Helmut van Thiel

Helmut van Thiel (born September 28, 1932 in Essen , † October 19, 2014 in Cologne ) was a German classical philologist who worked at the University of Cologne . He was a specialist in textual criticism and the history of transmission of the ancient novel and the Homeric epics Iliad and Odyssey .

Life

Helmut van Thiel studied classical philology and archeology at the universities in Cologne , Hamburg , Tübingen , Athens and Rome . On February 27, 1959, he was promoted to Dr. phil. PhD . He then received the travel grant of the German Archaeological Institute for 1960/61 and undertook extensive research and educational trips in the Mediterranean area, which he extended for two years with further grants.

After his return, van Thiel worked at the Institute for Classical Studies in Cologne. At that time he published together with Reinhold Merkelbach Greek and Latin booklets as an introduction to palaeography and textual criticism (1965 and 1969). In 1969 he qualified as a professor in Classical Philology and was appointed adjunct professor in 1970, later as Scientific Councilor and Professor. In 1998 he retired, but remained associated with the institute. He died on October 25, 2014.

Scientific achievement

In his academic work, van Thiel dealt all his life with text criticism and the history of the transmission of ancient texts. His main research interests were ancient novels and the Homeric epics. In his dissertation ( The Review λ of the Pseudo-Callisthenes ) he examined the transmission history of a version of the Greek Alexander novel . His results later flowed into his bilingual edition of this novel, which appeared in 1974 (2nd edition 1982). In his habilitation thesis he dealt with the Greek donkey novel, which has been handed down under the title Lukios, or: The donkey in the corpus of the sophist Lukian . His text-critical examinations and the text edition appeared in 1971/72 in the Zetemata series . At the same time, in 1971, he published an in-depth study of the transmission and reconstruction of Petron's Satyricon , a gaps in the transmission of a Latin novel.

From the 1980s onwards, van Thiel concentrated his studies on the textual criticism and transmission history of the Homeric epics Iliad and Odyssey , in which he took the standpoint of neoanalysis . He assumed that in the Homeric epics numerous small poems by various poets were processed, which resulted in the traditional text through several editing stages. Accordingly, van Thiel called his first monographs on this topic Iliad and Iliads (1982) and Odyssees (1988). After critical editions of the Odyssey (1991) and the Iliad (1996) in book form, he went on to publish his research results on the Internet in order to make them available to the general public and to be able to continuously revise or correct them. The first to appear in 2000 were his editions of the D- Scholien zur Iliad and Homerpur , which contain the complete text of the Iliad and the Odyssey without text-critical comments, punctuation marks and diacritical marks . In 2002 the Lexeis Homerikai ("Homeric words") followed, an alphabetically sorted list of the word explanations of the D-Scholien. In 2014 he published an expanded and improved edition of the D-Scholien.

One of his last research projects was a collection of the critical-exegetical comments on the Homertext that have come down to us from the Alexandrian philologists Aristarchus , Aristophanes of Byzantium , Demetrios Ixion and Zenodotus . He completed the project, which was funded by the German Research Foundation from 1995 to 2007, with a four-volume edition that was published in 2014 by Walter de Gruyter .

Fonts (selection)

• The review λ of the Pseudo-Callisthenes . Bonn 1959 (dissertation)
• with Reinhold Merkelbach: Greek booklet for an introduction to palaeography and textual criticism . Göttingen 1965 ( Classical Studies Booklets 10)
• Latin booklet for an introduction to palaeography and textual criticism . Göttingen 1969 ( Study books on Classical Studies 13)
• The donkey novel. Part: 1. Investigations . Munich 1971 ( Zetemata 54.1; habilitation thesis)
• Petron. Tradition and reconstruction . Leiden 1971 ( Mnemosyne Supplement 20)
• The donkey novel. Part: 2nd synoptic edition . Munich 1972 ( Zetemata 54.2)
• Middle Latin texts. A manuscript reader . Göttingen 1972 ( study books on Classical Studies 14)
• Adventure of a donkey or the metamorphosis of Lukios. The Greek donkey novel . Reconstructed, translated and explained by Helmut van Thiel. Munich 1972 ( Tusculum writings )
• Life and Deeds of Alexander of Macedon. The Greek Alexander Romance by handwriting L . Darmstadt 1974. 2nd, revised and supplemented edition 1983
• Iliads and Iliads . Basel / Stuttgart 1982
• Odysseys . Basel 1988
• Homeri Odyssea . Recognovit Helmut van Thiel. Hildesheim / Zurich / New York 1991 ( Bibliotheca Weidmanniana 1)
• Homeri Iliad . Recognovit Helmut van Thiel. Hildesheim / Zurich / New York 1996 ( Bibliotheca Weidmanniana 2). 2nd, revised edition 2010
• Homer's Odysseys . Developed, translated and explained by Helmut van Thiel. Berlin / Münster 2009
• Homer's Iliads . Developed, translated and explained by Helmut van Thiel. Berlin / Münster 2009
• Aristarchus, Aristophanes Byzantios, Demetrios Ixion, Zenodot. Fragments of the Iliad . Collected, reissued and commented by Helmut van Thiel. 4 volumes, Berlin / Boston 2014. ISBN 978-3-11-034314-4
  • Volume 1: Introduction, edition and commentary on books Α to Η
  • Volume 2: Edition and commentary on books Θ to Ο
  • Volume 3: Edition and Commentary Book Π to Ω
  • Volume 4: Register

literature

• Glotta . Volume 60 (1982), p. 136
• Kürschner's German Scholars Calendar 2007 . Saur, Munich 2007. Volume 3, p. 3711.

Web links

• Literature by Helmut van Thiel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Homepage of Helmut van Thiel at the University of Cologne
• Electronic text output:
  • homerpur (2000)
  • Scholia D in Iliadem (2000)
  • Lexeis Homerikai (2002)
  • Scholia D in Iliadem. Proecdosis aucta et correctior 2014. Secundum codices manu scriptos (2014)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} obituary notice , October 25, 2014 (accessed January 9, 2015).
2. ↑ Cologne University Publication Server: Scholia D .
3. ↑ Cologne University Publication Server : homerpur ; PDF in the German National Library.
4. ↑ Cologne University Publication Server : Lexeis Homerikai .
5. ↑ Cologne University Publication Server : Scholia D in Iliadem. Proecdosis aucta et correctior 2014. Secundum codices manu scriptos . ISBN 978-3-931596-83-5 .
6. ↑ Project proposal 2009 ( Memento of the original dated February 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed February 5, 2015).