Holger Friis Johansen

Holger Friis Johansen (born April 9, 1927 in Frederiksberg ; † November 2, 1996 ) was a Danish classical philologist .

Life

After completing his studies at the University of Oxford in 1952 , Friis Johansen, son of the classical archaeologist Knud Friis Johansen , worked until 1960 as editor of the Danish Lexicon of Middle Latin ( Lexicon mediae latinitatis danicae = Ordbog over dansk middelalderlatin ). He was also an archivist in the Danish National Archives from 1954 to 1961 . At the same time, he wrote his dissertation on General Reflection in Tragic Rhesis at the University of Copenhagen , which he was able to complete in 1959. Two years later he was appointed full professor of classical philology at the University of Aarhus and held this position for over 35 years until his death. In 1973 and 1974 he was also deputy rector of the university.

In addition to his university duties, Friis Johansen became one of the managing directors of the Society for the Translation of Historical Cuneiform Texts from 1965 and was appointed a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences in 1977 . He was also a member of the International Commission of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae from 1979 on .

He was married to the assistant professor Bente Friis Johansen, with whom he edited, among other things, a Danish- Middle Latin lexicon.

Works

Friis Johansen understood antiquity as a unit and therefore published on both Greek and Latin texts. He placed a special focus on archaic and classical Greek literature, including above all Greek tragedy . In addition to his dissertation on rhesis, the editing and translation of Aeschylus ' Die Schutzflehenden (1970–1981) are among his main works. Shortly before his death he was able to complete an extensive work on Theognis von Megara , which was published in three parts in the journal Classica et Mediaevalia , which he co-edited from 1979 to 1984 (1991, 1993, 1996).

In addition, he has written several publications for a larger audience. For example, he edited various Greek authors in translation, including Aristophanes , Pindar , Bakchylides and Thucydides . He also published introductory works on Greek literature up to Alexander the Great ( Fri mands tale. Græsk litteratur indtil Alexander den Stores tid ), Aeschylus and archaic Greek poetry.

Web links

• Obituary by Bodil Due on the Aarhus University website (Danish; Internet Archive )