Jost Trier

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Jost Trier (born December 15, 1894 in Schlitz , † September 15, 1970 in Bad Salzuflen ) was a German linguist and Germanic Medievalist . He was full professor for Germanic Philology at the University of Münster .

Life

Jost Trier was the son of a doctor. In 1924 he received his doctorate from the University of Freiburg . After his habilitation in 1929 , he held the chair for Germanic Philology in Münster from 1932. With his 1931 work “The German vocabulary in the sense of the mind. The history of a linguistic field ”he founded the word field research . He took up ideas from Ferdinand de Saussure and saw the vocabulary as a system of mutually determining units.

After the seizure of power of the National Socialists came Trier 1933, the NSDAP in. Trier radically differentiated German studies from research into other languages. Such philologies bear “no responsibility for the existence and fate of those languages”. The Germanist, on the other hand, is "the representative of his national community". Since the German “people's body”, the Germanic “people's community as a primordial greatness” carries the Germanist in its work, it cannot be neutral, objective and non-judgmental.

In 1933 Trier took over the chairmanship of the Folklore Commission for Westphalia , which he resigned in 1943. In 1934 Trier was elected a full member of the Historical Commission for Westphalia . In 1969 its membership was converted into a corresponding one. From 1935 to 1937 Trier was Dean of the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Münster. In 1939 he was elected a full member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

In the post-war period, Jost Trier became rector of the University of Münster in 1956/57. Since 1961 he was a member of the Senate of the German Research Foundation . In 1964, Trier was one of the founders of the Institute for the German Language in Mannheim . In 1968 Jost Trier was awarded the Konrad Duden Prize .

Jost Trier died on September 15, 1970 in a sanatorium in Bad Salzuflen. Three days later, on September 18, he was buried in his home town of Schlitz next to his wife, who had preceded him by a few days in death. Her son is the archaeologist Bendix Trier (* 1930).

The linguistic field

With his habilitation thesis, Jost Trier led the German vocabulary in the sense of the mind. The history of a linguistic field introduces the concept of the linguistic field into linguistics. Trier defines the linguistic field later as

"The linguistic realities living between individual words and the whole vocabulary, which, as a part of the whole, have the characteristic in common with the word that they are broken down, but with the vocabulary that they are broken down."

- Jost Trier, essays and lectures on word field theory , The Hague, Paris 1973, p. 148

Trier emphasizes that the field is a way to better understand the structure of the language and it can help to better examine the history and change of the language content. A change in meaning is often a change in the field structure.

Trier examined the meaningful area of ​​the mind once at time A, "the state of courtly poetry around 1200" and at time B, "the state of mysticism around 1300, as it is with Meister Eckehart ." The linguistic field of courtly poetry is exposed the terms wisdom, art and cunning together and finally shifts in the writings of Meister Eckehart to wisdom, art, wizzen.

The concept of the word field proved to be extremely fruitful for linguistics. The concept of the word field focuses on the relationships between the individual words and emphasizes in its own concept what is already echoed in Ferdinand de Saussure's valeur term: that the meanings of a word always result from the relationships to other words. Trier's achievement is that he has overcome the atomistic view that previously prevailed in semantics. Trier's work had a strong influence on Walter Porzig , André Jolles and Gunther Ipsen . This work is still important for modern collocation research .

Publications (selection)

  • Saint Jodocus. His life and his admiration, at the same time some contributions to the history of the German naming (= Germanistische Abhandlungen , Heft 56). M. & H. Marcus, Breslau 1924, DNB 362906254 (dissertation University of Freiburg im Breisgau 1924).
  • Essays and lectures on word field theory . Edited by Anthony Lee and Oskar Reichmann. Mouton, The Hague / Paris 1973.

literature

  • Werner Zillig (Ed.): Jost Trier. Life - work - effect , with contributions by Carsten Albers u. a., Aa, Münster 1994, ISBN 3-930472-48-1 .
  • Werner Zillig (Ed.): About Jost Trier , lectures on the occasion of the Jost Trier Memorial Day on December 15, 1994, with contributions by Karl-Heinz Borck u. a. Afterword by Susanne Höfer-Lutz and Werner Zillig, Aa, Münster 1994, ISBN 3-930472-50-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 620.
  2. ↑ Jost Trier, Why do we study the history of our mother tongue? In: Die Welt als Geschichte 4, 1938, pp. 347–357, here p. 350.
  3. ↑ Jost Trier, Why do we study the history of our mother tongue? In: Die Welt als Geschichte IV (1938), pp. 347–357, p. 349
  4. ↑ Jost Trier, Why do we study the history of our mother tongue? In: Die Welt als Geschichte 4, 1938, pp. 347–357, here p. 347.
  5. ^ Presentation of the history of the Folklore Commission for Westphalia on their website .
  6. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 242.
  7. ^ Yearbook of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen , Verlag Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970, p. 110.
  8. ↑ Jost Trier: The linguistic field. A dispute. In: Jost Trier: Essays and lectures on word field theory , ed. v. Anthony van der Lee and Oskar Reichmann, The Hague, Paris 1973, pp. 150–151.
  9. ↑ Jost Trier: wood. Etymologies from the Niederwald. Cologne and Graz 1952 (= Münster research , 6); Jost Trier: Venus. Etymologies around the forage leaves. Cologne and Graz 1963 (= Münster research , 15).
predecessor Office successor
Hellmut Becher Rector of the University of Münster
1956–1957 		Wilhelm Klemm
personal data
SURNAME Trier, Jost
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German linguist and Germanist
DATE OF BIRTH December 15, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Schlitz (Vogelsbergkreis)
DATE OF DEATH September 15, 1970
Place of death Bad Salzuflen