Franz Richter (classical philologist)

Karl Franz Richter (born August 2, 1882 in Groß Kryszahnen , † August 1, 1917 near Ypres ) was a German classical philologist , religious scholar and high school teacher.

Life

Franz Richter was born in East Prussia as the son of the royal forester Maximilian Richter. After the early death of his mother Auguste geb. Mielke he grew up with relatives in Quedlinburg , where his grandfather Franz Wilhelm Richter was the head of the grammar school from 1837 to 1872. In March 1901, Franz Richter passed the final examination at this grammar school. He first went to the University of Lausanne to study law. After a short time he switched to philology and history and went to Berlin University . Here he attended courses with the philologists Hermann Diels , Richard Heinze , Johannes Vahlen and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and the historians Otto Hirschfeld and Adolf Lasson . In 1904 he moved to Munich , where he deepened his studies with Otto Crusius , Adolf Furtwängler and Karl Theodor von Heigel . However, he received the most important suggestions in Halle , where he attended events with Friedrich Bechtel , Friedrich Blass , Carl Robert and Ulrich Wilcken .

Richter was particularly close to the religious scholar Georg Wissowa , who was then the editor of the revision of the Realencyclopedia of Classical Antiquities . Wissowa accepted him into the philological seminar and introduced him to comparative religious studies. Wissowa also suggested Richter's dissertation De deorum barbarorum interpretatione Romana quaestiones selectae , with which he received his doctorate in 1906. In this work, Richter examined the Roman reinterpretation of the gods of foreign peoples ( Interpretatio Romana ), which was an important preparatory work in religious studies.

After this initial success, Richter remained inclined to research, but turned to a school career in order to secure his livelihood. He worked for four years at various grammar schools before he was appointed senior teacher at the Kaiser-Friedrich-Realgymnasium in Neukölln in 1910 . During these years he wrote articles for Roscher's mythological encyclopedia and the Realencyclopadie of classical antiquity , whose editor Wilhelm Kroll had meanwhile become. In addition, he dealt with a collection of Latin sacred inscriptions on behalf of Wissowas, which appeared in Bonn in 1911.

After the outbreak of the First World War , Richter was drafted as a reserve reservist in December 1914. He was first used in the military directorate. Since he was not satisfied with this position in the hinterland, he volunteered for the armed service in the summer of 1916. He spent the winter of 1916/1917 on the Carpathian Front. In the spring of 1917 his regiment was transferred to Flanders, where he was fatally wounded on August 1st east of Ypres. His fellow students Paul Riewald and Friedrich Geiger , who like him had worked for Wissowa, also died in the First World War.

literature

• Georg Wissowa: Franz Richter † August 1, 1917 . In: Hundred Years: A. Marcus and E. Webers Verlag, 1818–1918 . Bonn 1919, pp. 59-60.

Web links

Wikisource: Franz Richter  - Sources and full texts

• Vita of Franz Richter in his dissertation
• Franz Richter personnel sheet in the personnel file of the BIL expert body in the archive database of the Library for Research on Educational History (BBF)