Moritz Schönfeld

Moritz Schönfeld (born February 9, 1880 in Groningen ; † October 4, 1958 in Hilversum ) was a Dutch German philologist , linguist and name researcher .

His family originally came from Saxony, from there they moved to Hesse around 1600 and to the Netherlands around 1800. His father was the natural history teacher Carl Dietrich Schönfeld, his mother Maria Elisabeth Venema was the daughter of the geographer and statistician Gerardus Azings Venema.

Moritz Schönfeld studied from 1898 to 1906 at the University of Groningen , where he was particularly influenced by the Germanist Barend Sijmons . In his thesis Schönfeld dealt with the Germanic folk and personal names; this work was later published in an expanded form and is considered a standard work.

After completing his studies, Schönfeld taught geography in Meppel (1905–1908) and Tilburg (1908–1913), then from 1913 at the newly founded grammar school in Hilversum (until his retirement in 1945). In addition to his school service, he pushed ahead with his scientific work. He dealt in particular with the names of fields and waters in the Netherlands as well as historical geography and wrote numerous articles for the real encyclopedia of classical antiquity (RE). His handbook on the historical grammar of Dutch (first published in 1921) had eight editions by 1970. From 1930 Schönfeld was a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences . On November 28, 1948, the University of Groningen awarded him an honorary doctorate .

Fonts (selection)

• Proeve eener critical verzameling van Germaansche folks- en persoonsnames voorkomende in de litteraire en monumentale overlevering der Grieksche en Romeinsche oudheid . Groningen 1906
• Dictionary of the old Germanic names of persons and peoples according to the tradition of classical antiquity . Heidelberg 1911, reprints Heidelberg 1965, Darmstadt 1965 ( digitized ).
• Historical grammatica van het Nederlands . Zutphen 1921. 2nd edition 1924. 3rd edition 1932. 4th edition 1957. 5th edition (obtained from Adolphe van Loey) 1957. 6th edition 1959. 7th edition 1970. 8th edition 1970
• Friezen, Saksen, Franconia. Lezingen belongs to the Dialecten-Commissie of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen op 14 mei 1947 . Amsterdam 1947
• Nederlandse waternamen . Brussels 1955

literature

• Mededelingen van de Vereniging voor Naamkunde te Leuven en de Commissie voor Naamkunde te Amsterdam . 31st year (1955), p. 2ff. (List of publications)
• Mededelingen van de Vereniging voor Naamkunde te Leuven en de Commissie voor Naamkunde te Amsterdam . 35th year (1959), pp. 1-6. In it: obituary by Fockema Andreae (1–4), obituary by Hendrik Jozef van de Wijer, Henri Draye and Karel Roelandts (4–5), additions to the list of publications (5–6)

Web links

• Literature by Moritz Schönfeld in the catalog of the German National Library
• Online entry on Moritz Schönfeld in the “Bio- en bibliografisch lexicon van de neerlandistiek” with photo

Remarks

1. ↑ Cf. index of Schönfeld's articles in the RE digitization project on Wikisource .