Erika Timm

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Erika Timm (* 1934 in Hamburg ) is a retired German professor for Yiddish studies . She is the author of several fundamental contributions in the field of Yiddish studies, historical linguistics and philology .

Life

Erika Timm studied at the University of Hamburg, her doctorate took place in 1970 and dealt with the songs of Oswald von Wolkenstein . In 1986 she completed her habilitation at the Institute for German Studies at the University of Trier with a thesis on the graphic and phonic structure of West Yiddish. From 1990 Timm was the first and until Marion Aptroot was appointed to the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf in 1996, the only one to hold a chair for Yiddish studies in Germany.

In her work, Erika Timm deals with phonetic, semantic and morphological aspects of old Yiddish, comparisons between West Yiddish and East Yiddish as well as the relationship between Yiddish and German dialects. Her most important contribution in this area, " Historical Yiddish Semantics ", focuses on Yiddish translations of the Bible that were written between 1400 and 1750. Timm shows here how the translation of the Bible in Jewish primary schools ( cheder ) at the time of the emergence of Yiddish influenced the development of its Germanic component, that the influence of Judaeo-French in this context was more important than previously thought and that a significant part of the vocabulary of the original translations is present in modern East Yiddish. Erika Timm is the editor of numerous old Yiddish books and the author of many studies in the field of German studies. On many of her publications she has worked with her husband, the philologist Gustav Adolf Beckmann.

Timm is currently working on the beginnings of Yiddish narrative prose as well as the editing of posthumous writings by Solomon A. Birnbaum .

Publications (selection)

  • Beria and Simra . A 16th century Yiddish tale. Edited and annotated. In: Literary Yearbook. New episode . tape 14 . Berlin 1973, ISBN 3-428-03420-1 , pp. 1-94 .
  • The tradition of the songs of Oswald von Wolkenstein (=  Germanic Studies . Volume 242 ). Lübeck, Hamburg 1972, ISBN 3-7868-2242-5 (dissertation).
  • Graphic and phonic structure of West Yiddish with special consideration of the time around 1600 (=  Hermaea. New series . Volume 52 ). Tübingen 1987, ISBN 3-484-15052-1 (habilitation thesis).
  • Matronymics in the Ashkenazi cultural area . A contribution to the mentality and social history of the European Jews. Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-484-10792-8 .
  • Frau Holle, Frau Percht and related figures . 160 years after Jacob Grimm from a German point of view. Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-7776-1230-8 (with the collaboration of Gustav Adolf Beckmann).
  • Historical Yiddish semantics . The Bible translation language as a factor in the divergence of the Yiddish and German vocabulary. Tübingen 2005, ISBN 3-484-73063-3 (with the collaboration of Gustav Adolf Beckmann).
  • Erika Timm, Gustav Adolf Beckmann: Etymological studies on Yiddish . At the same time a contribution to the problem of the Yiddish south-east and east flank. Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-87548-468-1 .
  • Erika Timm, Chava Turniansky : Yiddish in Italia . Yiddish Manuscripts and Printed Books from the 15th to the 17th Century. Ed .: Associazione Italiana Amici dell'Universita di Gerusalemme. Milan 2003.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Walter Röll and Simon Neuberg (eds.): Jiddische Philologie . Festschrift for Erika Timm. May Niemeyer , Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-484-10795-2 , p. VII ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed October 19, 2018]).
  2. ^ Marion Aptroot: Yiddish Language and Literature . In: Michael Brenner and Stefan Rohrbacher (eds.): Science of Judaism: Approaches after the Holocaust . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-525-20807-3 , pp. 195 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed October 19, 2018]).
personal data
SURNAME Timm, Erika
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German specialist in German with a focus on Yiddish studies
DATE OF BIRTH 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg