Eberhard Zwirner

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Eberhard Zwirner (born October 11, 1899 in Löwenberg , Province of Silesia , † July 11, 1984 in Schapdetten ) was a German psychiatrist and linguist ( phonetician ).

Life

After studying in Breslau and Berlin , he received his doctorate in 1924. med. and in 1925 Dr. phil. ( On the concept of history. An investigation into the relationship between theoretical and practical philosophy ). In 1924 Zwirner became an assistant at the University Psychiatric Clinic in Breslau , then a senior physician at the University Psychiatric Clinic in Münster and from 1928 he was department head at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in Berlin (until 1939 he headed the research department for language patients there, where he examined, among other things, "the hereditary and racial factors of speech" in the mentally ill and speech impaired).

In 1932 he founded the German Language Archives , of which he was director until 1971. In 1940 he became director of the German Language Archives in Braunschweig, which was taken over as the German Language Institute, KWI for Phonometrie in the Kaiser Wilhelm Society . During the time of National Socialism , he also worked as a medical officer in the Sturmabteilung (SA) until he, after collecting signatures against Oskar Vogt at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research and polemicizing against Berthold Ostertag , with Ostertag as "never wearable" SA was excluded and from 1941 worked at the Institute for German Ostarbeit in the Generalgouvernement under Hans Frank and advising military psychiatrist of Army Group North .

Zwirner was part of the Max Planck Society that emerged from the Kaiser Wilhelm Society from 1948 until it was spun off in 1949.

In 1950 he completed his habilitation in Göttingen. Since 1950, Zwirner was a private lecturer in phonetics at the University of Göttingen . He returned his Venia legendi in 1954. In 1956 he received another habilitation in Münster, where he became an adjunct professor from 1958 and also director of the Institute for Phonometry at the University of Münster. He also became head of the German Language Institute in Schapdetten-Münster. In 1963, Zwirner moved to the University of Cologne , where he was appointed full professor in the chair for phonetics and phonology. In 1969 he retired. Since 1970 he has been a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . He was the father of the art dealer Rudolf Zwirner and the surgeon Ruprecht Zwirner .

Scientific work

Since 1927 he developed phonometry with the mathematician Kurt Zwirner (not related) . He saw himself as the founder of a German structuralism.

Together with Kurt Zwirner, Eberhard Zwirner discovered a language law in quantitative linguistics : the text block law . The hypothesis was that sounds in text blocks behave according to the “law of small numbers”, another expression for the Poisson distribution . To do this, one divides a longer text into blocks of equal length and then examines how many of these text blocks a certain language unit does not occur once, twice, etc. Zwirner and Zwirner were able to substantiate their hypothesis on the basis of sound studies. Subsequently, other authors have repeatedly shown that units of the most varied types, i.e. not just sounds, behave in such investigations according to the Poisson distribution or other similar models (text block law).

Zwirner belongs u. a. with this development to the earliest authors who developed a mathematically formulated law for a linguistic phenomenon. It has proven itself many times. Zwirner is thus one of the pioneers of modern quantitative linguistics, alongside George Kingsley Zipf , who discovered the laws of language around the same time.

Zwirner was the editor of Phonometric Research (4 vols., 1936 ff.), The Archive for Comparative Phonetics and the Archive for Speech and Voice Physiology (1937-47). In addition, he wrote together with Kurt Zwirner Basic Questions of Phonometrie (1936), 2nd, expanded and improved edition 1966 (as Part I by Zwirner & Ezawa 1966–1969).

In 1941, Zwirner examined psychological disorders and speech disorders such as those "when there is a lack of oxygen at high altitudes" using an air force vacuum chamber. The vacuum chamber was then used in the Dachau concentration camp .

Eberhard Zwirner is also the author of the Korpus Deutsche Mundarten , which is made available for scientific purposes via the archive for spoken German .

Fonts

  • German Language Archives 1932-1962. History, tasks and structure, bibliography. Munster 1962.
  • as ed. with Kennosuke Ezawa : Phonometrie, first-third part. Karger, Basel / New York 1966, 1968, 1969.
  • with Kurt Zwirner: sound frequency and random law . In: Research and Progress 11, No. 4, 1935, 43–45. (Also in: Zwirner & Ezawa (Eds.), Part Three: 55–59.)
  • with Kurt Zwirner: Basic questions of phonometry . Metten, Berlin 1936. (2nd edition as Zwirner & Ezawa (eds.) Part I, 1966)
  • with Kurt Zwirner: Sound frequency and language comparison . In: monthly for higher schools 37, 1938, 246-253. (Also in: Zwirner & Ezawa (Eds.), Third Part, 68–74.)

Festschriften - Memorial Colloquium

  • Hermann Bluhme (editor): Languages, assignment, structures - his students' declaration for Eberhard Zwirner. Nijhoff, The Hague 1965.
  • Kennosuke Ezawa & Karl H. Rensch (eds.) With the participation of Wolfgang Bethge: Language and Spoken. Festschrift for Eberhard Zwirner on his 80th birthday. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1979.
  • Herbert Pilch & Helmut Richter (eds.): Theory and Empirical Research in Language Research (Festschrift dedicated to Eberhard Zwirner on his 70th birthday) . Karger, Basel a. a. 1970. (Contains a list of Zwirner's works.)
  • Hermann Bluhme (Ed.): Contributions to quantitative linguistics: Gedächtniskolloqium für Eberhard Zwirner , Antwerp, 9. – 12. April 1986. Narr, Tübingen 1988, ISBN 3-87808-697-0 .

literature

  • Hermann Bluhme: memory word . In: Hermann Bluhme (Ed.): Contributions to quantitative linguistics. Memorial colloquium for Eberhard Zwirner, Antwerp, December 9th. April 1986. Narr, Tübingen 1988, pp. 27-28. ISBN 3-87808-697-0
  • Klee: " Personal Lexicon Third Reich ", Fischer Verlag, ISBN 3-10-039309-0
  • " Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie ", Saur Verlag, ISBN 3-598-23170-9
  • Gerd Simon , Joachim Zahn: Seams between linguistic structuralist and racist discourse - Eberhard Zwirner and the German Language Archive in the Third Reich. In: Osnabrück Contributions to Language Theory. Volume 46, 1992, pp. 241-260.
  • Arno Ruoff : "On Wednesday, October 11th, 1899". About the forms of dates and how they are used in spoken language. In: Kennosuke Ezawa , Karl H. Rensch (Hrsg.): Language and speaking. Festschrift for Eberhard Zwirner on his 80th birthday. Tübingen 1979, pp. 65-75.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Klee : German Medicine in the Third Reich. Careers before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-10-039310-4 , p. 372.
  2. ^ Ernst Klee: German Medicine in the Third Reich. Careers before and after 1945. 2001, p. 372.
  3. ^ Ernst Klee: German Medicine in the Third Reich. Careers before and after 1945. 2001, pp. 152 and 391.
  4. ^ Ernst Klee: German Medicine in the Third Reich. Careers before and after 1945. 2001, p. 391.
  5. ^ Ernst Klee: German Medicine in the Third Reich. Careers before and after 1945. 2001, p. 391.
  6. ^ Eberhard Zwirner obituary in the 1985 yearbook of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (PDF file).
  7. ^ Ernst Klee: German Medicine in the Third Reich. Careers before and after 1945. 2001, p. 372 f.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Zwirner, Eberhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physician and phonetician
DATE OF BIRTH October 11, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Löwenberg , Province of Silesia
DATE OF DEATH July 11, 1984
Place of death Schapdetten