Gerhard Rohlfs (Romanist)

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Gerhard Rohlfs (born July 14, 1892 in Berlin-Lichterfelde ; † September 12, 1986 in Tübingen ) was a German Romance studies and professor at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich .

Life

From 1913 Rohlfs studied Romance languages ​​at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin and the University of Grenoble . He served on the Western Front (World War I) . With a doctoral thesis with Heinrich Morf , he was awarded a Dr. phil. PhD . He also passed state exams in French, Latin and Italian. After a six-month research stay in Calabria , he completed his habilitation in 1922 with Eduard Wechssler with an investigation into the Romanesque habeno-future and conditionalis and became a public lecturer at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin.

In 1926 Rohlfs became full professor in Tübingen, and in 1938 he accepted a professorship for Romance Philology in Munich as the successor to Karl Vossler, who had been forced into retirement . In 1942 a working committee for Romance studies was formed at the Deutsche Akademie , which Gerhard Rohlfs led and composed. This committee included Friedrich Schürr , Fritz Krüger , Fritz Neubert , Walter Mönch and others. During his university career, Rohlfs supervised a large number of dissertations, among others by Kurt Wais , Heinrich Lausberg and Rudolf Baehr . After retirement in 1957 he returned to Tübingen, where he became in 1958 an honorary professor was appointed.

From the beginning of his scientific career he devoted himself particularly to the research of southern Italian graces , which for him was not the result of immigration in Byzantine times, but rather went back to older roots in the Magna Graecia . In addition to the Italian-Greek dialects in Calabria and Salento , he dealt with the historical grammar of the Italian language and its dialects. He has also published studies on Spanish, Old French and Romansh. His lexicographical publications on the southern Italian dialects and on the namology of Calabria are fundamental . As part of his overall Romance field research, he published groundbreaking studies on language geography and dialectology, as well as language atlases and introductions to the course.

He was co-editor of the archive for the study of modern languages ​​and literatures (1930–1954) and editor of the collection of Romance exercise texts series .

Honors

The University of Pisa awarded him the Premio Forte dei Marmi in 1964 . On December 18, 2008 , a secondary school was named after him in Santa Severina (Crotone province), which Rohlfs had visited several times. Rohlfs' students and friends dedicated seven festschrifts to him (1952–1986).

Honorary doctorates

Memberships

Obituaries

Fonts in selection

  • Romance Linguistic Geography: History and Basics, Aspects and Problems of Attempting a Linguistic Atlas of Romance Languages . CH Beck, Munich 1971.
  • Historical grammar of the Italian language and its dialects , 3 volumes, Francke, Bern 1949–1954; Rework under the title Grammatica storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti , 3 vols., Einaudi, Turin 1966–1969 and several reprints.
  • Romansh. The special position of Romansh between Italian and French; a cultural-historical and linguistic introduction . CH Beck, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-406-05730-6 .
  • Sermo vulgaris Latinus. Vulgar Latin reader . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1951 (collection of short textbooks on Romance languages ​​and literatures; Volume 13).
  • Lexicon graecanicum Italiae inferioris . 2., ext. u. completely reworked. Aufl. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1964 (1st edition udT: Etymological Dictionary of Lower Italian Graecity ).
  • Nuovo dizionario dialettale della Calabria. Con repertorio italo-calabro . Nuova ed. Interamente rielab., Ampl. ed aggiornata, 3rd rist. Longo Ravenna 1982.
  • Romanic loan translations on a Germanic basis (Materia romana, spirito germanico). Munich 1984 (= meeting reports of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences: philosophical-historical class , 1983/4).
  • Soprannomi Siciliani . Palermo 1984 (Centro di Studi Filologici e Linguistici Siciliani. Lessici siciliani; Volume 2).
  • Gerhard Rohlfs - La Calabria contadina - Scavo linguistico e fotografie del primo Novecento , a cura di / ed. Antonio Panzarella, Edizioni Scientifiche Calabresi, Rende 2006, ISBN 88-89464-10-0 (illustrated book with photos that Rohlfs took and commented on linguistically).
  • Primitive domed buildings in Europe . BAdW. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung Munich 1957 (Italian edition Primitive costruzioni a cupola in Europa , Firenze 1963)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dissertation: Ager, Area, Atrium. A study of the Romance word history (Borna / Leipzig 1920).
  2. ^ Utz Maas : Persecution and emigration of German-speaking linguists 1933–1945 . Volume 1: Documentation. Biobibliographic data A – Z. Stauffenburg Verlag, Tübingen 2010, p. 841.
  3. ^ Frank-Rutger Hausmann : Also a national science? German Romance Studies under National Socialism. In: Romance journal for the history of literature. Vol. 22 (1998), pp. 261-313, here p. 289 ( online ; PDF; 10.7 MB).
  4. ↑ Membership catalog of the Crusca : The reason for the choice was his historical grammar of the Italian language and its dialects available in 1954, which was not to appear in Italian until twelve years later.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Rohlfs, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Romanist
DATE OF BIRTH July 14, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH September 12, 1986
Place of death Tübingen