Albert Bachmann (philologist)

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Albert Bachmann (1863-1934)

Johann Albert Bachmann (born November 12, 1863 in Hüttwilen ; † January 30, 1934 in Samedan ) was a Swiss dialectologist and Medievalist , professor of Germanic philology at the University of Zurich and from 1892 editor and from 1896 until his death editor-in-chief at the Schweizerischer Idiotikon .

Life

Grave of Albert and Emilie Bachmann in the Enzenbühl cemetery, Zurich

Bachmann was the son of a Thurgau farmer. He attended the canton school in Frauenfeld , where he was inspired by his German and history teacher Johannes Meyer for studying languages ​​and dialects. He studied Germanic philology and comparative linguistics at the University of Zurich under Adolf Kaegi , Heinrich Schweizer-Sidler and Ludwig Tobler, among others , and received his doctorate on January 9, 1886 with his contributions to the history of the Swiss guttural lute. In 1891 he completed his habilitation with his edition of the Swiss Folk Books from a Zurich manuscript of the fifteenth century . During these years (1886–1896) Bachmann worked as a German teacher at the Zurich Canton School (today the Rämibühl Canton School ).

In 1892 Bachmann became an editor at the Schweizerischer Idiotikon . In 1896 he succeeded Ludwig Tobler as full professor of Germanic philology and in the same year succeeded Friedrich Staub as editor-in-chief of the Swiss Idiotikon . Bachmann placed the idioticon at the very heart of his work and twice refused to be elected rector of the University of Zurich. After his death in 1934 Otto Gröger actually took over the office of editor-in-chief as “bureau chief”.

Albert Bachmann married twice, in 1886 Emilie geb. Bachmann (1865–1908) and Martha born in 1914. Blumer (1886-1977). An only daughter, Hilde Bachmann, married the dialectologist and Anglicist Eugen Dieth . Albert and Emilie are buried in the Enzenbühl cemetery , while Martha found her final resting place in the grave of her previously deceased son-in-law and daughter.

Bachmann was a "distinctive personality, an unchangeable character", he had a "ruthless sense of duty paired with deep-rooted, authoritarian knowledge" (Eugen Dieth). On the one hand, these characteristics helped the Swiss Idiotikon to achieve the highest level and a lot of recognition, but on the other hand, they did not always make relationships with its employees and students easy.

Research and creation

Bachmann worked intensively on the German- Swiss dialects , he was editor of the scientific series Contributions to Swiss German Grammar (BSG), which comprises a total of 20 volumes, and in 1913 he founded the phonogram archive of the University of Zurich together with Louis Gauchat . His chapter on languages ​​and dialects in the Geographical Lexicon of Switzerland , printed in 1908, was considered to be the authoritative description of Swiss-German dialect geography until the publication of the Linguistic Atlas of German-speaking Switzerland from the 1960s . Amazingly, Bachmann did not offer any courses on Swiss-German dialects at the university, apart from a voluntary biweekly “Swiss German Kränzchen”. The research of the Swiss dialects, which Albert Bachmann sustainedly supported, was continued by his students Heinrich Baumgartner , Walter Henzen and Paul Zinsli at the University of Bern , and by Rudolf Hotzenköcherle and Manfred Szadrowsky at the University of Zurich ; his student Wilhelm Wiget was a professor at the University of Dorpat in Estonia before he became Bachmann's successor in Zurich in 1932.

The second focus of Bachmann's philological work was Middle High German and Early New High German . He edited German literature from the 15th and 16th centuries and in 1892 published a Middle High German reading book including a well-founded short grammar, which was reissued over and over again over the next eighty years or so. Bachmann also worked for a long time on the critical edition of Huldrych Zwingli's works.

His main merit, however, was to convert the Swiss Idioticon , which had begun in the early Germanic stage, to the scientific, young grammatical basis that was current at the time . Apparently inspired by Hermann Paul's lexicographical-theoretical demands ( On the tasks of scientific lexicography, Munich 1894/5), Bachmann placed significantly more emphasis on a comprehensive representation of the history of words, and under his direction, semantic, geographical and temporal gaps in the Word stock closed. On this basis, the Swiss Idioticon became the most comprehensive regional dictionary of German:

«He saw in him his real life task, to which in the end everything, teaching and private life, had to subordinate itself. Carried by strong conviction, with a clear, critical spirit, and gifted with a tireless workforce, he continued and expanded the work in a way that soon earned him the reputation of a model dictionary in specialist circles. "

- Swiss Idioticon. Report on the year 1934, p. 4.

In addition, in 1916, at the conference of the cantonal surveying supervisory officers in Bern, Bachmann proposed that the field names in the map series should no longer be written in condemned German, but in a moderate dialect. He himself met with a lot of resistance at the time, but around thirty years later Guntram Saladin , who also worked on the Schweizerischer Idiotikon , succeeded in making this matter a breakthrough.

From 1916 onwards, Bachmann was also a member of the committee of the German-speaking Swiss Language Association (today the Swiss Association for the German Language ) and thus responsible for the publication of its “People's Books” (life pictures of Swiss writers). In January 1920, on behalf of the Swiss Federal Council, he took part in the intergovernmental spelling conference in Berlin as the official Swiss representative.

He was honored with a festschrift for his work: Festschrift Albert Bachmann on his sixtieth birthday on November 12, 1923, dedicated by friends and students. German Language Association, Berlin 1924 (=  magazine for German dialects 19).

estate

Bachmann's estate is in the manuscript collection of the Zurich Central Library and in the archive of the Swiss Idiotikons, and a photo album of the Bachmann-Blumer family is also in the “Historical Photography” collection of the Swiss National Museum .

Publications (selection)

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Albert Bachmann  - Sources and full texts

proof

  1. ↑ Guntram Saladin: On the question of writing names on the new cards. In: Swiss Journal for Surveying and Culture Technology 5/6 (1936), pp. 110–116 ( doi : 10.5169 / seals-195962 ).
  2. ↑ Christoph Landolt : Almost as diverse as the field names: The spelling on the national maps. Federal rules and cantonal exceptions. In: Sprachspiegel 72 (2016), pp. 139–146 ( digitized version ).
  3. ^ Nachl. A. Bachmann 1–19
  4. ↑ LM-89817.1-1184
personal data
SURNAME Bachmann, Albert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bachmann, Johann Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss linguist
DATE OF BIRTH November 12, 1863
PLACE OF BIRTH Hüttwilen
DATE OF DEATH January 30, 1934
Place of death Samedan