Otto Basler

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Otto Victor Emanuel Basler (born May 8, 1892 in Kitzingen ; † May 28, 1975 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German philologist , folklorist and librarian . He was one of the most famous German linguists .

Career

Origin, studies and military service

Basler was born in 1892 as the son of the businessman Wilhelm Emanuel Basler and his wife Sophie, b. Hendinger, born in the Franconian town of Kitzingen in the Kingdom of Bavaria . He grew up in the capital of the Kingdom of Saxony and attended the local community school. In 1911 he passed the school leaving examination at the municipal high school in Dresden.

From 1911 to 1913 he studied German and English Philology and Romance Studies a. a. with Gottfried Baist , Friedrich Brie , Alfred Götze , Friedrich Kluge , Emil Levy , Hans Schulz and Philipp Witkop at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau and in 1913 and after the interruption of the war from 1918 to 1920 German Philology, Classical Studies, Indo-European Linguistics, Folklore, Nordic Studies, French , English and history etc. a. with Karl von Bahder , Adolf Birch-Hirschfeld , Karl Brugmann , Max Förster , Albert Köster , Eugen Mogk , Wilhelm Streitberg , Georg Witkowski and Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig . During his studies in Freiburg in 1912, he stayed for several months in French-speaking Switzerland to learn the language . In 1919 he passed the state examination in German, English and French in Leipzig . In 1920 he was the medievalist Eduard Sievers from the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Leipzig and the printed excerpts in the Faculty Yearbook dissertation to orthography in Old High German Tatian to Dr. phil. PhD.

After his school days in 1911/12, he did military service as a one-year volunteer with the 5th Baden Infantry Regiment No. 113 in Freiburg im Breisgau. In the First World War (1914–1918) he initially served as a non-commissioned officer . He was then employed as a company leader; his last rank was that of a lieutenant in the reserve in the replacement infantry regiment 28.

Library service

From 1920 to 1925 he worked at the University Library in Freiburg im Breisgau , headed by Emil Jacobs : volunteer assistant (1920), scientific assistant (1920) and extraordinary librarian (1921).

In 1926 he moved to the German Army Library of the Reichswehr founded in 1919 in Berlin. There he became a full-time head of department. In 1934 the employee in the higher library service was appointed as a civil servant librarian. He also took over the deputy directorate under Siegfried Klefeker .

From 1936 to 1945 he was director of the Bavarian Army Library and chairman of the military district library of the military district command VII in Munich. During his tenure, he made the acquaintance of the resistance fighter against National Socialism, Franz Sperr , who was a reserve officer at the Army Library . In research it is sometimes included in the “restricted circle”. Basler last held the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Wehrmacht . After the Second World War in 1945, he was briefly employed by the Bavarian State Library , which had integrated the Army Library .

University lecturer and professor

In 1939, unsuccessful efforts were made to appoint the library director Basler as an extraordinary professor for library science at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . A later appointment as honorary professor for German word research and the history of the New High German language, as promoted by the President of the German Academy in Munich, Erich Gierach , or the Department of German Philology, who died shortly afterwards , failed in 1943/44 despite the prior approval of the Faculty by the Reich Minister for science, education and popular education , Bernhard Rust . According to Basler, it was due to the lack of and rejected party membership.

From 1943 or 1944/45 he taught on behalf of Gierach or was a lecturer in Munich. Specifically, he took over its seminars and from then on looked after the scientific legacy . In 1946/47 he was again a lecturer for German language and word research at the LMU Munich. He also worked as a lecturer in German language and literature at the Freising Theological College near Munich. In 1946 he was successfully proposed in Munich for an honorary professorship for the history of the New High German written language and folklore. Removed during the war by the US military government because of his high military rank, he was reinstated by a court order in 1947.

In 1947 he was appointed associate professor and in 1952 full professor of German philology and folklore, with folklore playing a subordinate role. In 1955 he took over the Dean's Office of the Philosophical Faculty, and in 1955/56 he was a member of the Senate . After his retirement in 1958, he was honorary professor for German philology and folklore at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau from 1959 to 1970. His main research interests were German philology, folklore, German word and dialect research , Alemannic local poetry , local history and specialist languages. His academic students included a. Isolde Baur , Georg Michael Pflaum , Franz W. Seidler and Karolina Zobel .

Part-time activity

From 1929 to 1938 he was an external employee of the Duden editorial team at the Bibliographical Institute in Leipzig, and from 1934 to 1938 he was honorary director of the language advice center there. In early 1936 he appeared at short notice as the successor to Theodor Steche at the Völkischer Kurier des Tannenbergbund . Around 1930 he became an employee of the German dictionary at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin. From December 1934 until his resignation in January 1937 he was also the scientific head of the language maintenance office in Berlin, although in practice, at least initially, he was not released by the Reichswehr. When the reform-critical Arthur Huebner took over functions, he withdrew. In 1944, together with Karl Reumuth , he proposed a reform of German spelling , which was not implemented due to the war.

From 1946 to 1957 Basler worked as head of the Bavarian Dictionary at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich. From 1965 to 1971 he was a full member of the scientific council of the Institute for the German Language in Mannheim. He also became a member of the Historical Commission , the Commission for Bavarian State History (where he linguistically supervised the Bavarian Place Name Book) and the Commission for Language Maintenance (where he participated in the renewal of the spelling). From 1954 to 1957 he was also a member of the Commission for Dialect Research (where he was entrusted with the new edition of the Bavarian Dictionary by Johann Andreas Schmeller ) at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

Memberships

From the 1920s, Basler was a member (from 1940 chairman) of the German Language Association in Munich, from 1940 a member of the Association of German Associations for Folklore, a member of the German Association of Germanists , a member of the Working Group for Historical Regional Studies on the Upper Rhine in Karlsruhe, a member of the Historical Association for History the Ortenau in Offenburg and from 1968 the KoninklijkeZuid-Nederlandse Maatschappij voor Taal- en Letterkunde en Geschiedenis in Brussels.

He was also a member of the Academy for Scientific Research and Maintenance of German Language in Munich, 1941/42 assessor of the Research Center for Linguistics, 1944 committee member and 1944/45 honorary head of the German Language Office.

Publications

In 1923 he took over the editing of the German Foreign Dictionary , suggested by Friedrich Kluge and begun by Hans Schulz († 1915) , a standard work of which he wrote Volume 2 (L – P, published 1942) and the first delivery of Volume 3 (until 1970, letter Q) worked out. In the early 1970s, for reasons of age, Basler handed over the materials he had collected for the completion of the German Foreign Dictionary to the Institute for German Language in Mannheim.

In addition to his monographs a. a. as a reviewer and author in professional journals and as a contributor in festschriften. In 1926/27 he was editor of the magazine Mutterssprache and in 1944, on behalf of the German Academy, co-editor (with Erich Gierach and Alfred Götze ) of the Jahrbuch der deutschen Sprache . He also published the edition of Der große Duden (Bibliographical Institute). He worked u. a. on the German dictionary, the Großer Brockhaus , Meyer's little lexicon, the handbook of modern military science, the German cultural atlas, the German language of the Middle Ages, the concise dictionary of German superstition and the New German Biography .

In the literature there is sometimes confusion with the Swiss literary critic of the same name .

Family and estate

Basler, Evangelical Lutheran, was in his first marriage (from 1921) to Hertha (1892–1947), b. Reh, and in the second (from 1952) with Margarethe, b. Neugebaur, married. He was the father of two children; his son died at the front in 1945. In old age he became increasingly blind .

Most of his estate is in the Institute for the German Language in Mannheim, where an Otto Basler archive was created. Over 15,000 volumes as well as manuscripts and printed matter were acquired in 1969/70 with the support of the Volkswagen Foundation. Basler's dictionary collection, which is part of the lexicographical library, is of particular value. Further holdings on Basler can be found at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg since 1997.

Awards

Basler received the following awards:

Works

  • Old Saxon. Helland, Genesis and Minor Monuments. In Erl. Text samples with linguistic-factual. Einf. Wagner, Freiburg 1923.
  • (Arrangement with Waldemar Mühlner ): The Volks-Duden. New German dictionary. According to the official regulations valid for the German Reich, Austria and Switzerland . Bibliographical Institute, Leipzig 1933.
  • Defense science literature in the 18th century . Mittler, Berlin 1933.
  • (Arrangement with Waldemar Mühlner): The little Duden. Reich school dictionary of German spelling. For elementary school . Bibliographical Institute, Leipzig 1934.
  • (Arrangement / Mitw.): The great Duden . 4 volumes, Bibliographical Institute, Leipzig 1934/35.
  • (Fortges.): German Foreign Dictionary . Volume 2: L-P and Volume 3: Q-R . Founded by Hans Schulz , de Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 1942/77.
  • German spelling. Rules and dictionary . Leibniz-Verlag, Munich 1948. (14th edition, Oldenbourg, 1960)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Kerstin Steiger: Basler, Otto . In: Christoph König (Ed.), With the assistance of Birgit Wägenbaur u. a .: Internationales Germanistenlexikon 1800–1950. Volume 1: A-G. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2003, ISBN 3-11-015485-4 , p. 93.
  2. ^ A b Hanno Birken-Bertsch, Reinhard Markner: Spelling Reform and National Socialism. A chapter from the political history of the German language . A publication of the German Academy for Language and Poetry, Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-89244-450-1 , p. 31f.
  3. ↑ Winfried Becker: The Bavarian resistance circle around Franz Sperr and Otto Geßler . In: Ulrich Karpen (ed.): Europe's future. Presentation of the Kreisau Circle around Helmuth James Graf von Moltke (= CF Müller Wissenschaft ). Müller, Heidelberg 2005, ISBN 3-8114-5333-5 , pp. 33–51, here: p. 36.
  4. ↑ Winfried Becker: Securing the livelihood and existential needs of Catholics in the resistance . In: Detlef J. Blesgen (Hrsg.): Financiers, finances and forms of financing of the resistance (= series of publications of the research community July 20, 1944 eV Vol. 5). Lit, Berlin a. a. 2006, ISBN 3-8258-7662-4 , pp. 85–110, here: p. 103.
  5. ^ A b c Johannes Moser: The establishment of the Munich Institute for German and Comparative Folklore. A look at the history of science into the 1950s and 1960s . In: Johannes Moser, Irene Götz, Moritz Ege (eds.): On the situation of folklore 1945-1970. Orientations of a science at the time of the Cold War (= Munich contributions to folklore . Vol. 43). Waxmann, Münster a. a. 2015, ISBN 978-3-8309-3258-1 , pp. 69-92, here: pp. 78f.
  6. ^ A b c Johannes Moser: The establishment of the Munich Institute for German and Comparative Folklore. A look at the history of science into the 1950s and 1960s . In: Johannes Moser, Irene Götz , Moritz Ege (eds.): On the situation of folklore 1945-1970. Orientations of a science at the time of the Cold War (= Munich contributions to folklore . Vol. 43). Waxmann, Münster a. a. 2015, ISBN 978-3-8309-3258-1 , pp. 69–92, here: p. 75.
  7. ↑ Hanno Birken-Bertsch, Reinhard Markner: Spelling Reform and National Socialism. A chapter from the political history of the German language . A publication of the German Academy for Language and Poetry, Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-89244-450-1 , p. 101f.
  8. ↑ Kerstin Steiger: Basler, Otto . In: Christoph König (Ed.), With the assistance of Birgit Wägenbaur u. a .: Internationales Germanistenlexikon 1800–1950. Volume 1: A-G. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2003, ISBN 3-11-015485-4 , p. 94.
  9. ↑ On the misinformation circulating in journalism: Hanno Birken-Bertsch, Reinhard Markner: Spelling Reform and National Socialism. A chapter from the political history of the German language . A publication of the German Academy for Language and Poetry, Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-89244-450-1 , p. 102, fn. 65.
  10. ^ A b Hanno Birken-Bertsch, Reinhard Markner: Spelling Reform and National Socialism. A chapter from the political history of the German language . A publication by the German Academy for Language and Poetry, Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-89244-450-1 , p. 32, fn. 34.
  11. ↑ Gerd Simon: The discreet charm of the language maintenance discourse . In: Rüdiger Vogt (ed.): About the difficulties of understanding when speaking. Contributions to the linguistics of discourse . Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1987, ISBN 3-531-11831-5 , pp. 278-295, here: 287f.
  12. ↑ Hanno Birken-Bertsch, Reinhard Markner: Spelling Reform and National Socialism. A chapter from the political history of the German language . A publication by the German Academy for Language and Poetry, Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-89244-450-1 , p. 35.
  13. ↑ a b c d Hans Schulz and Otto Basler , Institute for German Language , accessed on January 24, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Basler, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Basler, Otto Victor Emanuel (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philologist, folklorist and librarian
DATE OF BIRTH May 8, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Kitzingen
DATE OF DEATH May 28, 1975
Place of death Freiburg in Breisgau