John Koch (English studies)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Johannes August Hermann "John" Koch (born December 22, 1850 in Orunia , West Prussia , † September 28, 1934 in Berlin ) was a German literary scholar. He was one of the most important researchers on the literature of the English Middle Ages, especially the works of Geoffrey Chaucer .

Life

Koch attended the castle school (Königsberg) . After graduating from high school in 1869, he studied Romance and English at the Albertus University in Königsberg . In 1869 he became a member of the Corps Baltia Königsberg . He interrupted his studies to participate in the Franco-German War as a war volunteer in the 1st East Prussian Field Artillery Regiment . In 1874 he passed the philological state examination in German and modern philology . In 1875 he was promoted to Dr. phil. PhD .

He entered the school service in the Koenigsberg area and made several trips to the United Kingdom and to France and Italy. In 1878 he married Thomasine Pole , with whom he had three daughters. A year later he switched to the Dorotheenstädtische Realschule , where he stayed for 32 years. Koch died after a long illness at the age of 84.

Despite his teaching activity, Koch found time for academic work in Romance and English philology, comparative literature and pedagogy. In particular in the research of the late medieval English author Geoffrey Chaucer, Koch became a globally recognized authority. Between 1879 and 1934, Koch reviewed more than 70 publications from Chaucer research. He wrote several dozen specialist articles on questions of sources and manuscripts. His text-critical editions of the Canterbury Tales and his text edition of Chaucer's so-called Smaller Poems are of particular importance .

On the occasion of his retirement in October 1911, Koch was awarded the 4th Class Red Eagle Order .

Corps student

Cook on the entire committee of the VAC 1895–1905
Cook on the general committee of the VAC 1919–1924

His mother corps, Baltia Königsberg , unanimously awarded Koch honorary membership in 1921. From Guestphalia Berlin he received the corps bow in 1929 and the ribbon in 1932. Before and after the First World War , he was involved in the Association of Old Corps Students for decades . He wrote well over a hundred articles for the Academic Monthly Bulletins and the Deutsche Corpszeitung . From 1893 to 1905 he published the Berlin address book for Alter Kösener Corps Students . The “cookbook” led through the widespread corps student world of Berlin and its surroundings and was known to every corps student. The 16th edition was published in 1933. When the sheets of memory (Schmiedeberg) were bought by the VAC in 1925, Koch subjected them to the first critical review.

Bigger posts
Corps students as writers
In memory of the corps students who died as volunteers in 1870/71
The volunteer hunters of 1813
The corps and science
The corps and politics
The Kösener Association in the World War (1921)
Corps student war newspapers and war reports
Contributions to the promotion of the corps
The history of the Corps Baltia (1906)
Baltia in World War I (1921)
On the history of the Silber-Litthauer (1925/26)
One hundred years of Königsberg student corps (1928)

expenditure

  • (Ed.) Geoffrey Chaucer: The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale. A Critical Edition . Berlin: Felber; Heidelberg: Winter, 1902.
  • (Ed.) A Detailed Comparison of the Eight Manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales . London: Kegan Paul, French, Trübner & Co., 1913.
  • (Ed.) Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: Based on the Ellesmere Manuscript with readings, annotations, and a glossary . Heidelberg: Winter, 1915.
  • Chaucer's erudition in the Roman classics . English Studies 57 (1923), 8-84.
  • (Ed.) Geoffrey Chaucer's Smaller Poems: together with an introduction, readings, notes and a dictionary . Heidelberg: Winter, 1928.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1930, 86/109
  2. ↑ Dissertation: About "Jourdain de Blaivies" - an old French heroic poem of the Carolingian legends .
  3. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 2/357
  4. ↑ See G. van Setten (1960)

literature

  • Koch, John , in: Friedhelm Golücke : Author's lexicon for student and university history. SH-Verlag, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-89498-130-X . Pp. 178-179.
  • Eleanor P. Hammond: Chaucer. A Bibliographical Manual . London: Macmillan, 1908
  • Paul G. Ruggiers (ed.): Editing Chaucer: The Great Tradition , ed. Paul G. Ruggiers. Norman, Oklahoma: Pilgrim Press, 1984.
  • Siegfried Schindelmeiser: The Albertina and its students 1544 to WS 1850/51 and the history of the Corps Baltia II zu Königsberg i. Pr. (1970-1985). For the first time complete, illustrated and commented new edition in two volumes with an appendix, two registers and a foreword by Franz-Friedrich Prinz von Preussen, edited by R. Döhler and G. v. Klitzing, Munich 2010. ISBN 978-3-00-028704-6 .
  • CFE Spurgeon: Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion. 1357-1900 . 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900.
  • Gerhard van Setten: Dr. phil. John Koch Baltiae Koenigsberg . Einst und Jetzt , Vol. 5, 1960, pp. 124-125.
  • Richard Utz: Editing Chaucer: John Koch and the Forgotten Tradition . "And gladly wolde he learn and gladly teche." Studies on Language and Literature in Honor of Professor Dr. Karl Heinz Göller . Ed. Władysław Witalisz. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2001, pp. 17-26.
  • Richard Utz: Chaucer and the Discourse of German Philology. A History of Reception and an Annotated Bibliography of Studies, 1798-1948 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002).

Web links

Commons : John Koch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Cook, john
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Koch, Johannes August Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German literary scholar
DATE OF BIRTH December 22, 1850
PLACE OF BIRTH Orunia , West Prussia
DATE OF DEATH September 28, 1934
Place of death Berlin