Heinrich August Wilhelm Stolze

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Franz Xaver Gabelsberger (left) and Wilhelm Stolze

Heinrich August Wilhelm Stolze (born May 20, 1798 in Berlin ; † January 8, 1867 there ) was a German stenographer.

Wilhelm Stolze, along with Franz Xaver Gabelsberger, is the progenitor of the German unified abbreviation , which is official in the Federal Republic of Germany and Austria . His work in the Stolze-Schrey unification system , which the stenographers of German-speaking Switzerland chose as a unitary system, has an even stronger effect .

Live and act

Heinrich August Wilhelm Stolze

Wilhelm Stolze invented the first strictly scientific method of shorthand (shorthand) for the German language between 1838 and 1840 . After Franz Xaver Gabelsberger's breakthrough between 1817 and 1834/1849 to the independent German art of rapid writing or " cursive shorthand" (compared to the older " geometric " English-French), with which the numerous connections and peculiarities of the German language had been coped with for the first time , and Gabelsberger Subsequent triumphant advance through the southern German , Habsburg and Wettin states, on the other hand, Stolzes opened up more demanding, indeed accurate, but increasingly heavy weight, first Prussia , then northern Germany and Switzerland for the newer shorthand system. Due to his extensive consideration of linguistic correctness and constant reliability of phonetic, even spelling, written designations (principles that Prussia adopted, as opposed to the southern German states), Stolze stopped the spread of the more nimble Gabelsberger "art of speech" across Germany and carried it thus a decisive factor in the decades-long continuation of the struggle for new shorthand advances in the German-speaking area , although all later systems should lag far behind the Gabelsberger or Stolzian in terms of influence and distribution. Proud written thoughts are, according to which Gabelsbergers, the main source from which today's German unity shorthand (officially 1924, simplified 1936 and 1968) feeds.

As the son of a master shoemaker, Stolze grew up in poor circumstances. In the hope of being able to become a pastor, he attended the Joachimsthalsche Gymnasium in Berlin from 1809 and graduated with success; However, lack of money barred his access to the university, and so from 1817 he had to earn his living as an employee in the Berlin fire insurance company. In 1819, however, he began his detailed preparatory work on a new German shorthand theory. In 1835 he left his job and continued to work as an independent businessman for a few years, although at that time he had been teaching ancient Greek and Latin as well as newer languages ​​( French , English, etc.) as a tutor for a long time . According to his own statements, in 1838 he finally came up with his solution to the difficulties of naming self-contained voices in German root words - from where he redesigned his procedure from scratch - until 1840 he devoted himself exclusively to elaborating it. In viewing and treating the subject, he closely followed the insights of Karl Ferdinand Becker's ideal German theory of sound and word formation (in contrast to Grimm's and Humboldt's more historical linguistics). In 1841, a special grant from the Prussian Ministry of Education helped him to print his theoretical and practical textbook on German stenography for higher schools and for self-teaching, using a new method that combines brevity and completeness of the terms .

Stolzes Schnell- (or "Eng-") writing method had received decisive impulses from Gabelsberger's "Instructions for the German Art of Speech Drawing", first published in 1834, but in contrast to that, Stolze had spent years dealing with all known historically known shorthand systems before establishing his own principles from antiquity, the Middle Ages and the modern era. His ideal Becker approach, carefully supplemented by Grimm and Humboldt views and insights, gained a high linguistic content in his work through exhaustive verbatim distinctions, but at the same time made it more clumsy than in Gabelsberger's work; Stolze did the latter on the one hand by increasing his abbreviations for endings, prefixes, suffixes and stem syllables to almost 1,000 pieces - the use of which soon enabled him and his students to take notes on even the most fleeting speeches and exchanges - and on the other hand through their use Regulation and final listing made up for it, which made his procedure more difficult to adhere to with such pronounced certainty. Wilhelm Stolze also presented an abbreviation (see there for details).

Proud intention to make his typeface available to the broadest groups of users as a general business and occasional typeface, and even to gradually replace the previously common cursive typeface with it, failed due to the burden of the difficulties he was faced with, higher linguistic information and his exemplary conscientiousness For the sake of the accuracy of phonetic and spelling designation, charged his invention. Neither broader strata of the population nor general educational institutions accepted them; However, she rendered impeccable service to specialist stenographers. In 1844 he and his disciples Karl Gottlob Kreßler and Agathon Jaquet joined together with Berlin's first shorthand association, and in 1845 Stolz's simplified instructions for German shorthand began to appeal to broader circles. Its circulation exceeded the ten thousand while still alive; later, after radical cuts in the system by his son and successor Franz Stolze in 1872, it approached one hundred thousand. In 1847 the Stenographic Bureau was acquired by the Prussian Landtag , which Stolze briefly dismissed; since 1848, however, he was the undisputed head of the school, and the “Bureau” later stuck to Wilhelm Stolze's original written principles even after the simplifications made by his son in 1872. Stolze died one year after the 25th anniversary of the existence of his method at the age of 68 as the founder of one of the two main streams of German rapid writing, to which tens of thousands were attached even then.

  • Grave site - front view

  • Grave site - rear view (detail)

His grave can be found in the Protestant cathedral cemetery I in Berlin-Mitte , Liesenstrasse 8, in field 3, G3.

Since 1898 a street in the Berlin district of Friedrichshain has been named Wilhelm Stolzes, as were also named after Gabelsberger and Heinrich Roller in Berlin streets.

Publications

  • Theoretical-practical textbook of German shorthand. 1st edition Berlin 1841, 4th edition 1865
  • Theoretical-practical textbook of German shorthand for higher schools and for self-teaching. by Wilhelm Stolze. Mittler, Berlin 1888, publisher Franz Stolze . Digitized edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf . Description of the second and last revision of the Stolze shorthand system (Neu-Stolze) under Franz Stolze before the merger to form the Stolze-Schrey unit system.
  • Instructions for German Stenography , 1st edition Berlin 1845 a. ff.

In addition, reading books in shorthand, magazine articles in the newspaper of the Berliner Centralverein, etc. v. a. m.

literature

  • Christian Johnen, General History of Shorthand. 4., completely reworked. Ed., Berlin 1940
  • Friedrich Wilhelm Kaeding : Wilhelm Stolze, his life and work. 18 volumes in 1. Verlag für Stenographie, Magdeburg 1922.
  • Laurenz Schneider, Georg Blauert, History of the German Shorthand. Wolfenbüttel 1936
  • Arthur Mentz, Fritz Haeger, History of Shorthand. 3rd edition, Wolfenbüttel 1981
  • Franz Moser, Karl Erbach, Living shorthand story. 9th edition., Darmstadt 1995
  • Ernst Alberti:  Proud, Heinrich August Wilhelm . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 36, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1893, pp. 425-428.

u. v. a. m.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wilhelm-Stolze-Strasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
personal data
SURNAME Proud, Heinrich August Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German stenographer
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1798
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH January 8, 1867
Place of death Berlin