Gottlieb Lukas Friedrich plaque

Gottlieb Lukas Friedrich plaque

Gottlieb Lukas Friedrich Tafel (born September 6, 1787 in Bempflingen ; † October 14, 1860 in Ulm ) was a German classical philologist who worked as a "professor of ancient literature" at the University of Tübingen (1818–1846). He is considered to be a pioneer of Byzantine studies in Europe and wrote highly regarded philological and historical treatises.

Life

Gottlieb Lukas Friedrich Tafel was born in 1787 as the fourth child of a country pastor. The early death of his father led him to also turn to the spiritual career, which at the time offered a secure livelihood. He first attended the schools in Cannstatt and Tübingen, then from 1801 the seminars in Blaubeuren and Bebenhausen . After this training he studied theology in Tübingen from 1805, where he was particularly influenced by the orientalist Christian Friedrich Schnurrer . His first job after graduation was in 1810 in Holstein as a private tutor for the adopted sons of the diplomat Friedrich Karl von Reventlow . Four years later, Tafel began his vicariate in Tübingen, but his inclination towards philology increasingly led him away from the pastor's career. From 1815 onwards he held lectures on ancient literature, which were very well received. In 1818 he was appointed associate professor.

In the following years, Tafel dealt with the Greek poet Pindar and published his Dilucidationes Pindaricae ("Confrontations with Pindar") in two volumes in 1824 and 1827 . With the publication of the second volume, he was promoted to full professor “for ancient literature” and from then on worked as second professor alongside the long-established Karl Philipp Conz . A tip from his pupil Christoph Friedrich Stälin led Tafel to the Basel University Library after 1827, where he intensively studied a 12th century Pindar manuscript. During this work he became interested in the Byzantine philologist Eustathios of Thessalonike , whose Pindar commentary made valuable contributions to the understanding of the poet. Although the preoccupation with Byzantine, i.e. Middle Greek, authors was a field that research avoided at the time, Tafel dealt with it. He was also able to use the Byzantine manuscripts that had been in the possession of the University of Tübingen since the 16th century. In connection with this he also dealt with the work of the Tübingen Graecist Martin Crusius , with the Greek topography and the history of Greece and the Balkan Peninsula since the Middle Ages.

For health reasons, Tafel retired in the fall of 1846, at the age of 59. He moved first to Munich , then for reasons of pension law to Ulm, which, like Tübingen, was part of the Kingdom of Württemberg . It was here that Tafel continued his research. As a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , Tafel demanded that the philologists deal with the Byzantines: “In order to be able to interpret the riddle of Byzantine history, one must have made independent Byzantine studies that differ enormously from ancient studies in terms of language and subject. You enter a new sphere of life in which the earlier ideas that the school gave us can no longer be inserted ... ” Tafel was the first German philologist to recognize the Byzantines not as inferior descendants of the ancient Greeks, but as an independent cultural community looked. The Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg also appointed him a corresponding member in 1855, because the work with the Byzantines in Russia was already better at that time.

Tafel died on October 14, 1860 at the age of 73. He donated his private library to the Ulm City Library, and his handwritten estate went to the sister of his friend Georg Martin Thomas , who lived as a librarian in Munich. In 1893 the Berlin State Library acquired his posthumous manuscripts on the Byzantine authors Georgios Hamartolos , Laonikos Chalkokondyles and Eustathios of Thessalonike.

literature

• Carl Neumann:  panel, Gottlieb Lukas Friedrich . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 37, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1894, pp. 342-346.
• Frank Raberg : Biographical Lexicon for Ulm and Neu-Ulm 1802-2009 . Süddeutsche Verlagsgesellschaft im Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Ostfildern 2010, ISBN 978-3-7995-8040-3 , p. 431 f .

Web links

Wikisource: Gottlieb Lukas Friedrich Tafel  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Gottlieb Lukas Friedrich Tafel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by Gottlieb Lukas Friedrich Tafel in the Berlin State Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Meeting reports of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , Vol. 39, 3rd class, p. 152.
2. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Gottlieb Lukas Friedrich plaque. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed October 25, 2015 (Russian).