Karl Christian Reisig

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Karl Christian Reisig (born November 17, 1792 in Weißensee (Thuringia) , † January 17, 1829 in Venice ) was a German classical philologist .

Life

Karl Christian Reisig, the son of a wealthy doctor, received his first lessons from his father and from 1805 attended the Roßleben monastery school . After graduating from high school, he moved to Leipzig University in autumn 1809 , where he studied philology. Gottfried Hermann encouraged him to study Greek literature and accepted him into his Societas Graeca in his first semester . In 1812 Reisig published a critical edition of Xenophons Oeconomicus together with the student August Meineke , in which he glorified his teacher Gottfried Hermann and strongly criticized his older colleague Christian Daniel Beck . Because of the sensation caused by this writing, Reisig left Leipzig and went to the University of Göttingen . Here he continued his studies and specialized in the comedy poet Aristophanes .

During the popular uprising against Napoleon (1813) Reisig left the university to participate in the wars of liberation as a volunteer in the Saxon army . He was soon appointed sergeant, but did not take part in the fighting until 1815. He continued to occupy himself with Aristophanes and in 1816 published the book Coniectaneorum in Aristophanem liber I , with which he put the poet's textual criticism on a completely new basis. Because of this work, he was established in August 1817 by the University of Jena to the Dr. phil. PhD . His habilitation followed in January 1818 . As a participant in the Wars of Liberation and as a young lecturer who spoke Latin and Greek fluently, he was very popular with students. In 1820 he met Goethe who visited him in Jena.

Since the number of students at the University of Jena has steadily decreased since the assassination attempt by Karl Ludwig Sand (1819), Reisig found himself in financial distress. As an associate professor, he barely earned enough to live on, and as the number of students fell, so did the college fees. That is why he tried to get a transfer to a Prussian university. In the autumn of 1820 Reisig was appointed associate professor at the University of Halle-Wittenberg . Following the example of his Leipzig teacher Hermann, he set up a Societas Graeca in Halle , the most famous members of which were Friedrich Ritschl , Agathon Benary and Friedrich Haase .

In 1824, after August Seidler's death , Reisig was appointed full professor. However, he was not involved in the management of the seminar, which the aged professor Christian Gottfried Schütz (1747–1832) took over together with Seidler's successor Moritz Hermann Eduard Meier . In order to compensate for this setback, Reisig set up a private lecture for the Latin disputation, which increasingly overtook the seminar. He turned down a call to the Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel (1826), as did the co-management of the seminar, which he was then offered.

During his time in Halle, Reisig significantly expanded his knowledge of antiquity. He planned to combine the Leipzig grammatical training with Boeckh's subject philology and therefore dealt intensively with Greek art and epigraphy . The government granted him an educational trip to Italy in 1828. In the autumn of 1828, Reisig traveled to Venice via Leipzig and Munich, where he arrived in November and worked in the Marcus library. Shortly afterwards he became seriously ill. A doctor brought in by his companion Karl Ferdinand Ranke diagnosed “nerve fever”, but could not help Reisig. After the fever disappeared on New Year's Day 1829, Reisig died on January 17th.

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personal data
SURNAME Reisig, Karl Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German classical philologist
DATE OF BIRTH November 17, 1792
PLACE OF BIRTH Weißensee (Thuringia)
DATE OF DEATH January 17, 1829
Place of death Venice