Hans Sperber (Linguist)

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Hans Sperber (born March 25, 1885 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died December 10, 1963 in Columbus (Ohio) ) was a German linguist .

Life

Hans Sperber was born in Vienna in 1885 and was baptized Protestant there in 1890, together with his two years older sister Alice Sperber . Sparhawk had both German and Swedish citizenship.

After graduating from high school in 1903, he studied German and Romance philology in Vienna, where he received his doctorate in 1907. After his studies, which he continued at Uppsala University until 1909, he worked as a German lecturer for six years. In 1919 he completed his habilitation at the University of Cologne , where he worked as a private lecturer in German and Nordic philology. Although he was appointed associate professor in 1925, he did not receive a permanent, paid teaching position before 1929, which is why he took leave of absence every summer semester until then to earn money.

In 1933, because of his Jewish descent, the National Socialists revoked his teaching license (on the basis of the law for the restoration of the civil service ), which is why he emigrated to the USA and at Ohio State University from 1936 as a professor of German language and literature for the 16th and 17th centuries 17th century taught. Despite a successful emigration and a continuation of his career in the USA, Hans Sperber did not seem to have been happy. Nevertheless, he only returned to Germany a few times because of visiting professorships. He retired in 1955 and died in Columbus, Ohio in 1963.

He was married to Margaret Sperber (* 1898 in Erlau ); the two had two daughters, Brigitta and Karin Sperber.

research

Sparrowhawk worked in the vicinity of Sigmund Freud at a young age ; this also influenced his main research interests, which lay in the history of language and the theory or psychology of language. Sperber's article “On the Influence of Sexual Moments on the Origin and Development of Language”, which appeared in 1912 in the psychoanalytic journal Imago founded by Sigmund Freud , argues that “the original words all denote sexual things and then lost this sexual meaning by passed on to other things and activities that were compared to the sexual ones ”.

But Sperber also wrote several works on Scandinavian studies and German semantics . He was also one of the first to study the history of the German language in the 17th and 18th centuries. Sperber was also involved in the conception of Trübner's German dictionary. His most important work, however, is likely to be the “History of the German Language”, a standard work in German studies that has been updated again and again today (after Peter von Polenz's death ) .

Publications (selection)

  • " German 'Harfe' and his relatives ". In: words and things. Kulturhistorische Zeitschrift für Sprach- und Sachforschung, Volume 3, 1909, pp. 68–77.
  • "Six Icelandic poems with legendary content". Academic Printing Press, Uppsala 1911.
  • "Studies on the development of the meaning of the preposition 'über'". Appelberg, Uppsala 1915. (Habilitation thesis)
  • "Introduction to the theory of meaning". Schroeder, Bonn 1923.
  • "The Influence of Pietism on the Language of the 18th Century". In: DVjS 8, 1930, pp. 127-138.
  • "Three keys to language" (together with Robert M. Estrich). Rinehart, New York 1952.
  • "History of the German Language". 1st - 4th Edition (3rd and 4th edition together with Wolfgang Fleischhauer). De Gruyter, Berlin / Leipzig 1926/1934/1958/1963 (revised and edited by Peter von Polenz from the 5th edition in 1965).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Schweighofer, Astrid: Religious Seekers in the Modern Age: Conversions from Judaism to Protestantism in Vienna around 1900. De Gruyter, Berlin / Munich / Boston 2015.
  2. ↑ 1940 census. Accessed September 30, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Kapferer, Norbert: “On the 'original magic of the word'. Approaches to a theory of the origin of language in Sigmund Freud. ” In: Gessinger, Joachim and Wolfert von Rahden (ed.): Theories of the origin of language. tape 2 . De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1989, pp. 388-431 .
  4. ↑ Wenke Mückel: Trübner's »German Dictionary« - a dictionary from the time of National Socialism: A lexicographical analysis of the first four volumes (published 1939-1943) . Walter de Gruyter, 2005.
personal data
SURNAME Sparrowhawk, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German linguist, Germanist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH March 25, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH December 10, 1963
Place of death Columbus (Ohio)