Heinrich Ludolf Ahrens

Heinrich Ludolf Ahrens

Heinrich Ludolf Ahrens (born June 6, 1809 in Helmstedt ; † September 24, 1881 in Hanover ) was a German classical philologist who, as a grammar school director, published basic works on the dialects and on the beginnings of the ancient Greek language .

Live and act

Ahrens and Karl Ludwig Grotefend in medallions above the wood engraving “The feast of the philologists in the Odeon in Hanover”,
colored wood engraving from the EHXA workshop after August Klemme , around 1870

Ahrens grew up as the seventh son of a teacher in Helmstedt and attended the Julianum grammar school there from 1817. He studied antiquity and linguistics from 1826 to 1829 with Karl Otfried Müller and Georg Ludolf Dissen in Göttingen . His work De Athenarum statu politico was honored by the philosophical faculty, and he received his doctorate and habilitation there in 1829 - at the age of 20. In 1830 he became a collaborator at the Göttingen grammar school and in 1831 a teacher at the pedagogy in Ilfeld , where he stayed for 14 years and married a daughter of the director Adolf Friedrich Brohm. There he published his groundbreaking main work on the Greek dialects, which was based on Jacob Grimm's method and made him the "founder of modern dialectology ". Herbert Weir Smyth described this work as a pioneering achievement that had remained unsurpassed for almost forty years. While writing it, he contracted an inflammation of his right hand, which he tried in vain to cure during a stay in Berlin, but where he made the acquaintance of important scholars. Ahrens learned to write with his left hand (until he was able to use the right one again in 1869).

In 1845 he was appointed director of the grammar school in Lingen and in 1849, as the successor to Georg Friedrich Grotefend, director of the Lyceum , the Hanoverian old-language grammar school, an office that he held for almost 30 years. His student Otto Crusius remembered "how the inconspicuous man knew how to force the souls of his listeners with elegant, thoughtful speech". Ahrens put the lessons especially for the lower grades on a new organizational basis and set permanent standards for ancient language lessons with his own textbooks. In doing so, he relied on the Homer method , namely starting as quickly as possible (usually after a six-week basic course in grammar and lexis) with the classic odyssey as original reading, instead of practicing mechanical grammatical forms as before.

As a scientist, Ahrens explored many areas; In addition to classical philology, mythology and an interest in antiquity , he also published on theological and regional historical issues. In doing so, he often did pioneering work, but was subsequently refuted in many places, which is why he belongs to the second row of scientists of his time, but one of the outstanding there.

As a deputy of the higher schools, he was a member of the First Chamber of the State Assembly of the Kingdom of Hanover in 1849 , but was soon recalled from there because he made no secret of his German patriotic (instead of Hanoverian) sentiments. In 1869 Ahrens was appointed to the first Hanover synod by King Wilhelm of Prussia . He was a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen (historical-philological class) and the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and, since 1863, a member of the Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica in Rome. Ahrens retired in 1879 as a Privy Councilor and died on September 24, 1881 in Hanover. He had two daughters and three sons.

Fonts

His 100 publications are listed in Heinrich Ludolf Ahrens: Small writings by HL Ahrens. Edited by Otto Crusius, Hanover 1891, pp. X – XV. Including:

• De graecae linguae dialectis. Göttingen 1839–1843, 2 volumes (digitized version) ; 2nd edition by Meister , 1881 ff. And
• Bucolicorum graecorum reliquiae. Leipzig 1855–1859, 2 vols. (Digitized version) ; Text edition, ibid. 1850 a. more often.

He has also published numerous papers, most recently

• Contributions to Greek and Latin etymology. 1st issue, Leipzig 1879 (digitized version) .

The following are intended for school:

• Greek elementary book from Homer. 2nd edition, Göttingen 1870 (digitized version) and
• Greek form theory of the Homeric and Attic dialect. 2nd edition, Göttingen 1869 (digitized version) .

A selection of his historical work:

• The office of the keys. Hanover 1864 (digitized) . Here Ahrens interprets the key of Peter as the office of the administration of the remedies (p. 98), instead of only looking at it as a housekeeper.
• History of the Hanover Lyceum from 1267 to 1533 (= annual report of Hanover Lyceum I about the school year 1869/70. ). Hanover 1870 (digitized version) , further school program publications .
• On the oldest history of the Loccum monastery. In: Journal of the Historical Association for Lower Saxony 38 (1872), pp. 1-47 (Part 1) , 40 (1874/1875), pp. 372-423 (Part 2) , 41 (1876), pp. 47-156 (Part 3) (digital copies of the SLUB Dresden).

literature

• Albert Müller:  Ahrens, Heinrich . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 45, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1900, pp. 716-720.
• Carl Capelle : Heinrich Ludolf Ahrens. In: Biographisches Jahrbuch für Alterthumskunde. Volume 4, 1881, ed. by Conrad Bursian , pp. 89-103.
• Carl Capelle: In memory of Heinrich Ludolf Ahrens. Program Hannover 1st Lyceum, Hannover 1882, pp. 3–14.
• Georg Meyer: Directory of teachers and students of the Ilfeld Pedagogy from Easter 1800 to before Easter 1853. In: Annual report on the Royal Monastery School in Ilfeld, from Easter 1905 to Easter 1906. Göttingen 1906, pp. 3–71, here p. 8 .
• Wilhelm Rothert : General Hanoverian biography. Volume 1: Hannoversche men and women since 1866. Sponholtz, Hannover 1912, pp. 7-11.
• Klaus Mlynek : Ahrens, Heinrich Ludolf. In: Dirk Böttcher , Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein, Hugo Thielen: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2002, ISBN 3-87706-706-9 , p. 25 f. (Preview) .

Web links

Commons : Franz Heinrich Ludolf Ahrens  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Heinrich Ludolf Ahrens in the catalog of the German National Library
• Heinrich Ludolf Ahrens' personnel sheet in the personnel file of the BIL expert body in the archive database of the Library for Research on Educational History (BBF)

supporting documents

1. ^ Klaus Mlynek: Ahrens, Heinrich Ludolf. In: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon. From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2002, p. 25 f., Here p. 25 .
2. ↑ Georg Meyer: Directory of teachers and students of the Ilfeld pedagogy from Easter 1800 to before Easter 1853. In: Annual report on the Royal Monastery School in Ilfeld, from Easter 1905 to Easter 1906. Göttingen 1906, pp. 3–71, here p. 5 .
3. ^ Klaus Mlynek: Ahrens, Heinrich Ludolf. In: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon. From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2002, p. 25 f., Here p. 26 .
4. ^ Full text of the review on Crusius (ed.): Kleine Schriften , p. 236.
5. ^ Carl Capelle: Heinrich Ludolf Ahrens. In: Biographisches Jahrbuch für Alterthumskunde. Vol. 4, 1881, ed. by Conrad Bursian, pp. 89-103, here p. 91 f.
6. ↑ Otto Crusius: Foreword. In: Heinrich Ludolf Ahrens: Small writings from HL Ahrens. Edited by Otto Crusius, Hanover 1891, pp. V – IX, here p. IX .
7. ↑ See Heinrich Ludolf Ahrens: The Greek lessons at the Lyceum. In: Annual report of the Lyceum in Hanover. Easter 1860. Fr. Culemann, Hannover 1860, pp. 20–32 (digitized version ) .
8. ↑ See Stefan Kipf: Learning Greek with Homer and Herodotus. Attempts to reorganize the early Greek lessons since neo-humanism. In: Werner Hüllen, Friedrike Kippel (Hrsg.): Languages ​​of Education - Education through languages ​​in Germany in the 18th and 19th centuries. Wiesbaden 2005, p. 91-104, here p. 101 f., And Carl Capelle: Heinrich Ludolf Ahrens. In: Biographisches Jahrbuch für Alterthumskunde. Vol. 4, 1881, ed. by Conrad Bursian, pp. 89-103, here pp. 96-99.
9. ↑ A review that appeared in the journal Athenaeum on July 30, 1892, p. 156 provides information about the importance of his scientific work .
10. ^ Carl Capelle: Heinrich Ludolf Ahrens. In: Biographisches Jahrbuch für Alterthumskunde. Vol. 4, 1881, ed. by Conrad Bursian, pp. 89-103, here pp. 101 f.
11. ↑ Preview on Google Books.