Jacob Baden

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Jacob Baden

Jacob Baden (born May 4, 1735 in Vordingborg , † July 5, 1804 in Copenhagen ) was a Danish philologist .

Life

His parents were the principal of the Latin school in Vordingborg Jacob Baden and his wife Else Jacobine From, daughter of the administrator of Antvorskov . On February 4, 1763 he married his niece Sophie Louise Charlotte Klenow.

When Baden was two years old, his father died. He went to Latin school in Vordingborg and began his studies in Copenhagen in 1750 and passed the theological state examination. In 1756 he went on a trip abroad with public support, which initially took him to Göttingen , where the orientalist Johann David Michaelis made a great impression on him and encouraged him to study the ancient languages. From Göttingen he traveled on to Leipzig , where he studied with Christian Fürchtegott Gellert and Johann August Ernesti . After a year in Leipzig, he returned to Copenhagen in 1760. There he obtained a master's degree in philosophy. He read about the German language at the university and was a follower of Professor Jens Schielderup Sneedorff (1724–1764), who considered teaching the fine arts to be more important than the strictly logical-mathematical method. However, this was not very popular; because the students believed that this attitude deterred normal and thorough university studies. People also mistrusted Baden, who had come home from the newfangled Leipzig and wanted to set up a chair for aesthetics. The general trend was not favorable to his professional advancement. In 1762 he became rector of the education department in Altona . The pedagogy was in decline and its salary was tight. In addition, Johann Bernhard Basedow interfered in his work and hindered him. In 1766 he therefore moved to the vice rectorate in Helsingør . The office in Helsingør was no improvement over Altona, but he was hoping to succeed the old rector. Since his office allowed him a lot of time, he began in 1767 to write monthly supplements to Adressekontorets Efterretninger (Messages of the Adresskontor), which were supposed to contain reviews of Danish writings. He was also the editor of the Kritisk Journal from 1768 to 1772 and the Ny kritisk Journal from 1774 to 1779 . His knowledgeable reviews made a huge impact.

When the university reform was pending in 1771, he anonymously published the pamphlet "Upartisk Undersøgelse, om de akademiske Examina ere Videnskaberne og Lærdommen til Gavn eller Skade" (impartial investigation into whether the academic examinations are useful or harmful to science and teaching) and suggested abolishing the examen artium on the German model and also transferring the supervision of schools in each province to a college of the most learned people in the province and not just clergy. Shortly thereafter, another anonymously written article "Raisonnements over Kjøbenhavns Universitet" followed, which complained in particular about the harmful monopoly of the university. In the same year he got the hoped-for rector position, which he then held for nine years. He obtained several classic editions for school use.

In 1780 he became professor of rhetoric . He started his lectures on the Danish language. During this time he was also secretary of "Selskabet til de skjønne Videnskabers Forfremmelse" (Society for the Promotion of Beautiful Sciences). From 1793 to 1801 he published a quarterly Kjøbenhavns Universitets-Journal , in which he continued to write reviews in addition to the concerns of the university. In it he also turned against the unrestrained radicalism of his time. He was so caught up in his science that he lacked any sense of real life. In the middle of the naval battle of Copenhagen he immersed himself in a Latin poet. He felt that the bombardment was not his but the state's business.

In 1794/95 he was rector of the University of Copenhagen. In recent years he had been so plagued by gout that he could only walk from his apartment to the university with the help of a servant.

meaning

Its importance to the classical philology in Denmark is in the writing of textbooks for teaching Latin, especially his "Grammatica Latina, det er Anvisning til det latinske Sprog" in 1782. By royal privilege from April 4, 1782 his grammar dissolved the hitherto common Grammaticae Latinae praecepta in compendio by Søren Anchersen in Denmark and Norway. In Altona he had translated Sneedorff's letters into German and the biography of the general Gnaeus Iulius Agricola des Tacitus and the Cyropädie des Xenophon into Danish, and had written a Danish grammar with a chrestomathy and a Greek grammar. His Latin-Danish lexicon was based on the Novus Linguae Et Eruditionis Romanae Thesaurus by Johann Matthias Gesner , but was very independent. He replaced the nucleus latinitatis of Hans Gram and other lexical work, with which one had to make do until then decreases. But it wasn't easy to use his book; for he sorted the words according to their etymolical order. Only the references to the root word under which the words could be found were in alphabetical order. That is why people continued to use Scheller's Latin-German dictionary . Only his son Torkil Baden implemented the purely alphabetical order in a new edition in 1815. In 1788 he wrote the third part of a Danish-Latin dictionary, which had to be completely redesigned, as there was no such thing in Denmark before. His text editions for school use of the fables of Phaedrus from 1777, Virgil (1778-1780), Horace (1793) and others were an advance in Latin teaching. In contrast, his Greek grammar (only form theory) with the little chrestomathy from the New Testament and Aesop's Fables (1764) failed.

It was also important for the Danish language. It was the time of "language cleansing". He participated in it through his Afhandling om Sprogets Berigelse ved nye Ord og Vendinger (treatise on the enrichment of language with new words and phrases), printed as an appendix to his Forsøg til en Oversættelse af Tacitus (attempt to translate Tacitus). His lectures on Danish grammar, published in 1785 as Forelæsninger over det danske Sprog eller ræsonneret dansk grammar , were also important. It was essentially based on the work of previous researchers. But they ultimately led to the canonization of the Danish written language.

Remarks

The article is mainly based on Dansk biografisk lexikon . Any other information is shown separately.

  1. ↑ Baden, Jacob . In: Christian Blangstrup (Ed.): Salmonsens Konversationsleksikon . 2nd Edition. tape  2 : Arbejderhaver – benzene . JH Schultz Forlag, Copenhagen 1915, p. 497-498 (Danish, runeberg.org ).
  2. ↑ The "Examen artium" was the regular entrance examination for university, which required knowledge of Latin and Greek. So it corresponded to the Abitur, but was accepted by the university until 1883.
  3. ^ List of rectors on the University of Copenhagen website

literature

personal data
SURNAME Baden, Jacob
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish philologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 4, 1735
PLACE OF BIRTH Vordingborg
DATE OF DEATH July 5, 1804
Place of death Copenhagen