Andreas Spira

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Andreas Spira (born December 29, 1929 in Königsberg ; † May 18, 2004 in Mainz ) was a German classical philologist .

Life

Andreas Spira, the son of the English language professor Theodor Spira (1885–1961), grew up in Königsberg and Frankfurt am Main . He studied classical philology at the Universities of Freiburg , Munich , Oxford and Frankfurt , where he in 1957 when Harald Patzer and Hermann Langerbeck Dr. phil. received his doctorate .

His academic career led Spira to the young University of Mainz , where he worked as an assistant from 1959. In 1967 he completed his habilitation, in 1972 he was appointed professor and worked at the Mainz Seminar for Classical Philology until his retirement in 1995.

In his research work, Spira combined philological and religious studies approaches. He was mainly concerned with Greek literature, especially Homer , Plato , tragedy and the Church Fathers . In his dissertation, published in 1960, he examined the ethical-religious dimension of tragedy. This approach was largely ignored by the specialist public at the time because it did not correspond to conventional research. It is only since the 1980s that the specialist public has dealt intensively with Spira's theses.

In the area of patristicism , Spira mainly dealt with the church writer Gregor von Nyssa . He took part in several international colloquia and conferences, for which he also acted in an advisory capacity. As part of the Gregor Edition, he worked until the end of his life on his edition of De anima et resurrectione , which, however, could only appear posthumously.

Fonts (selection)

  • Investigations on the Deus ex machina in Sophocles and Euripides. Lassleben, Kallmünz 1960 (dissertation, University of Frankfurt am Main, 1957).
  • Passion and reason in the thought of the Greeks. Dooshisha Daigaku Shuppanbu, Kyoto 1995, ISBN 4-924608-42-4 .
  • Small writings on antiquity and Christianity: Image of man - rhetoric - Gregory of Nyssa (= Patrologia. Vol. 17). Edited by Hubertus R. Drobner. Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-3-631-56172-0 .
  • Gregorii Nysseni De anima et resurrectione (= Opera dogmatica minora. Pars III). Edidit Andreas Spira. Post mortem editoris praefationem accurate composuit Ekkehardus Mühlenberg . Brill, Leiden / Boston 2014, ISBN 978-90-04-12242-0 .

literature

  • Arbogast Schmitt: Andreas Spira † . In: Gnomon . Volume 77 (2005), pp. 651-653

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Spira, Andreas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German classical philologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 29, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Königsberg (Prussia)
DATE OF DEATH May 18, 2004
Place of death Mainz