Hermann Hitzig
Hermann Hitzig (born May 9, 1843 in Hottingen ; † August 27, 1918 in Zurich ) was a Swiss classical philologist and educator . As a professor in Zurich, he and his colleague Hugo Blümner published the writings of Pausanias with commentary. This edition is still cited as Hitzig-Blümner today .
Life
Hermann Hitzig came from an old family of scholars whose family tree goes back to the 17th century. His father was the Protestant theologian, Old Testament scholar and exegete Ferdinand Hitzig , who came from Baden and was appointed full professor of theology at the newly founded University of Zurich by Heidelberg in 1833 . Hermann Hitzig attended elementary school and the first classes of grammar school in Zurich and in 1861 moved with his family to Heidelberg, where his father had been appointed professor. Here Hermann Hitzig passed his school leaving examination and went to university to study classical philology, theology and philosophy; he joined the Allemannia Heidelberg fraternity . He later moved to Göttingen , where Hermann Sauppe and Ernst Curtius influenced him. After spending a semester in Berlin , he passed the first state examination in Karlsruhe in 1864 . The following year he received his doctorate in Heidelberg with the dissertation Quaestiones Herculeae (printed Heidelberg 1866). He then worked as a private tutor in Offenbach am Main from June to October and thus obtained the means to deepen his studies in Berlin in the winter semester of 1865/1866.
After his academic years, Hitzig returned to Switzerland and initially worked at the Progymnasium in Burgdorf near Bern , where he married Emilie Steiner in 1867, the sister of the dialect poet and painter Leonhard Steiner (1838–1920) and the orientalist Heinrich Steiner (1841–1889), of the second successor in office of his father Ferdinand Hitzig. With his wife, through whom he was related by marriage to the Zurich linguist and philologist Heinrich Schweizer-Sidler , Hitzig had three sons and two daughters.
In 1869, Hitzig was appointed to succeed Arnold Hug at the Gymnasium in Winterthur, where he worked with Eduard Wölfflin and Johann Jakob Welti . It was here that the famous numismatist Friedrich Imhoof-Blumer acquired his first knowledge of Greek from Hitzig. After the Franco-Prussian War , Hitzig moved to Heidelberg in 1871, where he taught at the grammar school in the neighborhood of his parents for two years. Here he devoted himself in a school program for the first time to his later specialty, the text criticism and explanation of the travel writer Pausanias ( Contributions to the text criticism of Pausanias , 1872/1873). Even after returning to Burgdorf (1873), where he helped as rector to expand the Progymnasium into a grammar school, Hitzig stayed with this topic. With his habilitation in high school education at the University of Bern (1878), the academic career opened up for him, which he began as a regular associate professor in Bern. When the municipal grammar school was founded by merging two institutes, Hitzig was appointed its rector in 1880. For the next six years, Hitzig continued to work on Pausanias (and Isaios ). In 1884 he went on a trip to Greece, where he met Heinrich Schliemann .
When his Winterthur predecessor Arnold Hug had to give up his professorship in Zurich in 1886 due to illness, Hitzig left Bern and went to Zurich University as a full professor of classical philology. Here the grammarian and Sanskritist Adolf Kaegi , the Indo-Europeanist Eduard Schwyzer and especially the archaeologist Hugo Blümner were among his colleagues. Hitzig gave his inaugural lecture on January 22, 1887, "on the credibility of Periegete Pausanias." In the same year the 39th meeting of philologists took place in Zurich, when the board member Hitzig was responsible for the preparation and rehearsal of a Greek play. The University of Zurich elected him dean of the Faculty of Philology I from 1890–1892 and Rector magnificus from 1906–1908 . In addition to his teaching and research activities, Hitzig was a member of the cantonal Matura Commission and from 1893 to 1899 a member of the cantonal education council. Hitzig supplemented his research work with trips abroad. Together with his colleague Blümner, he organized collections to support Greece in the Turkish-Greek War (1896/1897), for which he was appointed Commander of the Greek Order of the Redeemer .
In July 1911, with the unexpected death of his son Hermann Ferdinand Hitzig, Hitzig was hit hard, from which he recovered only slowly. In the years after his 70th birthday, he suffered from a visual impairment that finally forced him to hand over some of his lectures to younger colleagues at Easter 1917. On his 75th birthday, May 9, 1918, he submitted his resignation and was retired. In the winter semester of 1918/1919 he announced a lecture on the Odes of Horace . On August 12th, however, he fell ill with severe pneumonia, to which he succumbed after two weeks in his weakened condition. On August 29th it was handed over to the earth at the Enzenbühl cemetery. His funeral speech was given by his colleague Blümner, who died only a few months later.
Services
Hermann Hitzig has made a name for himself in classical philology, especially as a text critic. His main work is the critical edition of the travel writer Pausanias, which he edited together with Hugo Blümner including a German-language commentary in three volumes (six volumes, Berlin 1896–1910). This edition is still considered fundamental today. In contrast to other researchers (e.g. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff ), Hitzig and Blümner tried to prove the reliability of Pausanias.
One of the first Swiss lecturers to deal with papyrology was also heated. He gave public lectures and lectures about it and always consulted the fragments in the seminar for text-critical and exegetical purposes.
literature
- Eduard Schwyzer : Prof. Dr. Hermann Hitzig May 9, 1843 to August 27, 1918. Prof. Dr. Hugo Blümner August 9, 1844 to January 1, 1919. In: Annual report of the University of Zurich 1918/19, pp. 55–58 ( digitized version ).
- Otto Waser : Hermann Hitzig , in: Biographical Yearbook for Classical Studies , 42nd year (1922), pp. 11-23 ( digitized version ).
Web links
- Literature by and about Hermann Hitzig in the catalog of the German National Library
- Ueli Dill : Hitzig, Hermann. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- Overview of Hermann Hitzig's courses at the University of Zurich (winter semester 1886 to summer semester 1900)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Waser (1922), p. 20 f.
Greek Studies : Karl Jahn (1834–1854) | Otto Ribbeck (1856–1861) | Hermann Usener (1861–1863) | Johann Melchior Knaus (1863–1878) | Hermann Hagen (1878–1898) | Karl Praechter (1897–1907) | Otto Schulthess (1907–1932) | Édouard Tièche (1932–1943) | Willy Theiler (1944–1968) | Thomas Gelzer (1970–1991) | Heinz-Günther Nesselrath (1992–2001) | Arnd Kerkhecker (since 2003)
Latin Studies I: Georg Rettig (1834–1878) | Hermann Hitzig (1878–1886) | Friedrich Haag (1887–1906) | Wilhelm Havers (1915–1920) | Albert Debrunner (1920–1925) | Oskar von Allmen (1931–1932) | Walter Wili (1933–1966) | Max Imhof (1970–1992)
Latin Studies II: Olof Gigon (1948–1982) | Christoph Schäublin (1982–2002) | Martin Korenjak (2003–2009) | Gerlinde Huber-Rebenich (since 2009)
First full professorship (from 1969 Greek studies): Hermann Köchly (1850–1864) | Conrad Bursian (1864–1869) | Arnold Hug (1869–1886) | Hermann Hitzig (1886–1918) | Ernst Howald (1918–1952) | Fritz Wehrli (1952–1967) | Walter Burkert (1969–1996) | Christoph Riedweg (since 1996)
Second Ordinariate (Latin Studies): Heinz Haffter (1959–1970) | Hermann Tränkle (1971–1997) | Therese Fuhrer (1997-2004) | Ulrich Eigler (since 2005)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Heated, Hermann |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swiss classical philologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 9, 1843 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hottingen |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 27, 1918 |
| Place of death | Zurich |