Josef Svennen

Josef Gusten Algot Svnung (born January 7, 1895 in Möcklarp , Vetlanda municipality , Småland , † March 11, 1985 in Uppsala ) was a Swedish classical philologist , linguist and Scandinavian . He dealt with the language and style of the Latin specialist writers, with vulgar Latin appearances in late and middle Latin as well as with the early evidence of Scandinavia and the Goths .

Life

Josef Svennung went to high school in Växjö and Linköping and studied from 1913 Classical Philology, linguistics and prehistory at the University of Uppsala , where he in 1922 when Per Persson with a thesis on the Christian theologian and church historian Orosius Dr. phil. received his doctorate . From 1923 he taught as a private lecturer at Uppsala University and gained international renown through his studies in specialist and vernacular Latin, most of which he wrote in German or French. From 1938 he was a member of the Kungliga Humanistiska Vetenskapssamfundet i Uppsala .

After a trial lecture in the spring of 1944, he was appointed full professor of Latin language and literature at Uppsala University that same year (as the successor to Gösta Thörnell ). The Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Academies in Stockholm elected him as a working member on February 1, 1949, and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences a little later as a corresponding member. From 1958 until his retirement in 1961 he was inspector of the Småland country teams. He also participated in international research companies, for example wrote etymological introductions for the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae , for which he also worked as a flag reader for a long time. From 1951 to 1964 he was co-editor of the journal Archivum latinitatis medii aevi , from 1956 to 1973 editor of the journal Eranos. Acta philologica Suecana (after the death of his colleague Gudmund Björck ).

Svennen studied the Latin language and literature as well as the Nordic languages ​​well into old age. Early on, beginning with his dissertation on the language of Orosius, the Latin prose writers of late antiquity formed a research focus. During a research trip to Italy he discovered a manuscript in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Codex Ambrosianus C 212 inf., 13th / 14th century) by the Latin specialist writer Palladius on veterinary medicine , in which he wrote the previously unknown 14th book of his work recognized agriculture. In 1926 he published the editio princeps of this part of the work. This was followed by monographs on the late Latin reviews of Oreibasios ' medical compilations, on the Latin phonology, on the Middle Latin Compositiones Lucenses and on the pictorial language of the poet Catullus .

From Middle and Neo-Latin texts, Svnung finally came to his second research focus, Scandinavian studies . He examined on the one hand the ancient tradition about the Nordic peoples, especially the Goths , on the other hand the names of places and waters in the Baltic Sea region.

Svenn's students included the linguists and philologists Birger Bergh , Sten Hedberg , Arne Melvinger , Alf Önnerfors and Jan-Olof Tjäder .

Fonts (selection)

• Orosiana. Syntactic, semasiological and critical studies on Orosius . Uppsala 1922 (dissertation)
• Palladii Rutilii Tauri Aemiliani viri illustris Opus agriculturae. Liber quartus decimus de veterinaria medicina . Gothenburg 1926
• Word studies on the late Latin Oribasius reviews . Uppsala 1932
• Studies on Palladius and the Latin technical and vernacular language . Uppsala / Leipzig 1935
• Small contributions to the Latin phonology . Uppsala 1936
• Compositiones Lucenses. Studies on content, textual criticism and language . Uppsala / Leipzig 1941
• Catullus imagery . Uppsala / Leipzig 1945
• Belt and Baltic. Baltic Sea Name Studies. With special consideration for Adam von Bremen . Uppsala 1953
• Forms of address. Comparative research on indirect salutation in the 3rd person and the nominative for the vocative . Uppsala / Wiesbaden 1958
• Scandinavia and Scandia. Latin-Nordic name studies . Uppsala 1963
• Jordanes and Scandia. Critical exegetical studies . Stockholm 1967
• On the history of Goticism . Stockholm 1967
• Scandinavia with Pliny and Ptolemy. Critical-exegetical research on the oldest Nordic language monuments . Uppsala 1974

Editing

• Martin Luther : Tractatus de libertate christiana 1520 . Berlin 1932 ( Small texts for lectures and exercises 164)

literature

• Arne Melvinger, Birger Bergh, Sten Hedberg, Jan-Olof Tjäder: Smolanda Roma Scandia. Bibliographia Svenneniana annos MCMXVIII – MCMLXXIV comprehendens . In: Eranos . Volume 72 (1974), pp. 79-92 (complete list of publications)
• Ernst Vogt : Josef Svnung . In: Yearbook of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . Yearbook 1986, pp. 245–247 ( PDF ) = Erich Lamberz (editor): Ernst Vogt: Literatur der Antike und Philologie der Neuzeit. Selected writings . Berlin / Boston 2013, pp. 439–441
• Alf Önnerfors: Gudmund Björck (1905–1955) and Josef Svnung (1895–1985) . In: Eikasmos . Volume 4 (1993), pp. 131-136

Web links

• Entry on Josef Svnung at the Kungliga Vitterhetsakademien (Swedish)