Ludwig of Marnitz

Ludwig Robert von Marnitz (born November 6, 1857 in Papendorf ; † December 2, 1929 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf ) was a German philologist and professor at the Prussian War Academy .

family

He came from a Baltic German noble family. A branch of the Mecklenburg family came to Livonia and acquired the hereditary Russian official nobility on January 31, 1831 with his grandfather, the school inspector Friedrich Marnitz (1784–1849). In 1890 he was entered in the Moscow noble family register and after moving to Berlin on July 12, 1910, the Prussian nobility was recognized.

Marnitz was the sixth child of the country pastor Ludwig Wilhelm Marnitz (born May 31, 1813 in Lemsal ; † July 27, 1872 in Karlsbad , Riga-Strand ) and his wife Alexandra Petronella, née von Erdberg (born July 15, 1828 in Radzuni, Kovno governorate ; † January 14, 1918 in Goldingen ). The future German-Baltic pastor and evangelical martyr Xaver Marnitz (1855-1919) was his older brother.

On 25 April 1884 married in Marnitz Oberpahlen his first wife Sophie Maurach (born December 8, 1860 Oberpahlen , † May 13, 1914 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf). She was the daughter of Carl Peter Ludwig Maurach and Elisabeth Charlotte Catharine Maurach. With her he had their son Viktor von Marnitz . After the death of his first wife, he married Agnes Maurach on May 8, 1917 in Berlin (* May 15, 1867 in Oberpahlen; † unknown). She was a younger sister of his first wife.

Life

Marnitz attended the grammar school in Pernau and from 1873 to 1876 the government grammar school in Riga . After graduating from high school, he studied at the University of Dorpat in 1876/77 and from 1877 to 1880 at the Russian Historical-Philological Institute of the University of Leipzig, Classical Philology. After the death of his father in 1872, he was dependent on a Russian scholarship for his studies, which was connected with an obligation for the Russian civil service. 1880/81 Marnitz was a senior teacher in Lubny , 1881/82 at the Petri-Pauli-Schule in Moscow , 1883 at the private high school in Dorpat, 1883–1889 at the government high school in Wizebsk and 1890–1892 at the private high school K. Stavenhagen in Mitau .

By growing up in a multicultural environment and working for many years in Russian schools, he acquired excellent Russian language skills. This brought him a call in 1892 as a lecturer and from 1904 as a regular professor for Russian language at the Prussian War Academy in Berlin. From 1914 to 1919 Marnitz was first employed in the Central Evidence Office for POWs, then mainly as the editor of a newspaper for Russian POWs. In 1919 he was assigned as a volunteer to the library of the War Academy, later the German Army Library. From 1920 to 1923 he was in temporary retirement, then on December 12, 1923 in regular retirement.

Work and meaning

Since Russian language teaching played a greater role than the universities at the war academies in the run-up to the First World War , there were better material and personnel conditions for the development of textbooks. Although a number of Russian textbooks were already available at the war academies, from 1887 he created a self-contained series of textbooks that consisted of grammar, exercise book and elementary book. His textbooks enjoyed great popularity thanks to his realistic language teaching approach from the perspective of a German native speaker, so that his books saw many new editions. In addition, he was also known as an editor of reading texts and as a translator.

literature

• F. Häusler: Ludwig von Marnitz and his contribution to the development of Russian studies. in: Journal for Slavic Studies. Volume 35, H. 2, 1990, pp. 255-263.

Web links

• Literature by and about Ludwig von Marnitz in the catalog of the German National Library
• Baltic Historical Commission (ed.): Entry on Ludwig von Marnitz. In: BBLD - Baltic Biographical Lexicon digital

Individual evidence

1. ^ Baltic Historical Commission (ed.): Entry on Ludwig von Marnitz. In: BBLD - Baltic Biographical Lexicon digital