Oskar Seyffert (philologist)

Oskar Seyffert (born January 23, 1841 in Crossen / Oder ; † July 1, 1906 in Bad Homburg in front of the height ) was a German classical philologist and grammar school teacher who taught at the Sophien grammar school in Berlin from 1865 to 1905 . He is best known for his lexicon of classical antiquity (1882) and as the editor of the Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift (1884–1906).

Life

Oskar Seyffert, the son of commissioner August Seyffert, attended the community school in his hometown. After his father's death in 1849, he grew up alone with his mother. From 1855 Oskar Seyffert attended the Joachimsthalsche Gymnasium in Berlin; the following year his mother died so that he was an orphan at the age of 15. In the following time he joined his teachers, whom he kept an honorable memory for a long time. After graduating in 1860, Seyffert studied Classical Philology at the University of Berlin . His academic teachers included August Boeckh , Moriz Haupt , Theodor Mommsen , Karl Müllenhoff and Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg . On July 2, 1864, Seyffert was awarded a PhD with a dissertation on the metrics of Plautus comedies. phil. PhD ; he dedicated the writing to his former teachers at the "Joachimsthal" Friedrich Wilhelm Gustav Kießling and Hermann Usener .

On October 1, 1864, Seyffert began his probationary year in the Prussian school service. He taught at the Gymnasium in Frankfurt an der Oder and at the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Berlin. On January 25, 1865, he passed the teaching examination in the subjects of Greek, Latin, philosophical propaedeutics and German (for all classes) as well as religion and mathematics (for the fourths). At the end of the probationary year on October 1, 1865, he received a permanent position as a full teacher at the Sophien-Gymnasium in Berlin, where he spent his entire subsequent career. From April 1, 1868, Seyffert managed the school's teachers' library. On April 1, 1872 he was promoted to senior teacher and on April 20, 1885 appointed high school professor. Shortly thereafter, he turned down the offer to take on an extraordinary professorship in Classical Philology at the University of Königsberg .

Seyffert spent his free time with scientific studies. His research focus was the Roman comedy poet Plautus. He wrote studies and literature reports on this poet, but above all numerous reviews and advertisements in various magazines. In 1882 he published his Lexicon of Classical Antiquities , a popular reference work that was less widely used in Germany than abroad. The British philologists Henry Nettleship and John Edwin Sandys brought it out in English in 1884 in an abridged and revised version . The English edition enjoyed widespread circulation well into the 20th century and was revised in the 1950s and 1960s. In 2000 a Spanish translation by Toni Cutanda was published.

Seyffert's most important activity was that of a scientific editor and reviewer. In 1884 he joined the editorial team of Philologische Wochenschrift (from 1885 Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift ), which he ran together with Christian Belger and later with Karl Fuhr until his death. From 1896 to 1897 he also edited, together with Paul Wendland, the annual report on the progress of classical studies , one of the most important review organs in classical studies. However, he gave up the editorial office after two years because of the excessive workload. At that time, after his wife died in 1891, Seyffert's health was already seriously weakened.

In the last years of his life, Seyffert struggled with a lung disease. Repeated cures in Silesia ( Görbersdorf , Bad Reinerz ) stabilized his condition, but did not cure him. In 1904 he suffered a stroke that paralyzed the right half of his body. Since there was no prospect of improvement, Seyffert retired on October 1, 1905. His condition worsened in the winter of 1905/06. At Pentecost 1906 he went to a sanatorium in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe , where he succumbed to pneumonia on July 1st. He was buried in the cemetery of the Georgengemeinde at Königstor in Berlin.

Fonts (selection)

• Quaestionum metricarum particula: De Bacchiacorum versuum usu Plautino . Berlin 1864 (dissertation)
• Studia Plautina . Berlin 1874 (school program)
• Lexicon of classical antiquity . Leipzig 1882
  • English edition by Henry Nettleship and John Edwin Sandys : A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, Mythology, Religion, Literature and Art . London / New York 1884
  • Spanish edition by Toni Cutanda: Diccionario de mitología griega y romana . Barcelona 2000

literature

• Edward Adolf Sonnenschein: Prof. O. Seyffert, of Berlin . In: Athenaeum . No. 4110, August 4, 1906, pp. 130f.
• Franz Lortzing, Georg Goetz : In memory of Oskar Seyffert . In: Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift . Volume 26 (1906), No. 39, September 29, 1906, Col. 1217-1225
• Georg Goetz: Oskar Seyffert . In: Annual report on the progress of classical antiquity . Volume 37, 1909, Vol. 145 (1910). Nekrologe = biographical yearbook for archeology . 32nd year (1909), Leipzig 1910, pp. 103-109

Web links

Wikisource: Oskar Seyffert  - Sources and full texts

• Oskar Seyffert's personnel form in the personnel file of the BIL expert body in the archive database of the Library for Research on Educational History (BBF)
• Literature by Oskar Seyffert in the catalog of the German National Library