Fritz Schöll

Fritz Schöll

Fritz Schöll (born February 8, 1850 in Weimar , † September 14, 1919 in Rottweil ) was a German classical philologist . He was a professor in Heidelberg from 1877 to 1918 and wrote critical editions of the works of Plautus , Varro and Cicero .

Life

Fritz Schöll was born in 1850 as the youngest son of the director of the Weimar Art Institute, Adolf Schöll . His mother was Johanna, geb. Henle, the sister of the Göttingen anatomist Jakob Henle . The influence of the highly educated family introduced the young Fritz Schöll to the literature of antiquity at an early age, because his father, a friend of the classical scholar Karl Otfried Müller , was intensively involved with classical German, English and Greek literature. Although he secretly intended to become an actor during school, he decided to study Classical Philology at Prima, encouraged by his teachers.

Studies and early academic career

After graduating, he began studying in Göttingen in 1869 , where his older brother Rudolf Schöll had already studied from 1862 to 1864. Here he was particularly drawn to Hermann Sauppe , who was an old friend of the family from Weimar days; in addition, Kurt Wachsmuth influenced him . In the second semester Schöll was accepted as an extraordinary member and in the third semester as a full member of the Göttingen Philological Seminar. Participation in the Franco-Prussian War interrupted his studies from October 1870 to August 1871. Despite his wounding, he took part in the Battle of Beaugency and the following campaigns and experienced the end of the war in the hospital near Romainville . In the winter semester of 1871/1872 he resumed his studies in Leipzig , where the reputation of Friedrich Ritschl drew him. He had a close relationship with Ritschl and the linguist Georg Curtius . In 1873 he won the award task presented by Ritschl De accentu linguae Latinae veterum grammaticorum testimonia colligantur et breviter iudicentur (collection and brief commentary on the testimonies of ancient grammarians on the accent in the Latin language). He submitted an excerpt from this document as a dissertation in 1875, after having passed the Rigorosum in 1874. In 1876 the entire treatise appeared in a revised version in the files of the Philological Societät Leipzig (Volume 6, pp. 1–231).

After graduating in 1874, Schöll went to Jena for a year, where his brother Rudolf was appointed full professor in 1873. Fritz Schöll worked as a volunteer at the university library with Anton Klette , but returned to Leipzig as early as Easter 1875, where he became an adjunct at the Russian seminary alongside Wilhelm Hoerschelmann . Due to the influence of Ritschl, the comedies of Plautus moved into the focus of his work. Ritschl supervised his habilitation project through to completion. In the autumn of 1876 Schöll gave his inaugural lecture on Ion von Chios , which Ritschl could no longer attend for health reasons; a few days later he died. Schöll published his habilitation thesis in 1877 together with his fellow students Georg Goetz and Gustav Löwe in an anthology under the title Analecta Plautina , which was dedicated to the memory of their mutual teacher.

Professor in Heidelberg

In his second semester as a private lecturer in Leipzig (summer semester 1877), Schöll was appointed full professor at the University of Heidelberg . In autumn he succeeded Otto Ribbeck , who went to Leipzig as Ritschl's successor. Schöll remained in Heidelberg as a full professor until his resignation after 42 years. His former teacher Kurt Wachsmuth was called from Göttingen to Heidelberg in the same year; Schöll worked closely with him. In 1879 he married Clara Krieger, the stepdaughter of the landscape painter Friedrich Preller the Elder , with whom he frequented the house of his friend Wachsmuth. After he moved to Leipzig, Erwin Rohde was appointed to Heidelberg in autumn 1886 . Schöll maintained a close relationship with him too; after Rohde's untimely death he wrote an extensive biographical article about him for the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie . He also worked closely with Rohde's successors Otto Crusius (1898–1903), Albrecht Dieterich (1903–1908) and Franz Boll (from 1908). In addition to them, the librarian and philologist Karl Zangemeister , the ancient historian Alfred von Domaszewski , the archaeologist Friedrich von Duhn , the theologian Gustav Heinrich Bassermann and the lawyer Ernst Immanuel Bekker regularly visited his house.

Grave of the philologist Fritz Schöll and his wife in the (section y) at the Heidelberg mountain cemetery

Schöll served three times as dean of the philosophy faculty and was vice-rector of the university in 1890/1891. In 1909 he was elected a full member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences . In July 1918, at the age of 68, he resigned from his professorship. His successor was Otto Weinreich in October . A few weeks later Schöll died in Rottweil. He left behind his only daughter, who had cared for him in the years since his wife's death († 1913).

Services

Fritz Schöll is best known as a diligent editor of Latin scripts. As a pupil of Ritschl, he worked for many years with the explanation and critical edition of the comedies of Plautus. When producing the complicated text, he often proceeded with great decisiveness. In 1881 he published the Truculentus , which he had already dealt with in his habilitation thesis; In 1884 the Trinummus , in which he closely followed the textual figure of Ritschl. The Rudens and the Captivi followed in 1887, the Menaechmi in 1889 , the Casina in 1890 , the reworking of the Persa in 1892 , the Mostellaria in 1893 and the Cistellaria in 1894 . The other comedies were edited by his friends Georg Götz and Gustav Loewe. Shortly after Schöll's death, Götz realized that the edition was not a work for eternity, as the understanding of the Plautus tradition had undergone important changes in the meantime. However, their merit for research remains undisputed.

Another focus of Schöll's research was the revision of the De lingua Latina font by Varro , which he carried out together with Georg Götz. After long preparatory work, it was published by BG Teubner in 1910 and replaced the outdated edition by Leonhard Spengel (Berlin 1826). Götz wanted to publish the planned editio minor based on the deceased's personal copy; This did not happen because of the difficult economic conditions after the First World War .

Towards the end of his life, Schöll took part in the major new edition of Cicero's writings by the Teubner publishing house. The editions of the Philippian speeches , the speech Pro Scauro and the Orationum Fragmenta ( speech fragments ), which appeared during his lifetime, come from him. After his death, the speeches Pro Tullio, Pro Fonteio and Pro Caecina followed , which he had left ready for printing. His work on the fragments of Cicero (excluding those of the speeches and the philosophical writings) was interrupted by his death.

In addition to these three main fields of work, Schöll dealt in his essays with the neoteric Catullus , the rhetoric teacher Quintilian , the comedy poet Terence and the Greek tragedy, namely Euripides . Schöll also managed the estate of his deceased colleague Erwin Rohde: He arranged for the new editions of his writings Psyche (4th edition 1907) and The Greek Roman and His Precursors (3rd increased edition 1914) and exchanged letters with Friedrich Nietzsche together with Elisabeth Förster- Nietzsche out. He wrote substantial necrologists for Rohde, as well as for his brother Rudolf Schöll, who died early, and his father Gustav Adolf Schöll.

In the course of his long career, Schöll had many students, whom he brought to high levels of performance through intensive supervision and relentless criticism. They include Otto Kimmig , Joseph Anton Sickinger , Heinrich Bertsch , Emilie Boer , Friedrich Emlein , Karl Preisendanz and his successor at the Heidelberg chair, Otto Weinreich .

literature

• Georg Goetz : Fritz Schoell , in: Biographisches Jahrbuch für Alterthumskunde , 40th year (1920), pp. 84-102

Web links

Wikisource: Fritz Schoell  - Sources and full texts

Commons : Fritz Schöll  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Fritz Schöll in the catalog of the German National Library
• Overview of Fritz Schöll's courses at the University of Leipzig (winter semester 1876 to summer semester 1877)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Members of the HAdW since it was founded in 1909. Fritz Schöll. Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, accessed June 12, 2016 . 
2. ↑ Götz (1920) 94.