Hermann Hirt

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hermann Hirt (also called Herman Hirt , born December 19, 1865 in Magdeburg , † September 12, 1936 in Gießen ) was a German Indo-Europeanist .

After studying Indo-European Linguistics at the Universities of Leipzig and Freiburg, Hirt received his doctorate in 1889 at the University of Leipzig, where he also completed his habilitation in 1891. 1891-1896 Hirt worked as a private lecturer for Indo-European languages ​​at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Leipzig , followed by an extraordinary professorship for Indo-European Linguistics 1896-1912 there. From 1912 until his death in 1936, Hirt was a full professor of Sanskrit and Indo-European linguistics at the University of Giessen .

Hirt made fundamental contributions to the investigation of the accent and ablaut of the Indo-European original language . His Indo-European grammar was published in seven volumes between 1921 and 1927. A new edition of these volumes was published in November 2009 as paperback by Cambridge University Press .

Hirt assisted the archaeologists who claimed that the original home of the Indo-Europeans had to be in Northern Europe - a view that was controversial even then and now practically refuted. A peasant democracy ruled in his tribal society. Only during the expansion did the conquerors settle down as an aristocracy. This image of the Teutons, not a Nazi one, was common in the 19th century. Hirt also criticized the racist-anthropological speculations about the Indo-Europeans; he warned u. a. at the risk of describing the indo-European era as a golden age. He valued work that compared the Germanic peoples with "non-racial" peoples.

Works

  • The Indo-European accent. A manual . Strasbourg 1895.
  • Etymology of the New High German language . Munich 1909.
  • Indo-European grammar . 7 volumes. Heidelberg 1921-1937.
  • Manual of the primitive Germanic . 3 parts. Heidelberg 1931-1934.
  • The Indo-Europeans. Their distribution, their original home and their culture . 2 volumes. Strasbourg 1905–1907.

About Hermann Hirt

Web links