Karl Sittl

Karl Sittl (also Carl Sittl and with Latinized forms of the first name; * February 13, 1862 in Passau ; † May 9, 1899 in Würzburg ) was a German classical philologist and classical archaeologist .

Life

Karl Sittl studied Classical Philology and Archeology at the University of Munich , where he mainly followed Eduard Wölfflin . On March 4, 1882 he was promoted to Dr. phil. PhD . After his habilitation , he taught as a private lecturer at the University of Munich. From 1889 until his death in 1899 he was professor of philology and archeology at the University of Würzburg . He dealt with many different aspects of Classical Antiquity , starting with problems of the Latin language, through literary and historical subjects, to cultural-historical and archaeological subjects. In 1893 the German Archaeological Institute elected him as a corresponding member.

Sittl was active in various scientific fields without achieving great success with his publications. In his History of Greek Literature (1884–1887) he denied all Aeolian influences on the Homeric dialect. This thesis was refuted in detail by the linguist Gustav Hinrichs, so that Sittl's book was ignored in the professional world.

Sittl announced an edition of the Latin Mathesis of Firmicus Maternus , a specialist publication on astrology, in 1887. The first volume with books 1-4, published by Teubner Verlag in 1894 , turned out to be completely inadequate, as Wilhelm Kroll and Franz Skutsch demonstrated in a detailed review. Due to the blatant deficiencies in the constitution and criticism of the text , the publisher decided to crush the work and commission Kroll and Skutsch with a new edition, which appeared in two volumes in 1897 and 1913.

Sittl's systematic handbook Archeology of Art (1895) was also dismissed by various reviewers ( Georg Ferdinand Dümmler , Friedrich Koepp ) as superficial and unreliable.

In 1895 Sittl became an honorary member of the Catholic student association WKSt.V. Unitas Hetania in Würzburg.

After his untimely death at the age of 37, the Leipzig publisher Gustav Fock bought Sittl's library with more than 2000 volumes. The American philologist John Williams White acquired it from him for Wesleyan University .

Fonts (selection)

• The local differences in the Latin language with a special focus on African Latin. Erlangen 1882 ( digitized version ).
• The repetitions in the Odyssey. A contribution to the Homeric question. Munich 1882 ( digitized version ).
• History of Greek literature up to Alexander the great. Ackermann, Munich 1884–1887 ( digitized version ).
• The gestures of the Greeks and Romans. Teubner, Leipzig 1890.
• The patrician era of Greek art. Stahel, Würzburg 1891.
• Iulii Firmici Materni Matheseos libri VIII. Pars prior. Teubner, Leipzig 1894 (no more published).
• Archeology of Art (= Handbook of Classical Studies . Volume VI). Beck, Munich 1895 ( digitized ).

literature

• Anton Bettelheim (Hrsg.): Biographisches Jahrbuch and German Nekrolog . Volume 4, Reimer, Berlin 1900, p. 182.
• Wolfgang Schiering : Appendix. In: Reinhard Lullies , Wolfgang Schiering (Ed.) Archaeologists' portraits . Portraits and short biographies of classical archaeologists in the German language. Zabern, Mainz 1988, ISBN 3-8053-0971-6 , p. 335.

Web links

Wikisource: Karl Sittl  - Sources and full texts

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

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolfgang Burr (ed.): Unitas manual . tape 4 . Verlag Franz Schmitt, Bonn 2000, p. 430 .