Eduard Schwyzer

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Eduard Schwyzer, 1914

Eduard Schwyzer [ʃviːt͡sər] , originally Eduard Schweizer (born February 15, 1874 in Zurich , † May 3, 1943 in Berlin ), was a Swiss classical philologist and Indo-Europeanist . At the same time he was actively associated with the Swiss Idioticon throughout his life .

Name and family

In mid-1899, Eduard Schwyzer followed a decision by the family to archaize or make the name , which had meanwhile become Swiss , back to Schwyzer .

There is evidence that the Schwyzer / Schweizer family has been naturalized in Zurich since 1401. Father Johann Eduard and grandfather Eduard were coppersmiths and owners of a household business. As the eldest son, the future Indo-Europeanist should have taken on this profession. However, his grandmother campaigned for him to be allowed to go to high school; she had wished he would study theology. The Indo-European Heinrich Schweizer-Sidler was a great-uncle, the Graecist Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer was a son and the molecular biologist Robert Schwyzer was a nephew of Eduard Schwyzer.

Life

Education

Schwyzer studied Classical Philology at the University of Zurich from 1892 , spent two semesters with Karl Brugmann in Leipzig in 1894/95 and finally completed his doctorate in Zurich in 1897 with Adolf Kaegi . His dissertation was a prize task set by his teacher on the grammar of the Pergamene inscriptions, which he won in 1896. He then worked for a year as a cantonal school teacher in Solothurn .

Swiss Idioticon

Obituary notice for Eduard Schwyzer in the Schweizerischer Idiotikon, Volume XI, Column 616.
Form the past tense that Schwyzer recorded in Agaro

Albert Bachmann , who got to know Schwyzer as a student, brought him to the dictionary of the Swiss German language ( Schweizerisches Idiotikon ) in 1898 . Although not a Germanist, Schwyzer at least saw this as an opportunity to be able to work scientifically, and hoped that a position in Zurich would also offer better opportunities for a career at the university. He held this position with admittedly reduced workload in 1912 when he became a full professor, and only left it when he moved to Bonn in 1927.

Since after the death of editor-in-chief Albert Bachmann no personality could be found who, in the opinion of the executive committee of the dictionary, could have followed in his footsteps, Schwyzer examined all proof sheets from 1934 until his death in 1943 at the request of the committee. He exercised this office constructively and with great restraint.

Schwyzer had also actively contributed to supplementing the material of the Swiss Idiotikon by noting numerous dialect words on his hikes in the Alps. He published his experiences with the South Walsers in Formazza / Pomatt , Salecchio / Saley and Agaro / Ager in 1907 in the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung”.

University lecturer and professor

Schwyzer completed his habilitation with the revision of Konrad Meisterhans ' Grammar of Attic Inscriptions (1885) published in 1900 . In 1902 he became a private lecturer, in 1909 an associate professor and in 1912 - as successor to Kägis - a full professor of comparative Indo-European linguistics and Sanskrit at the University of Zurich.

From 1927 he worked at the University of Bonn . In 1932 he was appointed full professor for Indo-European comparison of languages ​​at the University of Berlin , where he succeeded Wilhelm Schulze . Retired in the spring of 1939, he had to remain in office because the Second World War broke out a little later . Schwyzer died of an embolism in 1943 after an operation.

In January 1937 he was elected as a full member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences . In the same year he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Athens - not least thanks to his preoccupation with modern Greek .

Create

With the exception of his dissertation, Schwyzer's monographs were all revisions of existing works, which he of course thoroughly rewrote. He also wrote around three hundred essays in which he preferred to deal with etymologies. He earned lasting fame with his two-volume grammar of ancient Greek . It was a Schwyzer revised version of Karl Brugmann's Greek grammar (1885) recommended by Jacob Wackernagel .

Schwyzer preferred to delve into detail instead of drafting large theories. His son Hans-Rudolf wrote that his father had “more critical understanding than creative ability”, and the Bernese Indo-Europeanist Albert Debrunner spoke of his “ability to conscientiously [...] clear up large areas and to modestly renounce the claim [...] to be original ». Schwyzer could do little with young grammatical thinking; In 1914, for example, he wrote in an essay - quite modern for his time - that research should include not only all biological language affinities, but also the mutual cultural influence of very different languages, as is evident in vocabulary, sentence structure and the world of ideas.

Schwyzer's work as an Indo-Europeanist was strongly influenced by his work on the Swiss Idioticon . He himself declared: "The intense preoccupation with lively and experienced language under the strict guidance of Albert Bachmann was also an incomparable methodological training". Even Otto Gröger , de facto successor as Bachmann's, wrote in the obituary, Schwyzers work as a classical scholar was quite Bachmann and the Idiotikon been characterized; conversely, many of the dictionary articles written by Schwyzer would breathe the spirit of Karl Brugmann. In the spirit of an Idiotikon editor, for Schwyzer there was no “classic Greek” with a “right” and a “wrong”, but a Greek that differed according to the criteria of place, time and social class. Accordingly, he also traced the history of the Greek language from the early sources to the present day of modern Greek. The connection of word research with factual research, which Schwyzer was concerned with, also goes back to the work on the Idiotikon .

Works (selection)

The list of Schwyzer's writings, compiled by Max Vasmer in 1950 and supplemented by Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer in 1951, comprises 312 titles, including his numerous, at that time undrawn word articles in volumes IV to IX of the Swiss Idioticon .

  • Grammar of the Pergamene inscriptions: Contributions to the phonology and inflection theory of the common Greek language. Weidmann, Berlin 1898 (reprint: Weidmann, Hildesheim 2003), ISBN 3-615-00275-X .
  • Dialectorum graecarum exempla epigraphica potiora. Hirzel, Leipzig 1923 (reprint: Olms, Hildesheim 1960).
  • Modern Greek dialect texts. Recorded by A. Heisenberg, utilizing the preparatory work by Joh. Kalitsunakis, arr. by Eduard Schwyzer. Institute for Sound Research, Berlin 1934 (Sound Library 94).
  • Greek grammar. CH Beck, Munich. Volume 1: General part, phonology, word formation, inflection. 1934/1939, 6th edition 1990. Volume 2: Syntax and syntactic stylistics. 1950, 5th edition 1988. Volume 3: Register. 1953, 2nd reprint of the 2nd edition 1980. Volume 4: Job register. 1971, 3rd edition 2005. - 2002 under the title Hellēnikē grammatikē. Basismenē stē Grammatikē tēs hellēnikēs tu Karl Brugmann published in Athens in Greek.
  • Syntactic archaisms of the Attic. Berlin 1940 (Treatises of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Phil.-hist. Class).
  • Linguistic hypercharacterization. Berlin 1941 (Treatises of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Phil.-hist. Class).
  • As a personal agent in the passive voice, especially in Greek. Berlin 1942 (Treatises of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Phil.-hist. Class).
  • To the apposition. Berlin 1947 (Treatises of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Phil.-hist. Class). (Posthumously.)
  • Small fonts. Edited by Rüdiger Schmitt . Innsbruck 1983 (Innsbruck contributions to linguistics).

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Eduard Schwyzer  - Sources and full texts

proof

  1. ^ Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer: Eduard Schwyzer 1875-1943. Beer, Zurich 1951 (114th New Year's sheet for the best of the Zurich orphanage for 1951), p. 24 f. The indication "1892" in the Historical Lexicon of Switzerland is incorrect. - The letter y represents the conventional Swiss spelling for the long, closed Middle High German î [ iː ], which has been preserved in Swiss German to this day.
  2. ^ Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer: Eduard Schwyzer 1875-1943. Beer, Zurich 1951 (114th New Year's sheet for the best of the Zurich orphanage for 1951), p. 12 ff.
  3. ^ Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer: Eduard Schwyzer 1875-1943. Beer, Zurich 1951 (114th New Year's sheet for the best of the Zurich orphanage for 1951), p. 24.
  4. ^ Walter Haas: The dictionary of the Swiss German language. Attempt through a national institution. Edited by the editors of the Swiss German dictionary. Huber, Frauenfeld 1981.
  5. ↑ Eduard Schwyzer: With the Germans in the Pomatt. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , numbers 209–212, 1907.
  6. ^ Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer: Eduard Schwyzer 1875-1943. Beer, Zurich 1951 (114th New Year's sheet for the best of the Zurich orphanage for 1951), p. 44.
  7. ^ Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer: Eduard Schwyzer 1875-1943. Beer, Zurich 1951 (114th New Year's sheet for the best of the Zurich orphanage for 1951), p. 33.
  8. ^ Albert Debrunner: † Eduard Schwyzer . In: Museum Helveticum 1, 1944, p. 8.
  9. ^ In: Genealogical and cultural language relationship. Ceremony for the inauguration of the new buildings of the University of Zurich, inauguration ceremony 1914. Schulthess, Zurich 1914 (Ceremony for the Philosophical Faculty I Zurich, Part IV).
  10. ↑ Meeting reports of the Prussian Academy of Sciences 1937, S. CVI, quoted from Albert Debrunner: † Eduard Schwyzer . In: Museum Helveticum 1, 1944, p. 4 and [Max] Vasner: Memorial speech on Eduard Schwyzer. In: Yearbook of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin 1946–1949. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1950, p. 223.
  11. ↑ Otto Gröger: † Eduard Schwyzer. In: Neue Zürcher Nachrichten p. 2, from May 12, 1943.
  12. ^ Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer: Eduard Schwyzer 1875-1943. Beer, Zurich 1951 (114th New Year's paper for the best of the Zurich orphanage for 1951), p. 43.
  13. ↑ [Max] Vasner: Commemorative speech for Eduard Schwyzer. In: Yearbook of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin 1946–1949. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1950, p. 225 f.
  14. ^ Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer: Eduard Schwyzer 1875-1943. Beer, Zurich 1951 (114th New Year's sheet for the best of the Zurich orphanage for 1951), p. 39.
  15. ^ Albert Debrunner: † Eduard Schwyzer . In: Museum Helveticum 1, 1944, p. 10.
personal data
SURNAME Schwyzer, Eduard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Swiss, Eduard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss classical philologist and Indo-Europeanist
DATE OF BIRTH February 15, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich
DATE OF DEATH May 3, 1943
Place of death Berlin