Edwin Patzig

Edwin Patzig (full name Moritz Julius Edwin Patzig , born June 1, 1846 in Zittau , † September 29, 1929 in Leipzig ) was a German Byzantine and grammar school teacher who taught at the Nikolaischule and Thomasschule in Leipzig . He was particularly concerned with source and transmission problems of Byzantine histories.

life and work

Edwin Patzig, the son of a master baker, attended the community school and grammar school in Zittau and from Easter 1866 studied classical philology at the University of Leipzig . In the same year he joined the Lausitzer Preacher Society ; later Friedrich Ritschl and Georg Curtius accepted him into the philological seminar. Patzig spent the summer of 1869 in Paris , where he refined his knowledge of French and worked on Greek manuscripts in the Royal Library . On the basis of his findings and notes, he wrote his doctoral thesis on the late antique poet and grammarian Musaios in Leipzig under the direction of Ritschl and Curtius in 1870 , with which he became Dr. phil. received his doctorate . On October 28, 1870, he passed the state examination for the higher teaching post.

After graduating, Patzig worked as a private tutor in Nice (until 1871) and Saint Petersburg (until September 1873). On October 1, 1873, he went to the Nikolaischule as an assistant teacher and taught German, Latin, Greek, French and geography. On January 1, 1875, he was appointed (eleventh) senior teacher and class leader of the Quarta, later of the lower grade. At Easter 1885 he moved to the Thomas School in Leipzig (as the sixth senior teacher and head of Obersekunda), where he continued his career. Easter 1889 he was promoted to the fourth senior teacher and head of the lower prima and on October 22, 1892 appointed professor. In December 1894 he joined the general gymnastics club in Leipzig . In 1910 he retired as a high school teacher.

Patzig's scientific work was based on late ancient Greek literature. After his first work on Musaios, he dealt with the mythological scholias to four speeches of the church father Gregor von Nazianz , which originated in the 6th century and were handed down under the name "Nonnos". Patzig clarified the complex history of transmission of these scholias and thus paved the way for a critical edition. Through this work he came to Byzantine historiography, in which he found his life's work. From 1892 he published his studies in the Byzantine Journal founded by Karl Krumbacher .

In his essay Dictys Cretensis (1892) Patzig (at the same time as Ferdinand Noack , but independently from him) first defended the thesis that the Troy report of Dictys Cretensis (only preserved in Latin) was actually a translation of a Greek original. He traced the traces of this Greek Troy report in the world chronicle of John Malalas and in the Suda . Patzig and Noack's essays sparked a protracted debate that ended in 1907: a papyrus find from Tebtunis , which contained a fragment of the Greek dictys, confirmed the existence of the Greek original.

Patzig occupied himself for a long time with the world chronicles of John Malalas and John of Antioch . He vehemently opposed the equation of the two historians proposed by Georgios Sotiriadis in 1888. Patzig also examined the transmission and authenticity of the various collections of excerpts of John of Antioch, the Constantinian and Salmas excerpts.

In his source research on Zonaras in two essays (1896/1897), Patzig identified a line of tradition that he called the " Leo source " because of its similarities to the Chronicle of Leon Grammatikos . Patzig suggested John of Antioch as the author of this work.

Fonts (selection)

• De Musaei Grammatici emendatione . Leipzig 1870 (dissertation)
• De Nonnianis in IV orationes Gregorii Nazianzeni commentariis . Leipzig 1890 (school program)
• Unrecognized and unknown fragments of malalas . Leipzig 1891 (school program)
• Johannes Antiochenus and Johannes Malalas . Leipzig 1892 (school program)
• Dictys Cretensis . In: Byzantine Journal . Volume 1 (1892), pp. 131-152
• About some sources of the zonara . In: Byzantine Journal . Volume 5 (1896), pp. 24-53
• About some sources of the Zonara (II.) . In: Byzantine Journal . Volume 6 (1897), pp. 322-356
• The Roman sources of the Salmese Johannes Antiochus . In: Byzantine Journal . Volume 13 (1904), pp. 13-50

literature

• Ernst Bischoff : The teaching staff of the Nicolaigymnasium in Leipzig 1816–1896 / 97: Biographical-bibliographical contributions to school history . Leipzig 1897, p. 37
• August Heisenberg : Edwin Patzig . In: Byzantine Journal . Volume 31 (1931), p. 240

Web links

Wikisource: Edwin Patzig  - Sources and full texts

• Patzig, Edwin .  Publications in the bibliographic database of the Regesta Imperii .