August Leskien

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August Leskien (1913)
August Leskien's grave at the Südfriedhof in Leipzig

Johann Heinrich August Leskien (born July 8, 1840 in Kiel , † September 20, 1916 in Leipzig ) was a German Indo-European and Slavist . In the field of Indo-European studies he is considered to be the founder of the so-called Leipzig School .

Life

Leskien studied classical philology in Kiel and Leipzig from 1860 to 1864 . The doctorate to Dr. phil. took place there in 1864.

From 1864 to 1866 he taught Latin and Greek at the Thomasschule in Leipzig .

In 1866 he began studying comparative Indo-European, Baltic and Slavic linguistics with August Schleicher in Jena . In 1867 he completed his habilitation and moved to the University of Göttingen as a private lecturer .

Just one year later, in 1868, he was appointed associate professor of comparative linguistics and Sanskrit in Jena. From 1870 he taught as an associate professor for Slavic Studies in Leipzig, where he was elected a full member of the Royal Saxon Society of Sciences in 1875 . He was appointed full professor in 1876. He became director of the Indo-European Institute there.

In 1877, Aleksander Brückner dedicated his book The Slavic Loan Words in Lithuanian to his “high-ranking lerer August Leskien”. Other linguists have also learned from Leskien.

Leskien was one of the founders of the young grammarians of the Leipzig School . As a theorist , he was convinced of the invariability of the laws of sound , the most important principle of change. In addition to South Slavic and Old Bulgarian, the focus of his research was Lithuanian .

Awards

Fonts

  • The Declination in Slavic-Lithuanian and Germanic , price publication of the Societas Jablonoviana. Leipzig 1876. ( digitized and full text in the German text archive )
  • Handbook of the Old Bulgarian (Old Church Slavonic) language . Heidelberg 1871.
  • Grammar of the Old Bulgarian (Old Church Slavonic) language . Heidelberg 1909.
  • Lithuanian reading book with grammar and dictionary . Heidelberg 1919. (= Idg. Library, ed. By H. Hirt and W. Streitberg. 1st department, 1st row: Grammatics 12).
  • Diaries 1892–1916, ed. v. T. Fuchs and B. Staude. Dresden 2016. (= components from the Institute for Saxon History and Folklore, edited by E. Bünz et al. Volume 36).

literature

Web links

Commons : August Leskien  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: August Leskien  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Richard Sachse, Karl Ramshorn, Reinhart Herz: The teachers of the Thomas School in Leipzig 1832-1912. The high school graduates of the Thomas School in Leipzig 1845–1912 . BG Teubner Verlag, Leipzig 1912, p. 9 f.
  2. ^ August Leskien obituary by Wilhelm Streitberg at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (PDF file).
  3. ↑ Information on the library website , accessed on February 1, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Leskien, August
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Leskien, Johann Heinrich August (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Indo-Europeanist and Slavist
DATE OF BIRTH July 8, 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH Kiel
DATE OF DEATH September 20, 1916
Place of death Leipzig