Dietrich Hofmann

Dietrich Hofmann (born December 17, 1923 in Bad Lobenstein , Thuringia , † December 13, 1998 in Preetz , Schleswig-Holstein ) was a German Germanic and Scandinavian medievalist and hairdresser .

Hofmann studied older German, Scandinavian and English studies in Leipzig from 1942 to 1949 . From 1948 to 1951 he continued his studies with Hans Kuhn at the University of Kiel . There he received his doctorate in 1952 with the thesis Nordic-English feudal relationships of the Viking Age . Since 1949 he worked at the Nordic Institute and since 1950 at the “North Frisian Dictionary Center” there as a research assistant. Since 1954 he was Kuhn's research assistant . After his habilitation with the work Die k-Diminutiva in North Frisian and in related languages , which was published in 1961, he became a full professor at the Saarland University in Saarbrücken in 1959 . In 1962 he followed a call to Münster for the newly established professorship “Germanic Philology with special attention to the Nordic”. In 1969 he followed his academic teacher Kuhn in Kiel to the chair for Old Germanic, Nordic and Frisian Philology ( Nordic Studies ) at the University of Kiel. In 1989 he retired.

Hofmann was involved in his research from the tradition of the subject, from his professional self-image and from the influence of his teachers. Beyond the boundaries of older Scandinavian literature and culture, he published and researched on questions and topics across the entire spectrum of "Old German Studies". In addition to the older German language and literature, this also includes the Old English language and literature. Due to his place of study and later teaching in Kiel, Frisian was an important research focus of Hofmann.

Hofmann was since 1967 co-editor of the Münster Early Medieval Studies and editor of the Low German Studies and the Nordic journal Scandinavian Studies .

Fonts (selection)

• Nordic-English feudal relationships of the Viking Age, Munksgaard , Copenhagen 1955 (Bibliotheca Arnamagnaeana, volume 14) (dissertation).
• The K-Diminutiva in North Frisian and in related languages , Böhlau, Cologne 1961 (Low German Studies, Volume 7) (habilitation thesis).
• (Revised by Ferdinand Holthausen): Old Frisian Dictionary , 2nd edition, Winter, Heidelberg 1985, ISBN 3-533-03641-3 .
• (together with Friedrich Ranke): Old Norse Elementary Book. Introduction, grammar, texts (some with translation) and dictionary , 5th edition, de Gruyter, Berlin 1988 (Göschen Collection, Volume 2214).

• Collected writings , two volumes, Buske, Hamburg 1988/1989, ISBN 3-87118-871-9 and ISBN 3-87118-872-7 .

• The verse structures of the old Saxon stick rhyming poems Heliand and Genesis , two volumes, Winter, Heidelberg 1991, ISBN 3-533-04442-4 and ISBN 3-533-04444-0 .

• The legend of Saint Clemens in the Scandinavian countries in the Middle Ages , Lang, Frankfurt / M. 1997 (Contributions to Scandinavian Studies, Volume 13), ISBN 3-631-32154-6 .

literature

• Kürschner's German Scholars Calendar 2001. Saur, Munich 2001, p.?.

Web links

• Literature by and about Dietrich Hofmann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Publications by Dietrich Hofmann in the Opac of the Regesta Imperii