Karl Wildhagen

Karl Wildhagen (born August 23, 1873 in Hanover , † August 7, 1945 in Leipzig ) was a German Anglist who became known as the author of a dictionary.

Live and act

Karl Wildhagen was the son of the Hanoverian master carpenter Friedrich Wildhagen († before 1922) and his wife Meta, née Schlimme from Einbeck . After attending the Realgymnasium in Hanover, he studied newer languages ​​in Göttingen from the summer semester of 1893. In March 1903 he received his doctorate at Lorenz Morsbach Dr. phil. He dealt with the linear version of the Eadwine Psalter and wrote a monograph on it that is still considered a fundamental work on this topic today.

From 1902 Wildhagen assisted Felix Liebermann from Berlin with his dictionary for the three volumes of the "Laws of the Anglo-Saxons". In 1904 he stopped working as an assistant and passed the state examination for higher teaching qualifications the following year. From 1906 to 1908 he worked as a senior teacher in Gotha , from 1908 to 1910 in Dortmund and then until 1920 in Berlin. In addition to teaching, he worked on many new editions of an English textbook by Carl and Max Deutschbein and published the Cambridge Psalter in 1910. In 1913 he published his “Studies on the Psalterium Romanum in England and its glossings”. He also traveled almost annually to England, particularly Oxford , where he improved his language skills.

In April 1920 Wildhagen accepted a call from Leipzig University as an associate professor. With “The Calendar of the Vitellius E XVIII Manuscript” he published his last work from the subject area of ​​his dissertation here the following year. After that he was more concerned with English language studies and cultural history. In 1923 he published the brochure "The Driving Force in English Education", and two years later the study "The English People's Character".

In 1925 Wildhagen received a call from the Technical University of Dresden, which he did not follow. On October 1, 1925, he took over the chair for English philology and the directorate of the English seminar in Kiel. As a full professor, he was in charge of the whole of English studies, i.e. the history of language and literature from the beginning of written records to the present day, systematic linguistics and regional studies. In contrast to his predecessor Ferdinand Holthausen , he set new priorities and gave more space to recent English literary history. He dedicated his first lecture to the subject of “Modern English Drama” and thus made contemporary literature the subject of philological consideration, which was new at the time. In the lectures of the following semesters he also dealt with medieval topics, but concentrated on Shakespeare, English Romanticism and works from the Victorian era.

Wildhagen took into account that most of the students later work as teachers and therefore mostly deal with contemporary English and more recent English literature. This is likely to be due to his own long teaching experience. Therefore he consistently refrained from more esoteric niche topics and sometimes gave overviews of entire epochs in the history of English literature in lectures. This resulted in a teaching concept designed for teachers at Kiel University, similar to today's English studies. Lectures on regional studies were also new, but Wildhagen delegated them to lecturers.

In the 1930s Wildhagen devoted himself more to journalistic activities. The private lecturer Hermann Heuer took over most of his courses at the English seminar from 1935 onwards. After his retirement in 1938, he immediately stopped all teaching activities and only occupied himself with the work on his planned dictionary. At the turn of the year 1941/42 he moved to Leipzig, where he suddenly died shortly after the end of the war. Although he was regarded as a respected specialist book author in specialist circles for decades, there is no necrological literature . This is probably due to the place of residence and the time of death.

dictionary

Wildhagen published relatively little. In the 1940s to 1960s, he was known for decades in professional circles for his work on the largest and most contemporary German-English dictionary of the time. From 1930 he worked for the Tauchnitz-Verlag on a new version of the "Dictionary of the English and German Language" by William James . Before that, he had worked for the publisher since 1925 as editor of “Student's Series”, which dealt with study editions of recent English literature. With the new owner of the publishing house, the concept of the series changed from 1934. In the years up to 1938 a completely new dictionary was created. For reasons of marketing and legal restrictions, the first, German-English part bore the title of the Williams dictionary and was declared its 54th edition.

Wildhagen concentrated in his dictionary on the contemporary English language and went into dialects, sociolects and American English. He also mentioned changing meanings that arose for syntactic and stylistic reasons and used the IPA as a modern phonetic spelling system. He gave no explanations about the origin of the word or the factual background, so the scope of the book remained clear. Presumably also because of the low price and the appealing brief, the book prevailed over the "Muret-Sanders" dictionaries from Langenscheidt-Verlag .

In the second, revised edition of the dictionary, which came out in 1943, Wildhagen was considered the sole author. He also wrote an extensive third edition, but it was not printed until after his death. Schoolchildren and especially Anglists knew the work as the "Wildhagen", often also as "Wildhagen-Héraucourt". The factually incorrect designation "Wildhagen-Héraucourt" was based on the title of the second German-English part, the two volumes of which Will Héraucourt published in 1953/1954 by Brandstetter-Verlag. Wildfang had prepared this second volume extensively over decades, created a large rough manuscript and files and died before it was completed. Héraucourt used this preparatory work for the second part and completed it. Since Héraucourt had his own material by working on a German-English picture dictionary for Brockhaus-Verlag, he was able to complete “Wildhagen-Héraucourt” in a comparatively short time. The second part followed Wildhagen's design principles, with Héraucourt taking up words from the vulgar language much more strongly than Wildhagen had previously in the first part. For the first time, the reader no longer needed any special dictionaries for this topic.

The first part of the dictionary, written by Wildhagen, appeared largely unchanged in its twelfth edition until 1964. Héraucourt revised this part, which then went to print in 1964 as the so-called “second edition”. The second, German-English part remained unchanged until the tenth edition. A new version of Héraucourt came out in 1972, again as a "second edition". Both new editions were economically unsuccessful. Instead, dictionaries from Langenscheidt-Verlag caught on in schools and universities. Experts regard the books by Wildhagen and Héraucourt as suitable reference works to this day, but their vocabulary is out of date.

family

On July 14, 1906, Wildhagen married Margarete Essigke, whose father was the businessman Hermann Essigke († before 1922). The couple had four daughters and one son.

literature

• Hartwig Moltzow: Wildhagen, Karl . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 11 - 2000. ISBN 3-529-02640-9 , pages 382-385.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Hartwig Moltzow: Wildhagen, Karl . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 11 - 2000. ISBN 3-529-02640-9 , page 382.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Hartwig Moltzow: Wildhagen, Karl . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 11 - 2000. ISBN 3-529-02640-9 , page 383.
3. ↑ Hartwig Moltzow: Wildhagen, Karl . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 11 - 2000. ISBN 3-529-02640-9 , page 385.
4. ↑ Hartwig Moltzow: Wildhagen, Karl . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 11 - 2000. ISBN 3-529-02640-9 , pages 383-384.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Hartwig Moltzow: Wildhagen, Karl . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 11 - 2000. ISBN 3-529-02640-9 , page 384.
6. ↑ Hartwig Moltzow: Wildhagen, Karl . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 11 - 2000. ISBN 3-529-02640-9 , pages 384-385.