Heinrich Beck (philologist)

Heinrich Beck (born April 2, 1929 in Nördlingen , Bavaria ; † June 5, 2019 in Aschheim ) was a German Germanic and Scandinavian Medievalist .

life and work

After graduating from high school in 1949, Heinrich Beck studied German , Scandinavian and linguistic studies in Munich and Reykjavík . In 1962 he was in Munich for Nordic philology and Germanic antiquity with the dissertation The Ebersignum in Germanic. A contribution to Germanic animal symbolism to the Dr. phil. PhD . In 1967 Beck completed his habilitation in Munich with a thesis on studies of Germanic image and word references .

From 1968 to 1978 Beck held a professorship for older German and Nordic studies at Saarbrücken University . From 1978 until his retirement in 1994 he taught as a full professor for older German studies including Nordic at the University of Bonn .

Beck's main area of ​​work was the lexicons and syntax in the old Germanic languages, especially the old Norse language . In connection with this, Beck has published works that take a position on various aspects and related questions on Germanic and Old Norse literature and culture as well as on so-called Germanic antiquity as a whole. Beck was the initiator of numerous conferences on his original research focus as well as on Germanic antiquity. From these conferences, edited volumes with the written versions of the lectures of the participating scholars were published as supplementary volumes to Beck's Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). From 1968 to 2008 Beck was one of the editors and author of numerous articles of the 2nd edition of the Reallexikons der Germanischen Altertumskunde, which was completed in 2008 with 35 volumes and 2 index volumes. He was still significantly involved in its exclusively digital continuation of Germanische Altertumskunde Online (GAO).

In 1994 Heinrich Beck was honored by colleagues on his 65th birthday with a commemorative publication, which his colleague Heiko Uecker from Bonn was responsible for as editor. The title of the celebratory publication Studies on Old Germanic shows through the subject-thematic range of the individual contributions how far Heinrich Beck researched and published and how far he has earned an international reputation as a high-ranking scientist. This commemorative publication was also published as a supplement to the RGA. On the occasion of their 85th birthday, the Munich Institute for Nordic Philology organized a symposium in honor of Heinrich Beck and Kurt Schiers on April 2, 2014; The interdisciplinary spectrum of lectures and the presence of numerous well-known Scandinavians and Germanists underlined the influence that Heinrich Beck's continued studies in Germanic antiquity and medieval studies exerted even after his retirement.

Honors

• 1982: Corresponding member of the Philological-Historical Class of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen
• 1988: Knight's Cross of the Icelandic Order of the Falcons
• 2002: Honorary doctorate from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis (USA)

literature

• Wilfried Kürschner : Linguist Handbook . Gunter Narr Verlag, Tübingen 1997. ISBN 3-8233-5001-3 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Heinrich Beck in the catalog of the German National Library
• Page from Beck at the German Institute of the University of Bonn
• Obituary from the University of Bonn

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Database query on the website of the Icelandic President (incorrectly listed as Heinrich Bech ), accessed on July 6, 2020.
2. ↑ Communications from the University of Bonn