Friedrich Solmsen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Friedrich Heinrich Rudolf Solmsen (born February 4, 1904 in Bonn , † January 30, 1989 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina ) was an American classical philologist of German origin. He emigrated to England in 1933 and from there to the USA in 1937 , where he worked as a professor at various universities. After the Second World War he was an important contact person for classical studies between Germany and the English-speaking world. As a researcher, he was particularly concerned with Greek philosophy.

Life

Youth, studies and early years in Berlin

Friedrich Solmsen was the son of the linguist Felix Solmsen and his wife Lily, née Brach. His father Felix died when he was only seven years old. Friedrich Solmsen studied classical philology at the universities of Bonn , Heidelberg and Berlin from 1922 . In Berlin he joined Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff , who accepted him into his Graeca . His actual mentor, however, was Werner Jaeger , whose connection between philology and philosophy had a lasting influence on Solmsen's research. In 1928 he was with the dissertation The Aristotelian methodology and the late Platonic Academy doctorate . He achieved his habilitation in 1929 with the work The Development of Aristotelian Logic and Rhetoric , which appeared as the fourth issue in Jaeger's series Neue Philologische Studium (Berlin 1929). In 1932 he married the classical philologist Lieselotte Salzer.

Exile in Cambridge (1933–1937)

After the National Socialists came into power, Solmsen, who was of Jewish origin through both parents, was fired as senior assistant on June 30, 1933. On September 2, 1933, his license to teach as a private lecturer was revoked and he was banned from publishing. In the same year he emigrated to England with his wife, where he worked as a visiting researcher at the University of Cambridge . During this time he published several smaller works, including a number of articles in the Realencyclopadie der classical antiquity ; its editor Wilhelm Kroll made it possible for Solmsen to circumvent the ban on publication in the German Reich.

As a professor in the United States

In 1936 Solmsen obtained his second doctorate degree (Ph.D.) in Cambridge and was thus able to advance his academic career in English-speaking countries. In 1937 he went to college in the American town of Olivet in Michigan as a professor of philosophy . In 1940 he moved to Cornell University in Ithaca (New York) as an assistant professor , where he was finally appointed full professor . From 1953 he was also chairman of the Department of Classics . In 1962, Solmsen moved to the University of Wisconsin – Madison , where he was named Moses Slaughter Professor of Classics in 1964 .

In 1974, Solmsen retired at the age of 70. However, he remained active in teaching and research. The place of activity in his later years was the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , where he taught as a Paddison visiting professor from 1964 to 1965, and from 1975 to 1976 as Adjunct Professor of Classics .

Services

As a researcher, Solmsen dealt with wide areas of Greek literature. Particular focus of his research was the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle , Epicurus and the Stoic . Solmsen also presented numerous essays on the theogony of Hesiod , the Greek tragedians, Greco-Roman mythology and the Roman reception of Greek philosophy. His small writings were published from 1968 to 1982 in three volumes by Georg Olms Verlag in Hildesheim.

Another important merit of Solmsen is that after the Second World War he contributed to renewing contact between Germany and the American-speaking area. From 1958 to 1959 he was a scholarship holder of the Fulbright Foundation at the universities of Frankfurt am Main and Kiel ; the University of Kiel awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1965 . In the same year, Solmsen was visiting professor at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. In the summer semester of 1968 and 1973 he was visiting professor at Heidelberg University. Solmsen was also a member of the American Philosophical Society (since 1966) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (since 1968), a corresponding member of the British Academy (since 1973) and the German Archaeological Institute , and an external member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences ( since 1960).

Fonts (selection)

  • The development of Aristotelian logic and rhetoric . Weidmann, Berlin 1929.
  • Antiphon Studies. Investigations into the origin of the Attic court speech . Weidmann, Berlin 1931.
  • Plato's theology. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY 1942.
  • Hesiod and Aeschylus . Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY 1949.
  • Aristotle's system of the physical world. A comparison with his predecessors . Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY 1960.
  • Small fonts . Three volumes. Olms, Hildesheim 1968–1982.
  • Intellectual experiments of the Greek enlightenment . Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 1975.
  • Isis among the Greeks and Romans . Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1979, ISBN 0-674-46775-2 .

literature

  • Eckart Mensching : On Berlin Philology in the Later Weimar Period - Friedrich Solmsen's Berlin Years . In: Nugae on the history of philology . Volume 3. University library of the Technical University, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-7983-1347-4 , pp. 64–117.
  • Helen F. North: Solmsen, Friedrich Heinrich Rudolf . In: Ward W. Briggs (Ed.): Biographical Dictionary of North American Classicists . Greenwood Press, Westport CT et al. 1994, ISBN 0-313-24560-6 , pp. 604-606.
  • Dietmar Schmitz: Solmsen, Friedrich. In: Peter Kuhlmann , Helmuth Schneider (Hrsg.): History of the ancient sciences. Biographical Lexicon (= The New Pauly . Supplements. Volume 6). Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02033-8 , Sp. 1174 f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Solmsen published an autobiographical article about this time entitled Wilamowitz in His Last Ten Years . In: Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies , Volume 20 (1979), pp. 89-122.
  2. ↑ UAHUB University Curator PA Friedrich Solmsen, Bl. 23, Bl. 24
personal data
SURNAME Solmsen, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Solmsen, Friedrich Heinrich Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American classical philologist of German origin
DATE OF BIRTH February 4, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Bonn
DATE OF DEATH January 30, 1989
Place of death Chapel Hill, North Carolina