Friedrich Slotty

Grave of Friedrich Slotty in the north cemetery in Jena

Friedrich Slotty (born October 19, 1881 in Brieg ; † December 23, 1963 in Jena ) was a German Indo-Europeanist who worked as a professor of comparative linguistics in Prague (1925-1939) and Jena (1953-1963).

Life

Friedrich Slotty studied classical philology and comparative linguistics at the universities of Greifswald , Breslau and Jena . In Jena he took up the subjects of Classical Archeology and Ancient History and learned Sanskrit . His academic teachers included the philologists Georg Goetz and Rudolf Hirzel , the linguists Carl Cappeller and Berthold Delbrück , the archaeologist Ferdinand Noack and the historians Alexander Cartellieri and Heinrich Gelzer .

1905 Slotty was a dissertation written in Latin about the use of poetic plural in Catullus doctorate . After the school leaving examination (1907) he went to school. After the seminar year at the Friedrich Gymnasium in Frankfurt (Oder) , he completed the probationary year at the Wilhelm Gymnasium in Potsdam , where he was employed as a senior teacher in 1909. In 1912 he returned to the University of Jena, where he qualified as a professor in 1914 for Indo-European Linguistics . In 1919 he was appointed associate professor.

In the Weimar Republic , Slotty joined the German Democratic Party . For a long time he was a board member of the Jena local group and also publicly advocated democracy. In this he differed significantly from most German university professors.

In 1925 Slotty moved from Jena to the German University in Prague , where he worked as an associate professor for comparative linguistics. In addition to comparative studies, he also represented general linguistics and also held lectures on Etruscology , which was his specialty.

In Prague, Slotty worked closely with German and Czechoslovak colleagues. In 1929 he was promoted to full professor. He took up opposition to the National Socialists , who were gaining more and more power in Germany, and addressed the public several times with warnings about fascism. In autumn 1938, on the occasion of the annexation of the Sudetenland , he gave a radio speech against Hitler .

After the annexation of the rest of the Czech Republic in March 1939, Slotty was banned from teaching and publishing. In 1940 his professorial title was revoked. Since he did not receive a pension, he lived with his family in abject poverty.

After the end of the Second World War , Slotty was supported by the Czechoslovak government and reinstated in his chair. In 1947 he was offered a professorship for Indo-European Linguistics at his home university in Jena, which he was not able to follow until 1953 (after the deaths of Stalin and Klement Gottwald ). Since he was already in old age, he retired after just one year , but held lectures as an emeritus for a few years. He died on December 23, 1963 after a long illness.

plant

Slotty dealt with wide areas of Indo-European studies. In addition to numerous treatises on individual problems, he also wrote didactic and methodical overview works on Vulgar Latin and Greek , which were reprinted several times.

His particular research focus was etruscology, an area that has received little treatment because of its structural difficulties. He developed the then largely unknown Etruscan language with fundamental studies. However, his life's work remained unfinished.

Fonts (selection)

• De numeri pluralis usu Catulliano . Jena 1905 (dissertation)
• The copulative composition in Latin . Potsdam 1911 (school program)
• The use of the subjunctive and optative in Greek dialects . Göttingen 1915 (extended habilitation thesis)
• Vulgar Latin exercise book . Bonn 1918. Second, revised edition, Berlin 1960. Reprint Berlin 1967
• Introduction to Greek: For university courses and adult studies. Presented on a linguistic basis . Bonn 1922. Second revised edition, Berlin 1938. Third edition, Berlin 1952. Fourth edition, Berlin 1957. Fifth edition, 1964
• Syllable punctuation and formation of syllables in Old Truscan . Heidelberg 1952 ( contributions to Etruscology 1)

literature

• Richard Hauschild: In memoriam Friedrich Slotty . In: Socialist University of Jena . Volume 7, Issue 1 (January 1964), p. 2 (with picture)
• Richard Hauschild: Friedrich Slotty . In: Researches and Advances . Volume 39, Issue 7 (June 1964)
• Johann Schröpfer: Friedrich Slotty. A life in the service of linguistics and humanity . In: Researches and Advances . Volume 31 (1956), pp. 60-62

Web links

• Literature by Friedrich Slotty in the catalog of the German National Library
• Friedrich Slotty personnel sheet in the personnel file of the BIL reviewer in the archive database of the Library for Research on Educational History (BBF)