Klaus Siewert

Klaus Siewert (born February 15, 1954 ) is a German philologist , linguist and cultural scientist. His specialties are German language history , special and secret languages .

Life

Klaus Siewert spent his childhood as the second of four sons of the civil engineer Heinrich Siewert and his wife Christa in Lerbeck / Porta Westfalica. After graduating from high school in 1972 at the Besselgymnasium in Minden , he studied German, history, archeology, philosophy and pedagogy at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster and spent study visits to Rome and the Near and Middle East. In 1979 he passed the state examination for teaching at grammar schools (with distinction).

From 1980 Siewert worked at the research company " Old High German Dictionary " of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . After graduating as Dr. phil. (summa cum laude) he took on teaching positions for German language and German literature of the Middle Ages at the University of Münster. In 1989, before the fall of the Wall, he received a research grant in the GDR within the framework of the German-German cultural agreement ("Oldest sources of the German language in the GDR territory"); In addition to his scientific work in the GDR, he was involved as a Monday demonstrator in Leipzig and Dresden. From the 1990s onwards he devoted himself to establishing modern special language research in Germany. Stops on the way were: the establishment of the student project group Masematte in 1988 and the establishment of a special language research unit at the University of Münster, the DFG project "Rotwelsch Dialect", a post-doctoral scholarship from the German Research Foundation, from 1995 the organization of international symposia on special language research, 1998 the habilitation with the work “Fundamentals and Methods of Special Language Research” (Venia Legendi: German Philology / Linguistics) and in 2000 the establishment of the International Society for Special Language Research (IGS).

After his time as a lecturer in Münster, he took on professorships at the TU Darmstadt and at the University of Paderborn . In 2009 he set up a science publishing house as the publishing center for research in the field of special languages ​​(Secret Languages ​​Publishing House). He also volunteers in non-profit organizations: from 1990 in the Society for German Language (GfdS); from 2000 as founding chairman of the International Society for Special Language Research (IGS); from 2012 as chairman of the jury of the language and literature prize "Landschreiber-Competition".

Publications (selection)

• The Old High German Horace Glossation, Göttingen 1986 (Studies on Old High German 8, Academy of Sciences in Göttingen), dissertation 1984
• Basics and methods of special language research. With a dictionary of the Masematte from speaker surveys and the written sources, Wiesbaden 2003 (Sondersprachenforschung 8), habilitation thesis Münster 1998
• Secret languages ​​in Westphalia, volumes I-III, Münster / Hamburg 2014–2017
• Dictionary of German secret languages: Rotwelsch dialects, volumes I-II, together with Rudolf Post and Thorsten Weiland, de Gruyter Verlag Berlin-New York (2021, in preparation for printing)
• Series “Special Language Research”, 1996 ff.

Web links

• http://www.klaussiewert.de (complete list of publications)