Wilhelm (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philologist, modern language reformer
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1850
PLACE OF BIRTH Cleeberg , Nassau
DATE OF DEATH September 22, 1918
Place of death Marburg