Andreas Thierfelder

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Grave of Andreas Thierfelder in the main cemetery in Mainz

Andreas Martin Wolfgang Thierfelder (born June 15, 1903 in Zwickau ; † April 3, 1986 in Mainz ) was a German classical philologist who worked as a full professor in Gießen (1941–1943) and Mainz (1950–1971).

Life

Andreas Thierfelder passed his Abitur in 1921 at the State High School St. Afra in Meißen and moved to the University of Leipzig in 1922 , where he studied classical philology and ancient history (with Erich Bethe and Richard Heinze, among others ). He became a member of the Leipzig University Choir at St. Pauli . He spent a few semesters in Kiel , where Eduard Fraenkel influenced him. Thierfelder received his doctorate in 1930 with the dissertation De rationibus interpolationum Plautinarum (printed in 1929). He dedicated the text to his doctoral supervisor Richard Heinze, who did not live to see it go to press.

After a few months as an assistant in Gießen , Thierfelder returned to Leipzig in the same position in the fall of 1930. He achieved his habilitation in 1934 with the work Contributions to the Critique and Declaration of Apollonius Dyscolus , which was supervised by Alfred Körte . During his four years as a private lecturer, Thierfelder held two professorial positions: in the summer semester of 1936 in Halle and in the winter semester of 1937/1938 in Rostock , where he was subsequently appointed associate professor. In 1937 he joined the NSDAP . In 1941 he followed a call to the University of Giessen (as a full professor), where he worked until his deployment in World War II (1943–1945).

After two years of British captivity in Egypt, during which Thierfelder had founded a camp university supported by Otto Skutsch with books, he returned to Germany in 1947. His chair in Giessen was lost with the dissolution of the faculty there. Thierfelder made his way with teaching assignments and substitutions at the University of Hamburg , where he also worked on the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae , before he was appointed to the University of Mainz in 1950 as the successor to Wilhelm Süß . He was the second holder of this chair at the newly founded university in 1946. Thierfelder turned down an offer from the University of Tübingen (1961). He retired in 1971. In 1971 he got the Latin translation of the Worms Memorandum. His students in Mainz included u. a. Karl Heinz Chelius , Dietram Müller , Udo Reinhardt , Klaus Sallmann and Andreas Spira .

Services

Thierfelder is particularly known as an intimate connoisseur of ancient comedy, both Greek and Roman. His successor from Mainz, Jürgen Blänsdorf, praised him in an obituary with the words: "With extensive knowledge of language, style, metrics and tradition, he was able to open a new epoch of Plautus criticism with his dissertation ". In the research debate at the time about “Attic” and “Plautinian” elements in the Plautus pieces, he participated alongside Friedrich Marx , Eduard Fraenkel, Günther Jachmann and Hans Drexler . Thierfelder's verse translations of the pieces Captivi, Curculio, Epidicus, Miles Gloriosus and Poenulus (by Plautus) as well as Eunuchus and Heautontimorumenus (by Terenz ), which were published by Reclam-Verlag , are still of great importance ; In addition, he re-edited Johan Louis Ussing's Plautus commentary in 1972 and published several re-published study editions of Rudens (1949) and Andria (1951).

Thierfelder enriched Greek comedy research with a new edition of the Fragments of Menander after the new edition by his teacher Alfred Körte (1953), the second volume of which remained relevant until his death despite numerous new finds. His extensive preoccupation with ancient comedy culminated in his essay Die ancient Komödie und das Komische , which was only published in 1979 , in which he demonstrated "a deep-rooted relationship between comedy and tragedy, despite all the differences in the medium and the poetic statement."

In addition, Thierfelder made numerous text-critical and exegetical contributions to a wide variety of Greek and Latin authors, and has dealt with grammar since his habilitation. With painstaking work he brought out new editions of Hermann Menges Repetitorium der Latinischen Stilistik und Syntax (1953) and Repetitorium der Greek Syntax (1954) as well as the Latin grammar by Kühner and Stegmann (1955), which had remained unedited since 1914. In 1962 and 1976 Thierfelder delivered the fourth and fifth editions, after which the reprographic reprint of the second edition (published 1997) was corrected.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The correct date (confirmed by information from the Mainz cemetery administration dated October 8, 2014) is given by Blänsdorf, Gnomon 59/1987; Krömer / Bögel 1996; Eberle, Catalogus Professorum Halensis. Different date of death: April 15, 1986 (Buddrus / Fritzlar 2007; Fuchs, BBKL).
  2. ^ Walter Seidel, Willmar Sichler: Directory of the members of the Association of the Old Paulines in Leipzig. Leipzig 1937, p. 51.
  3. ↑ http://www.wormser-zeitung.de/lokales/kultur/wormser-katholiken-forderten-1971-papst-paul-vi-zur-aufstieg-des-kirchenbanns-von-martin-luther-auf--ohne- success_17584994.htm
  4. ↑ a b Blänsdorf (1987) 665.
personal data
SURNAME Thierfelder, Andreas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Thierfelder, Martin Wolfgang Andreas (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German classical philologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 15, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Zwickau
DATE OF DEATH April 3, 1986
Place of death Mainz