Ekkehard strength

Ekkehard Stark (born January 2, 1958 in Freiburg im Breisgau ; † September 16, 2001 in Leipzig ) was a German classical philologist who was professor for Latin studies at the University of Leipzig from 1992.

Life

Ekkehard Stark was the second son of the zoologist Otto Julius Stark , who worked as a professor at the University of Freiburg . From 1968 to 1977 he attended the mathematically and scientifically oriented Wentzinger Gymnasium . After graduating from high school, he wanted to study philosophy, German and history, but did not get a place and used the time to catch up on the major Latinum that was required for the subjects. The preoccupation with the Latin language encouraged him to study Latin as a major (from the 1978 summer semester). The Graecum he took for this purpose led him to his second major, Greek. His great academic success earned him a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation .

In his thesis, Stark dealt with the reception of antiquity by the composer Hermann Nitsch . Although Stark received the Scientific Prize of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences for this work in 1985 and Eckard Lefèvre had already offered him in 1983 to do his doctorate with the work, he decided to write a dissertation in the field of Roman comedy for his doctorate. His dissertation The Menaechmi des Plautus and not a Greek original was a milestone in research and was awarded the title summa cum laude .

After a few years as an assistant in Freiburg, Stark completed his habilitation in 1991 with the script Campania as a spiritual landscape: Interpretations of the ancient image of the Gulf of Naples . A few months later he received a call to the newly established chair for Latin studies at the University of Leipzig , where he began teaching in the 1992/1993 winter semester. Here he worked in a leading position in the rebuilding of the institute and the library. From the summer semester 1994 to the winter semester 1995/1996 he was Vice Dean of the Philosophical Faculty. During these years, Stark made a decisive contribution to research and teaching in the Leipzig Latin Studies.

Since the summer of 1994, Stark suffered from a hereditary lung disease that partially restricted his work. He was only able to accept the Theodor Mommsen Prize, which he received in 1997 for his habilitation thesis, with great effort in Ercolano . A lung transplant in the summer of 1998 brought only a respite. He died three years later while preparing for a second transplant.

literature

• Eckard Lefèvre : Ekkehard Stark † , in: Gnomon Volume 77 (2005), pp. 89-94 (with picture).

Web links

• Literature by and about Ekkehard Stark in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lefèvre (2005) p. 90.