Karl Mras

Karl Mras (born June 6, 1877 in Vienna ; † July 7, 1962 there ) was an Austrian classical philologist .

Life

As the son of a senior teacher, Mras attended Mariahilfer Gymnasium and then studied Classical Philology, Sanskrit and Comparative Linguistics at the University of Vienna . His academic teachers included Hans von Arnim , Edmund Hauler , Friedrich Marx and Karl Schenkl . After graduating, Mras worked as a middle school teacher. He started an academic career with a government travel grant that took him to Italy, Greece and Asia Minor. During this trip, Mras collated numerous manuscripts by ancient authors, with which he laid the foundation for his later text-critical and editorial work. In 1912 he completed his habilitation in Vienna with a work on the transmission history of the writings of the sophist Lukian of Samosata . One year after his appointment as adjunct professor, he was appointed associate professor of classical philology at the University of Graz in 1921 .

In 1933 he returned to Vienna as a full professor and chair holder. As a staunch opponent of the National Socialists, however, he had to retire early after the occupation of Austria in 1938 and was replaced by the educator Richard Meister , who was also not considered politically reliable enough to teach pedagogy. After the end of the Second World War , Meister was able to return to his teaching chair and Mras resumed teaching as a philologist. His research achievements brought him numerous honors, including in 1946 his appointment as a corresponding member, in 1947 a real member of the Vienna Academy of Sciences , and in 1956 a corresponding member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin . It wasn't until 1953, at the age of 76, that Mras retired.

Services

Characteristic of Mras' research achievements is his extensive knowledge of Greek and Roman culture, the grammar, metrics and textual criticism of Greek and Latin and his familiarity with secular, cultural and religious history. He dealt with all epochs of ancient literature, but especially devoted himself to editing and commenting on post-classical authors. Of the Christian writers, he dealt with Eusebius of Caesarea , whose Praeparatio evangelica he published 1954–1956 in a two-volume edition with extensive commentary as well as indexes of places, names, subjects and languages, and Hegesippus , whose edition was in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL) by Vincenzo Ussani (1932) he enriched it with a new preface in 1960. The pagan writers Lukian and Macrobius gave Mras translations, commentaries and bilingual editions.

literature

• Obituary: Yearbook of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin 1963, pp. 210–211.
• Wolfhart Unte :  Mras, Karl. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , p. 247 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Alois Kernbauer: Karl Mras. In: Classical Philology at the University of Graz from the beginning of the 19th century to the present . With contributions by Herbert H. Egglmaier, Walter Höflechner, Alois Kernbauer, Walter Primig, Peter G. Tropper, Franz-Anton Wallisch. In: Contributions and materials on the history of science in Austria . Ed. Walter Höflechner (= publications from the archive of the University of Graz 11), Graz 1981, pp. 213–225.

Web links

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