Othmar Meisinger

Othmar Meisinger (born November 29, 1872 in Rappenau , † April 29, 1950 in Bad Rappenau ) was a local researcher from Baden who was particularly interested in researching dialect and collecting folk songs .

Life

Meisinger was the son of the Frankfurt merchant Johann Franz Meisinger and the Babstadt farmer's daughter Elise Reichardt, who had bought a house in Rappenau in 1866 and lived there from 1872 at the latest. Othmar attended secondary school in the neighboring village of Wimpfen , and later the grammar school in Mannheim . He then studied philosophy , German and classical philology in Heidelberg and Munich . Erwin Rohde , Wilhelm Braune and Kuno Fischer were among his university lecturers in Heidelberg, and Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl during the semester in Munich . In 1896 he passed the first state examination, but failed on a first doctoral thesis because another doctoral student had anticipated him with a thesis on The Seven Wise Men saga in antiquity . In 1901 he received his doctorate in Heidelberg with a dissertation on the Rappenau dialect. From 1900 to 1902 he was a teacher in Freiburg, then in Lörrach, where he was appointed professor in 1903. In 1913 he moved to Karlsruhe, 1920 to Heidelberg.

In 1906, he submitted a comprehensive dictionary for the Rappenau dialect, which had already been the subject of his dissertation. In the magazine for high German dialects he published a study on Hebrew foreign words from the Jewish trader language. In Lörrach he began to collect the folk songs of the Baden Oberland. As he was musically gifted, he could not only record texts but also melodies. In 1913, the work Lieder aus dem Wiesental , Baden , was published in Karlsruhe on behalf of the Badische Heimat Landesverein , the 346 folk songs of which come mainly from Meisinger's collection. In the following year a shortened edition was published as an Oberland folk song book . With the work People Words from the Wiesental , he also published a work on the dialect of the Baden Oberland. In 1924 he published a book on appellative names with Hinz and Kunz, German first names in an expanded sense . In 1932 he revised the song book of the Odenwald Club called Odenwälder Spinnstube with songs from his collection . In the same year he published the humorous dialect poem and anecdote collection O last!

Due to health problems, he took early retirement in 1932. On his 75th birthday in 1947, he became an honorary citizen of his hometown Bad Rappenau.

literature

• Ludwig Vögely : Othmar Meisinger . In: Life in the Kraichgau in the past . Regional culture publishing house, Ubstadt-Weiher 1997, ISBN 3-929366-56-8
• Inge and Rudolf Rothenhöfer: Professor Othmar Meisinger (1872–1950), honorary citizen of Bad Rappenau . In: Bad Rappenauer Heimatbote No. 10, Bad Rappenau 1998