Césaire Villatte

Leonhard Carl Conrad Christian Friedrich Césaire Villatte (born January 13, 1816 in Neustrelitz ; † June 12, 1895 ibid) was a German Romance philologist and lexicographer .

life and work

Césaire Villatte was a son of the French father of the same name Césaire (Pierre) Villatte (1770–1846) and his wife Christina (Wilhelmine Louise), nee. Schulz, daughter of the landowner from Varchentin . The father had been driven to Germany by the revolution . An older brother, August Wilhelm Alexander Villatte (* 1814), later worked as a French language teacher in Schwerin .

Césaire, Michaelis passed his Abitur in 1836 at the Carolinum grammar school (Neustrelitz) . He studied in Berlin and was his father's successor from 1838 to 1884 as a language teacher at the Carolinum grammar school in his hometown. In addition, he also gave optional French lessons at the Neustrelitz secondary school for 15 years from 1852 onwards. Together with Karl Sachs , to whom the Langenscheidt- Verlag had entrusted the project of an extensive French-German dictionary, Villatte worked between 1863 and 1880 on one of the most important bilingual dictionaries in the German-speaking area, which lives on in today's large dictionary of the publisher and is known as "Sachs / Villatte "is known.

In collaboration with Karl Sachs, Villatte was particularly responsible for the latest developments in the French language. This is shown by the forewords of the various editions of the large dictionary and, in particular, the "Parisisms" glossary. By this he understood the peculiarity of spoken French, in the variety that was common in Paris at the time. The term is a collective term that is intended to replace the unclear term 'argot' for a despised (and at the same time admired) linguistic register - today linguistics correctly speaks of français non-conventionnel - in the sense of the statistical norm. Villatte benefited not only from various stays in Paris, but also from the interest of contemporary French lexicography in the 'argot', which was reflected in several dictionaries. It should be noted that - not least thanks to the writers of naturalism (above all Zola) - the language of the (Parisian) people was increasingly included in lexicography. In his bilingual dictionary, Villatte tried to match the so-called French substandard with a German substandard. As a language teacher, when he lexicographed spoken 'unconventional' French, he was driven by the desire to make the 'real' (spoken) French understandable to German-speaking learners of French.

Due to his merits, he was awarded a doctorate by the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Rostock , waiving the oral examination phil. PhD. The House of Mecklenburg-Strelitz appointed him professor on July 2, 1877, and after completing the work awarded him the Golden Cross of Merit of the Wendish Crown .

Césaire Villatte was married twice: his first marriage was on October 4, 1842, Georgine Maria Luise, b. Rust (1824–1846), daughter of a Neustrelitz district hussar and chamberlake. His second marriage was on December 8, 1848 with Julia Pauline Sophia, b. Kortüm (* 1829), a daughter of the Neustrelitz doctor and Grand Ducal personal physician Theodor Kortüm (1785-1858). Nothing is known about children from these marriages.

Works

The Sachs / Villatte

Title page of the encyclopedic French-German and German-French dictionary Sachs-Villatte , hand and school edition from 1917

• (with Karl Sachs ) Encyclopedic French-German and German-French dictionary. Great edition. 2 volumes. Berlin 1869–1880 (40, 1630, 32, 2119 pages)
• (with Karl Sachs) French-German and German-French dictionary. Hand and school edition. 2 volumes. Berlin 1873–1881 (56, 738, 908 pages, numerous editions)
• (with Karl Sachs) French-German supplement lexicon. Berlin 1894 (32, 329 pages; was added to later editions of the Encyclopedic Dictionary)
• Karl Sachs: Encyclopedic French-German and German-French dictionary: hand and school edition. 2 volumes. 4th edition, revised by Karl Moser. Berlin-Schöneberg 1911
• Langenscheidt large dictionary French Sachs-Villatte. 2 volumes. French-German: 13th edition of the 1979 edition, ISBN 978-3-468-02151-0 ; German-French: 18th edition of the 1968 edition, ISBN 978-3-468-02156-5 , Berlin (1079, 1109 pages).

More dictionaries

• Parisisms. Alphabetically arranged collection of the peculiar expressions of the Parisian argot. A supplement to all French-German dictionaries. Berlin 1884. 9th edition 1912 (403 pages)
• Emergency dictionary of French and German for travel, reading and conversation. 3 volumes. Berlin 1884–1887

literature

• Ludwig Fränkel: [Obituary]. In: Journal of French Language and Literature. Vol. 17, 1895, pp. 192-194
• Ludwig Fränkel:  Villatte, Césaire . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 39, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1895, pp. 705 f.
• Barbara von Gemmingen: Langenscheidt. La maison d'édition et ses dictionnaires bilingues français-allemand / allemand-français (1856–1906) . In: Mélanges de lexicographie et de linguistique françaises er romanes dédiés à la mémoire de Manfred Höfler. Edited by Mechtild Bierbach u. a. Strasbourg / Nancy 1997, pp. 223–256 (Travaux de Linguistique et de Philologie 35/36)
• Franz-Joseph Meißner: La découverte du français non-conventionnel outre-Rhin: le dictionnaire des 'Parisismen' de Césaire Villatte . In: Documents pour l'histoire du français langue étrangère et seconde, vol. 56, pp. 103-124.
• Karl Rieck : Festschrift for the centenary celebration on October 10, 1906. History of the Carolinum grammar school in the first century of its existence. Bohl, Neustrelitz 1906, pp. 61–62 ( digitized version )

Web links

• Literature by and about Césaire Villatte in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)
• Literature on Césaire Villatte in the Landesbibliographie MV

Individual evidence

1. ↑ cf. Meißner 2016