Georg Thilo

Georg Christian Thilo (born July 31, 1831 in Halle (Saale) , † April 4, 1893 in Heidelberg ) was a German classical philologist and high school teacher. He is best known for his edition of Servius' commentaries on Virgil's poems and studies on Latin poets and grammarians.

Life

Georg Thilo was the son of the Protestant theologian and philologist Johann Karl Thilo (1794–1853) and his second wife Maria geb. Fries, a daughter of the banker and art collector Christian Adam Fries . He grew up with five younger siblings. In the house of his father, who was a professor of historical theology at the University of Halle (Saale) , Georg Thilo came into contact with numerous scholars at an early age, including the historian Heinrich Leo , the philologists Gottfried Bernhardy and Friedrich Ritschl and the lawyers Ludwig Pernice and Karl Witte .

Georg Thilo attended the education department of the Francke Foundations from 1841 to 1849 and studied classical philology and history at the University of Halle from the winter semester 1849/50. He attended lectures by Gottfried Bernhardy, Heinrich Keil , Heinrich Leo and the archaeologist Ludwig Ross and joined the Salingia student union. For the winter semester of 1850/51 Thilo moved to the University of Bonn , a center of classical studies. After two semesters, Thilo was accepted into the philological seminar led by Friedrich Ritschl and Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker . In his six semesters in Bonn he mainly attended Ritschl's lectures and was shaped by his research, which was mainly related to Latinist text criticism and grammar. Ritschl pointed out to him early on that the Latin grammarist Varro was mentioned in Plutarch's Moralia . On July 27, 1853, Thilo was promoted to Dr. phil. doctorate after the head teacher exam he had passed four days earlier.

Since his father had died shortly before, Thilo returned to Halle after completing his studies and began his school career. He completed the probationary year from Michaelis 1853 to 1854 at the Latin secondary school of the Francke Foundations. After he had taken an additional exam for religious instruction in December 1854, he went to the Domgymnasium Naumburg in May 1855 . The proximity to the Pforta state school enabled him to continue his scientific work, which he also drove through a short research trip to the libraries of Northern Italy (during the school holidays). At that time Thilo collected the material for his life work, the critical research and edition of Servius' commentaries on Virgil's poems. Thilo published the first samples of this work in the journal Rheinisches Museum für Philologie and in school programs . After giving up his position in Naumburg in July 1856, Thilo embarked on a long trip to Italy from August 1856. He traveled via Munich to Milan, Genoa, Livorno and Pisa to Naples, where he joined his college friend Emil Hübner from Bonn , who had been studying Latin inscriptions in Italy for some time on behalf of the Berlin Academy. Thilo and Hübner traveled together to Sicily for several weeks and at the end of October (after a stay in Pompeii ) drove to Rome, where Thilo studied Latin manuscripts throughout the winter. From April 1857 he continued his journey and again visited Naples and Northern Italy. In September 1857 he traveled on to Paris , where he did research in the Imperial Library until December 8th. On the return trip to Halle, he stayed a few days in Leiden and examined manuscripts in the university library there.

After returning to Halle, Thilo returned to school in April 1858, now as a full teacher and inspector at the Pedagogical Department of the Francken Foundations in Halle. He taught Latin, Greek, German and occasionally history. He gradually released the fruits of his one and a half year research trip. Thilo's critical edition of the Roman Argonauts epic by Valerius Flaccus (Halle 1863) should be emphasized , which for the first time put the text on a secure basis: Thilo had carefully compared the Vaticanus in 3277 and published it in a very conservative text edition. His thesis that Vaticanus 3277 was the only independent witness to the transmission of the epic was the general research opinion for a long time and was refuted only in 1970 by the studies of Widu-Wolfgang Ehlers .

After being appointed head teacher (1865), he married Amalie Fremerey from Heidelberg. In Halle, Thilo found a spiritually stimulating environment through the college and the university. With other interested parties he regularly read Plautus' comedies . In autumn 1867 he took part in the preparation and implementation of the 25th meeting of German philologists and school men, at which he renewed old contacts and made new acquaintances, including with the philologist and Servius specialist Hermann Hagen , with whom Thilo had been for a long time worked together.

When in 1869 the offer came to Thilo to take over the directorate of the grammar school in Neubrandenburg , he decided to leave Halle and moved there in October 1869. In the small town in Mecklenburg, he ex officio headed not only the grammar school, but all public schools, including the secondary and elementary schools. The heavy workload, which was at the expense of Thilo's health, prompted him to give up his post after six years and to move to Heidelberg, his wife's home, in the autumn of 1875. There he continued his academic work as a "secondary school director out of service" and also taught Latin at the secondary school from 1877 to 1883. From 1878 he published his long-prepared Servius edition, which Ritschl repeatedly warned about, which since then has formed the basis for dealing with this late antique commentary on Virgil.

Thilo died at the age of 61 after a long illness.

Fonts (selection)

• De Varrone Plutarchi quaestionum Romanarum auctore praecipuo . Bonn 1853 (dissertation)
• Servii comment. Forgotten Aen. lib. I, 139-200 . Naumburg 1856 (school program)
• Quaestiones Silianae criticae . Halle 1858 (school program)
• C. Valerii Flacci Setini Balbi Argonauticon libri octo . Hall 1863
• Servii grammatici in Virgilii Georg. lib. I, 1-100 commentarius . Halle 1866 (school program)
• Quaestiones Servianae . Hall 1868 (school program)
• Observationes criticae in Servii in Verg. Aen. VI. commentarium . Neubrandenburg 1871 (school program)
• with Hermann Hagen: Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii carmina commentarii . 4 volumes in 3 parts, Leipzig 1881–1902. Reprint Hildesheim 1961
• P. Vergilii Maronis Carmina. Editio stereotypa . Leipzig 1886

literature

• Samuel Brandt : Georg Thilo . In: Biographisches Jahrbuch für Altertumskunde . 17th year 1894 (1895), pp. 93–124.

Web links

Wikisource: Georg Thilo  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Georg Thilo in the catalog of the German National Library