Karl Ferdinand Becker (Linguist)

Karl Ferdinand Becker

Grave of Karl Ferdinand Becker

Karl Ferdinand Becker (born April 14, 1775 in Lieser ; † September 4, 1849 in Offenbach am Main ) was a German doctor, scientist, pedagogue and linguist.

origin

His parents were Franz Anton Becker, head of an electoral iron hammer near Lieser / Mosel, and Anna Maria, née Sartorius. The family returned to their Westphalian homeland around 1780 and the father bought an estate in Neuhaus Castle .

Life

After attending the grammar school in Paderborn , Karl Ferdinand Becker entered the seminary in Hildesheim and shortly afterwards became a teacher at the grammar school Josephinum . However, he renounced an ecclesiastical career and studied medicine at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen from 1799 . In 1802 he won an award from the medical faculty for his treatise on the influence of external heat and cold on the human body .

In 1803 he married Amalie Schmincke from Karlshafen and established himself as a general practitioner in Höxter . In 1810 he became sub-director of the powder and saltpeter factories in the Département der Leine and Harz ( Kingdom of Westphalia ) and returned to Göttingen, where he had also given scientific lectures at the university since 1812. When the epidemic of “ nervous fever ” broke out around 1814 after the victory of the Allied troops over Napoleon , he published a treatise on the knowledge and cure of petechial fever . He was then called to Frankfurt am Main , where he worked briefly as a doctor in the military hospital “Im deutschen Haus” before becoming a senior doctor at the war hospital in Heusenstamm ( Principality of Isenburg) and then at a hospital in Aschaffenburg ( Grand Duchy of Frankfurt ).

After the "Central Hospital Administration" was dissolved, he settled in Offenbach as a general practitioner in January 1815. Since the doctor's office was not a financial success, he devoted himself not only to raising his eight children, but also to raising the children of friends. In 1823 he built a boarding school in his house in order to be able to devote himself entirely to educational tasks. While teaching the German language, he found that a basic grammar was missing. Since then he has devoted himself to language research and corresponded with Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm , as well as with Wilhelm von Humboldt .

Due to the financial success due to the high circulation of his "school grammar", Becker was able to devote himself entirely to linguistic research, so that he was best known as a linguist. His doctrine of considering the existing language as a strictly logical organism, however, was refuted by Jakob Grimm, who placed the historical perspective in the foreground in the case of language problems.

His grave in the old cemetery in Offenbach is a grave of honor .

family

In 1803 he married Amalia Schmincke from Karlshafen. The couple had five sons and three daughters, including:

• Theodor (1822–1895), Prince Educator , Privy School Councilor
• Bernhard, school methodologist in Oldenburg
• Ferdinand Wilhelm (born April 24, 1805 - † June 22, 1834), doctor and professor in Berlin
• Carl (1821–1897), banker and consul ⚭ Julie Schöffer (1839–1917), parents of Minister Carl Heinrich Becker
• Dorothea Wilhelmine Sophie (1807–1871) ⚭ Johann Georg Helmsdörfer (1803–1856), philologist
• Ferdinande Dorothea Wilhelmine (born November 22, 1811 - † June 25, 1893) ⚭ 1836 Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg (1802–1872)

Publications

Scientific and medical writings

• Illumination of the Marcardian essay: About the Brownian heresy (Göttingen 1802), digitized (Göttingen 1803)
• Instructions for the artificial production of saltpetre (1814)
• About the knowledge and healing of petechial fever (1814)

Grammatical writings

• The German word formation (Frankfurt 1824), digitized
• German language teaching (Frankfurt 1827)
  • German language teaching. Second volume: Deutsche Grammatik (Frankfurt a. M. 1829), digitized
• The organism of language (1827)
• Detailed German grammar as a commentary on the school grammar , digitized version (1st section, Frankfurt am Main 1836) , digitized version (2nd department, Frankfurt am Main 1837) , digitized version (2nd edition, 1st volume, Frankfurt am Main 1842, and 2nd edition) Volume, Frankfurt am Main, 1843)
• School grammar of the German language (Prague 1831)
  • Handbook of the German language (new edition of the German school grammar, revised by Theodor Becker), digitized version (9th edition, 1870) , digitized version (10th edition, 1872) , digitized version (11th edition, 1876)
• Organism der Sprach (2nd edition of the work from 1827, Frankfurt 1841) ( digitized in the digital library Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania)
• The German style (Frankfurt am Main 1848; 3rd edition of Lyon , 1883), digitized
• Textbook of the German style (edited by Theodor Becker, Frankfurt am Main 1850; 2nd edition 1870), digitized version (1st edition)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Church book 2, Lieser, kept in the Trier diocese archive
2. ^ Franz Schmitt, Chronik Weindorf Lieser, Paulinusdruckerei Trier 1988, p. 595
3. ↑ German Biography Encyclopedia - Aachen - Braniß , S.470 , partial view
4. ↑ Didaskalia: Leaves for Spirit, Mind and Publicity, Volume 16, p.433 , obituary Johann Georg Helmsdörfer

literature

• Georg Helmsdörfer, Karl Ferdinand Becker, the grammarian , digitized
• Henrik Becker:  Becker, Karl Ferdinand. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 710 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Robert Eitner :  Becker, Karl Ferdinand . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 46, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1902, pp. 322-324.
• Gerhard Haselbach. Grammar and language structure. Karl Ferdinand Becker's contribution to general linguistics from a historical and systematic perspective . Berlin: De Gruyter 1966.
• W. Keith Percival. 'Josiah Gibbs (1790–1861): An echo of Karl Ferdinand Becker in the New World'. In: Lo van Driel & Theo Janssen (eds), Ontheven aan de tijd. Linguistic-historiographical studies for Jan Noordegraaf bij zijn zestigste verjaardag . Amsterdam: Stichting Neerlandistiek VU & Muenster: Nodus Publications 2008, pp. 161–170. ( ISBN 978-3-89323-757-9 ).
• Franz Schmitt, Chronik Weindorf Lieser , Paulinusdruckerei Trier 1988, pp. 595-599.
• Friedrich Schrod, Becker Karl Ferdinand, pedagogue and linguist , in: Hessische Biographien, Volume 2, Darmstadt 1927, p. 224ff.
• Meyers Konversations-Lexikon , 4th edition from 1888 to 1890.

Web links

• Literature by and about Karl Ferdinand Becker in the catalog of the German National Library