Otto Schröder (philologist)

Otto Schroeder (born July 14, 1851 in Halenbeck , † January 28, 1937 in Berlin ) was a German classical philologist and high school teacher. He was particularly prominent in his work on Greek (and Roman) poetry and verse .

Life

Portrait of Otto Schroeder "1899 in the hottest summer (Pindar correction)"

Otto Karl Schroeder was the son of Carl Friedrich Schroeder (1807–1873) and Pauline geb. Fredenhagen (1821-1910). He spent his childhood on the Halenbeck estate in Prignitz , which his father had owned since 1838, and from 1857 in Stuthof near Lippehne in Neumark. From 1860 he attended high school in Landsberg an der Warthe , from Michaelis in 1864 in Guben, where his parents had moved. The Guben high school took a remarkable boom under the direction of Aemilius Wagler . On March 12, 1869, Schroeder passed his school leaving examination and went to the University of Jena , where he studied classical philology, German and history.

When the Franco-German War broke out, Schroeder interrupted his studies. On the day France declared war, he volunteered as a one-year volunteer . He was initially stationed in Spandau and was then assigned to the front. He took part in the siege of Metz and the battle of Orléans . After the end of the war he was stationed in Frankfurt (Oder) until the end of his service . In 1871 he received the war memorial for his participation in the French campaign .

After the end of the war, Schroeder continued his studies at the universities of Leipzig and Berlin ; in Berlin he was particularly influenced by Moriz Haupt , who, as a specialist in Greek and old German poetry, inspired Schroeder for his research interests. On October 27, 1874, Schroeder passed the teaching examination in Berlin. He received the qualification to teach German for all classes, in Latin and Greek initially only up to upper level II (secondary), in history only up to the fourth. He completed his probationary year from October 1874 to October 1875 at the grammar school and secondary school in Minden ( Westphalia ), where he had worked as a regular assistant teacher since April 1874.

On October 1, 1875, Schroeder returned to Berlin, where, with a short break (1910–1912), he worked until the end of his life. He worked for a long time at the Joachimsthal Gymnasium , initially as a provisional adjunct, and from April 1876 as a permanent adjunct. In addition to his school service, he took part in officer training courses: in 1877 he was appointed second lieutenant in the reserve, in 1882 he was appointed second lieutenant in the Landwehr (with distinction in 1883). In 1884 he resigned from the service. In 1897 he received the Kaiser Wilhelm I Memorial Medal.

One of the Siegesallee essays: Hardly enough (Schroeder) and remarkably sensible (Wilhelm II.)

Schroeder also took up scientific work outside of school, while at the same time improving his qualifications. On October 29, 1878, he passed a supplementary examination in Latin and Greek, which he then taught up to the highest grade level. In the same year his first scientific work appeared in the program of the Joachimsthal Gymnasium. On February 7, 1880, he was promoted to Dr. phil. PhD . His dissertation on the Hildebrand song appeared in the Festschrift of the Joachimsthal School in the same year.

On April 1, 1881, Schroeder was appointed senior teacher, five and a half years later as high school professor (characterized on September 14, 1886). As a teacher, he attracted attention because of his original ideas. Probably the best-known example is the essay topic “The leg position of the monuments in Siegesallee” , which he placed in the top class in history in 1901; the students should infer their character from the stance of the stone rulers. Four of these essays came to Kaiser Wilhelm II , who read them through with great sympathy and provided them with comments; his judgment differed considerably from that of the teacher. The essays only came to the public in 1960.

Since the 1880s, Schroeder lived entirely in his teaching and research activities. He associated with numerous scholars, because at that time Berlin was the largest center of classical studies in Germany. He developed a particularly close relationship with the Danish philologist Johan Ludvig Heiberg , whose son-in-law he eventually became: on September 29, 1901, he married his daughter Cathrine (* 1880). The couple had four children: Hedda Paula Cathrine (* 1902), Diedrich Otto (* 1903), Ulrich Johann Otto (* 1905) and Hans Oluf (* 1907).

Schroeder's 30-year activity at the Joachimsthal Gymnasium ended in 1910 when he was given a director's position outside of it: on August 1, 1910, he was appointed director of the Naumburg Cathedral Gymnasium . But on October 1, 1912, Schroeder returned to Berlin, where he was appointed director of the Kaiserin-Augusta-Gymnasium in Charlottenburg . He retired on April 1, 1921 at the age of 69.

Schroeder devoted the last years of his life entirely to his scientific work. From 1913 to 1923 he was editor of Socrates. Journal for the high school system .

Schroeder's grave is located in the south-west cemetery in Stahnsdorf .

Scientific work

Like many high school teachers of his time, Schroeder was scientifically active throughout his life. In addition, he found in Berlin, a center for classical studies, a very favorable environment with well-equipped libraries and many specialist colleagues. His research was devoted to Greek, Roman and German poets. He placed the emphasis on the poets whose metrics presented particular challenges: the poet Pindar , the Attic tragedians Aeschylus , Sophocles and Euripides , the comedy poet Aristophanes and the Roman poet Horace .

Schroeder became known early on in literary and journalistic circles after he had published the pamphlet Vom Papiernen Stil in 1889 . In it he attacked absurd and unrelated typography, spelling and expression. The book provoked various reactions, some critical and polemical, and some delighted. It remained very popular for a long time and saw eight more editions by 1919.

Schroeder had already dealt with Pindar in his first scientific paper (1878). During his work with this poet, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff also came into contact with him, who mentioned Schroeder in his memoirs . Schroeder examined the transmission history of the Pindar manuscripts and prepared a critical edition with extensive apparatus, which was published in 1900 by Teubner Verlag. She was praised by the professional world for the critical viewing of the text witnesses. As new Pindar fragments became known in the following years through papyrus finds, Schroeder brought out a new edition with a selection of these fragments in 1908, which he revised in the second (1914) and third (1930) editions. In 1922 he published a commentary on Pindar's Pythian odes.

Contrary to the point of view established by Rudolf Westphal , Schroeder understood Pindar's verses as an ionic , not as a dactyloepitrite . While Friedrich Blass agreed with this thesis, other researchers disagreed decisively. At the 47th meeting of philologists in Halle an der Saale (October 1903) Hans von Arnim refuted the theory with powerful arguments; at the same meeting Schroeder gave a lecture on Pindar's metrics and maintained his position, referring to the latest papyrus finds. Later, Paul Maas in particular , who had been in contact with Schroeder since his doctorate (1902), turned against Schroeder's interpretation and firmly rejected it. The dedications of selected works by the two scholars show that this dispute ultimately did not lead to a rift: Maas dedicated his essay "The new freedom of responses in Bakchylides and Pindar" (1921) to Schroeder on his 70th birthday. Schroeder's dedication in the plan of the Greek verse (1930) reads: "Paulo Maas / adversario honesto / curarum socio / fideli amico" ("for Paul Maas, the sincere opponent, caring companion, loyal friend"). Schroeder continued his metric studies into old age away and tried to mediate between competing theories - mainly in his work over the current state of the Greek Verswissenschaft (Naumburg 1912) that simultaneously translated into English by Paul Shorey in the journal Classical Philology appeared .

Schroeder did not study the manuscripts of the Attic poets, but concentrated on explaining the text. He presented several individual studies, especially on Euripides, including a critical analysis of the pondoscopy in the Phoenis (1906). His greatest interest was metrics, knowledge of which he considered an important prerequisite for aesthetic appreciation. He successively published editions of Aeschylus (1907, 1916), Sophocles (1907, 1923), Euripides (1910, 1928) and Aristophanes (1909, 1930) in the Teubner-Verlag. In 1927 Schroeder published an annotated edition of Aristophanes' Birds , a piece written for Greek metrics and music at the end of the 5th century BC. Chr. Represents a valuable source.

In addition to Greek poetry, Schroeder also dealt with the Roman poet Horace, who had reproduced the Greek lyrical meters in the most diverse ways. Schroeder published a metrical manual for beginners which explained the Horazsch meter. In old age he published a detailed commentary on the poems of Horace (1930).

Through his studies of the Greek and Roman poets, Schroeder was a recognized expert on the teaching of these languages. He also presented his knowledge in systematic studies, where he pursued various focuses: He presented the historical development of Greek metrics and clarified the metric terms historically and systematically. His nomenclator metricus (1929), an alphabetical list of all metric technical terms, contributed significantly to clarifying the very confused and often misinterpreted terminology and is still an irreplaceable reference work today.

Fonts (selection)

• Studia Pindarica . Berlin 1878 (school program)
• Comments on the Hildebrandslied . Berlin 1880 ( Symbolae Joachimianae I , pp. 189–218; also dissertation, Jena)
• From the paper style . Berlin 1889. 2nd edition, Berlin 1891. 3rd edition, Berlin 1892. 4th edition, Leipzig 1896. 5th edition, Leipzig 1902. 6th edition, Leipzig 1906. 7th edition, Leipzig 1908. 8th edition Revised edition, Leipzig / Berlin 1912. 9th revised edition, Leipzig / Berlin 1919 ( digitized version of the 6th edition).
• Pindari Carmina . Leipzig 1900
• The sun is sacred to me. Monday speeches . Leipzig 1901. 2nd, increased edition under the title: Holy is me the sun. Monday speeches and related matters . Berlin 1925
• De tichoscopia Euripidis Phoenissis inserta (Eur. Phoen. 103-192) . Leipzig 1906 (school program)
• Aeschyli Cantica . Leipzig 1907. Second edition, Leipzig 1916
• Sophoclis Cantica . Leipzig 1907 2nd edition, Leipzig 1923
• Preparatory work on the history of Greek verse . Leipzig 1908
• Pindari Carmina cum fragmentis selectis . Leipzig 1908. 2nd edition, Leipzig 1914; with appendix, Leipzig 1923. 3rd edition, Leipzig 1930
• Aristophanis Cantica. Digessit stropharum popularium appendiculam adiecit . Leipzig 1909. 2nd, improved edition, Leipzig 1930
• Euripidis Cantica fragmento Grenfelliano adiecto . Leipzig 1910. Second edition, Leipzig 1928
• Horace's dimensions. Explained for beginners . Leipzig 1911
• About the current state of ancient Greek verse science . Naumburg 1912 (school program)
• Pindar's Pythias. Explained by Otto Schroeder . Leipzig / Berlin 1922
• Aristophanes: The birds. New processing . 4th edition, Berlin 1927 ( Selected Comedies by Aristophanes 4; first edition by Theodor Kock 1864)
• Greek singing verses . Leipzig 1924 ( Philologus . Supplement-Volume 17, Issue 2)
• Nomenclator metricus. Greek verse science in alphabetical order . Heidelberg 1929
• Outline of the Greek story of verse . Heidelberg 1930
• Horace: Comment . Bielefeld 1930

literature

• Gert Falch Heiberg, Hans Knagenhjelm Heiberg: Slægten Heiberg: personalhistoriske og genealogiske oplysninger . Kristiania 1907, pp. 115-116
• The old Joachimsthaler . Year 4, 1931, No. 14: Fixed number Otto Schroeder, the 80-year-old, in honor (with picture)
• The old Joachimsthaler . Volume 10, No. 37 (1937), pp. 2–7 (obituaries and condolences)
• The old Joachimsthaler . Volume 10, No. 38 (1937), p. 1 (obituary and condolences)
• Ecce . In: The old Joachimsthaler . Volume 10, No. 40 (1937), p. 1 (report on the funeral service)
• High school . Volume 49 (1938), p. 260
• Eckart Mensching : Texts on the history of philology in Berlin I (P. Maas, U. v. Wilamowitz, O. Schroeder, Ed. Norden) . In: Latin and Greek in Berlin Volume 29 (1985), pp. 82–89 (= Nugae zur Philologie-Geschichte . Berlin 1987, pp. 48–55)
• Helmut Caspar: The legs of the Hohenzollern. What primary school students from the Joachimsthal Gymnasium wrote about Siegesallee and what Wilhelm II thought of the essays. Berlin Story Verlag, Berlin 2007 ISBN 978-3-929829-58-7 ( with picture, p. 93 )
• Franz Kössler: Personal dictionary of teachers of the 19th century. Professional biographies from school annual reports and school programs 1825–1918 with lists of publications . Advance publication, Giessen 2007 full text
• Hans-Harald Müller, Mirko Nottscheid: Science without a university, research without a state: The Berlin Society for German Literature (1888–1938) . Berlin / Boston 2011, p. 464

Web links

Wikisource: Otto Schröder  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by Otto Schröder in the catalog of the German National Library
• Otto Schröder's personnel sheet in the personnel file of the BIL expert body in the archive database of the Library for Research on Educational History (BBF)
• Jonathan Groß: Biogram of Otto Schröder in the scholarly historical prosopography of the Teuchos Center

Individual evidence

1. ↑ [1]