Friedrich Christian Diez

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Friedrich Christian Diez

Friedrich Christian Diez (born March 15, 1794 in Giessen , † May 29, 1876 in Bonn ) was a German Romance studies .

Life

Friedrich Christian Diez attended grammar school and then the universities in his hometown of Gießen (1811–16) and Göttingen (1816–18). Here he first studied classical philology as well as modern languages and literatures with Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker , among others , who aroused his interest in Italian poetry . He translated works by Lord Byron and Walter Scott and became interested in medieval literature. In 1813 he took part in the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon . During this nationalistic time he wrote: German and good - or on the gallows with / the French Bruth . During his studies he became a member of the German Reading Society (1814) and the Göttingen fraternity .

After meeting Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , he began to be interested in the poetry of the troubadours . Goethe had read the collection of Occitan poetry edited by François-Juste-Marie Raynouard and encouraged Diez to study it more closely. After a few years as a private tutor and librarian in Darmstadt and Utrecht , Diez received his doctorate in Gießen in 1821, followed by his habilitation in Bonn in 1822 . In 1830 he was appointed to a chair for medieval and modern languages ​​and literatures in Bonn , which he held until his death in 1876.

Services

Diez first published two works on the poetry of the troubadours, Die Poesie der Troubadours (1826) and Life and Works of the Troubadours (1829). In the following years he devoted himself to the grammar of the Romance languages ​​(1836-44) using the method of language comparison developed by Franz Bopp and Jacob Grimm on the basis of phonetic development in the Romance languages. Diez also called this approach the "critical method".

On the basis of the (Romance) language comparison, he wrote the Etymological Dictionary of Romance Languages ​​in 1853, in which he placed etymological research on a scientific basis. Here he mainly dealt with the Romance national languages ​​French , Spanish , Italian , Portuguese and Romanian and, due to its cultural importance in the Middle Ages, also with Occitan. Romansh minority languages ​​such as Catalan , Sardinian and Romansh , on the other hand, are only sporadically taken into account by Diez. As the first linguist, he also made vulgar Latin a subject of research.

Diez's importance lies primarily in the development of a scientific method for describing the Romance languages. As the founder of the subject Romance Studies at the German universities as a comparative subject, his influence can still be seen today. His students in Bonn included u. a. Hugo Schuchardt , Gaston Paris and Adolf Tobler .

Diez Foundation

With his "Grammar of Romance Languages" from 1836 Friedrich Diez became the founder of scientific Romance studies. The work was a historical-comparative grammar of Grimm's observance. It resulted in the professionalization and institutionalization of Romance philology in numerous European countries (cf. Jürgen Storost , Die 'neue Philologen', their institutions and periodicals: an overview. In: Sylvain Auroux, EFK Koerner, Hans -Josef Niederehe et al., History of Linguistics, 2nd Part, Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2001, pages 1241–1272.). The dismay over the death of the old master immediately led to the idea of ​​a great honor. The Italian "Rivista di filologia romanza" (Volume 2 [1876], No. 4, page 250) suggested the erection of a "monumento" for the deceased, for the realization of which donations would be required; the editorial staff immediately offered 100 lire.

In Berlin, the Romanist Adolf Tobler (1835–1910) raised the idea of ​​setting up a European foundation and put it up for discussion in Germany, Italy and France. Adolf Tobler had been professor of Romance philology in Berlin since 1867 and on February 1, 1877, sent a circular signed by numerous prominent humanities scholars of the time with the aim of creating a “Comité for the establishment of a Diez Foundation”. It was a matter of “attaching a foundation to his glorious name, the purpose of which was to promote work in the field of the science of the Romance languages ​​which he founded, a foundation which, through encouragement to progress, paved the way for the master's Ways contribute to the fact that what he has accomplished is preserved in the right sense for future generations, and which at the same time renew the memory of his immortal merit ”. The idea was to set up the foundation with a large German scientific institute. The Berlin Academy of Sciences , whose tasks also included the organization and administration of foundations ( Bopp Foundation , Charlotten Foundation ), should be in the background .

In addition, the call for donations was issued, the interest of which was to be used to honor outstanding literary achievements in the field of Romance studies. Support for the establishment of the foundation came from many quarters; the outstanding Romanists Graziadio Isaia Ascoli (1829–1907) in Italy, Adolf Mussafia (1834–1905) in Austria and Gaston Paris (1839–1903) in France are mentioned. The only retarding moments came from the Romanist Hugo Schuchardt (1842–1927) from Graz , who was suspicious of Berlin’s leadership in the matter, also for political reasons (Franco-German War of 1870/71) and who would have preferred to see the foundation in Settled in Rome. Schuchardt's opposition statement led to numerous controversies among European scientists, but also to the polarization of positions, which expanded across Europe. However, Tobler was not deterred and on February 23, 1879 submitted a draft statute for discussion to the Comité. Finally, on June 7, 1880 , Kaiser Wilhelm granted the foundation the rights of a legal entity. The Berlin academy agreed to look after the foundation: the Vienna academy also agreed to play a key role in the foundation, as did the Italian Accademia die Lincei. Members of the board were: the presiding secretary of the Berlin Academy Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903), the historian Georg Waitz (1813–1886), the Germanist Karl Müllenhoff (1818–1884), Tobler, the Leipzig Romanist Adolf Ebert (1820–1890 ), the French Romanist Gaston Paris , the Austrian Romanist Adolf Mussafia and the Italian Graziadio Ascoli . Adolf Tobler was proposed and elected as chairman . The statute of 1880 stipulated: “The purpose of the foundation is to promote scientific work in the field of Romance linguistics and the history of literatures of the Romance peoples, regardless of the nationality of the authors.” Adolf Tobler himself became a full member in 1881 the Berlin Academy of Sciences was chosen, which institutionalized Romance philology in the academy.

The decade-long profitable work of the foundation, which is outlined below, came to an end during the inflation of 1923 , when the foundation money became worthless and no longer yielded interest. The rest was collected by the National Socialists' “ Winter Relief Organization ”, so that in 1937 the Academy had to declare the foundation closed.

The work of the foundation and the award winners

The Olympic quadrennial principle was chosen for the award of the prize, i. H. Work in the field of Romance languages ​​and literature was followed for four years. The observations led to suggestions for the award of a groundbreaking work, which were discussed and submitted to a majority vote. According to the statutes, the first award was to be made on Leibniz Day in 1884, for which work from 1880 to 1883 was considered. These discussions, which took place in writing, are extremely interesting in terms of the history of science because they individually and subjectively reflect the state of the art of current science, but also record the research situation and the problems posed. In the literature on the topic listed below, the processes of opinion formation are presented in full.

The award for the first quadriennium was for the work of the Italian Pio Rajna (1847–1930) "Sulle origini dell'epopea francese" (Florence 1884). Rajna had created a standard work that is still valid today, in which it was shown that the Merovingian epics had already processed historical facts (while Gaston Paris had followed the mythological traces of the royal epics during these investigations). In 1909, Rajna was elected a corresponding member of the Berlin Academy.

The award for the second quadrennium happened on Leibniz Day in 1888; it received the Tobler student Adolf Robert Gaspary (1849-1892) for his "History of Italian Literature", Volume 1, Berlin 1884, which was rated as a standard work.

The third quadriennium was fulfilled in 1892 with the award for the young grammar work by Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke (1861–1936) "Grammar of Romance Languages", Volume 1, Leipzig 1890. The decision in favor of this work also testifies to the dominance of the Romance studies the prevailing method of the positivist young grammatical approach that determined Romance philology for decades.

The fourth quadrennium saw Meyer-Lübke again as a laureate, now with the work "Italian Grammar", Leipzig 1890. In the fifth and sixth quadrennium, Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke also won with his "Grammar of Romance Languages", Volume 2, Leipzig 1894, respectively Volume 3, Leipzig 1899.

The seventh quadrennium saw the Freiburg novelist Emil Lévy (1855–1918) as the laureate for the work “Provençal Supplementary Dictionary. Corrections and additions to Raynouard's Lexique Roman ”, volumes 3 and 4, Leipzig 1900–1903, which by 1924 eventually grew to ten volumes.

The eighth quadriennium (1904–1907) led to the award of the “Atlas linguistique de la France” (Paris 1902 ff) by Jules Gilliéron (1854–1926), professor at the Paris École des Hautes Etudes. Gilliéron had committed himself to the synchronous geography of language, whereby what he was accused of, the historical component was neglected.

In the ninth quadriennium, the proposal to award the third volume of the “Grammaire historique de la Langue française” (Copenhagen 1908) by the Copenhagen Romanist Kristoffer Nyrop (1858–1931) was successful.

During the First World War, the work of the foundation was suspended, so that it wasn't until the twelfth quadrennium that another award was made: the Swiss Romance scholar Walther von Wartburg (1888–1971) received the honor for his “French Etymological Dictionary”, Bonn 1922 ff The "FEW" based its lemma arrangement on Latin and followed the historical development of a keyword up to the present day and in a broad dialectal diversification.

The files of the Diez Foundation are preserved in the archive of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences .

Works

  • Old Spanish romances (Berlin 1821).
  • About the Minnehöfe, contributions to the knowledge of Romance poetry (Berlin 1825; Franz. Von Roisin, Lille 1842).
  • The poetry of the troubadours (Zwickau 1826; 2nd ed. V. Bartsch, Leipzig 1883; Franz. V. Roisin, 1845).
  • Life and works of the troubadours (Leipzig 1829, with numerous translations; 2nd ed. V. Bartsch, das. 1882), in which for the first time a comprehensive and scientific presentation of the nature and development of Provencal poetry in the Middle Ages is given.
  • Grammar of Romance languages (Bonn 1836–38, 3 vols .; 4th ed., Bonn. 1876–77; Eng. Vn Cayley, 1862; French v. Brachet et al., 1872–76).
  • Etymological dictionary of the Romance languages (Bonn 1853, 2 vol .; 4th edition by A. Scheler, Bonn 1878), for which Jarnik published an index (Berlin 1878). Both works treat these languages ​​for the first time from a comparative historical point of view and have thus become epoch-making for Romance philology.
  • Ancient Romanesque language monuments (Bonn 1846).
  • Two old Romanesque poems (Bonn 1852).
  • About the first Portuguese art and court poetry (Bonn 1863).
  • Old Romanesque glossaries, corrected and explained (Bonn 1865).
  • Romanesque word creation (Bonn 1875).
  • Smaller works and reviews (edited by v. Breymann, Munich 1883).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paul Wentzcke : Fraternity lists. Second volume: Hans Schneider and Georg Lehnert: Gießen - The Gießener Burschenschaft 1814 to 1936. Görlitz 1942, A. Teutsche Lesegesellschaft (Teutonia). No. 9.

Web links

Wikisource: Friedrich Christian Diez  - Sources and full texts
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personal data
SURNAME Diez, Friedrich Christian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Diez, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1794
PLACE OF BIRTH to water
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 1876
Place of death Bonn