Otto Zwierlein

Otto Zwierlein (born August 5, 1939 in Hollstadt ) is a German classical philologist .

Life

Zwierlein studied Classical Philology, History and Middle Latin Philology at the Universities of Würzburg , Basel and at the Free University of Berlin from 1960–1965 , where he received his PhD in 1965. phil. received his doctorate. Subsequently, until his habilitation in 1970, he was a scientific assistant at the seminar for Middle Latin Philology at the Free University, then scientific advisor and professor. In 1971 he was appointed full professor at the University of Hamburg , and in 1979 in Bonn . In 1986 he was Nellie Wallace Lecturer at the University of Oxford , 1990–91 Visiting Mellon Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton . In 2004 he retired.

Zwierlein supervised a total of 25 doctoral students, including a. Thomas Klein , Rainer Jakobi , Christine Schmitz , Jürgen Paul Schwindt , Marcus Deufert , Alexander Arweiler and Wilfried Lingenberg .

Otto Zwierlein has been married to the archaeologist Erika Zwierlein-Diehl since 1969 ; they have three children together: the English scholar Anne-Julia Zwierlein (* 1971), the historian Cornel Zwierlein (* 1973) and the physicist Martin Zwierlein (* 1977).

Memberships

Zwierlein has been a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz since 1980, a member of the Academia Europaea since 1990, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy since 1991 . Since 1998 he has been a full member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences .

1981–1990 Zwierlein was an expert reviewer and member of the selection committee of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and in 1996 a member of the graduate school “Commentary in Antiquity and the Middle Ages”.

Research priorities

Zwierlein deals with the tragedies of Seneca and the comedies of the authors Plautus and Terence , as well as ancient and Middle Latin epics. In addition, late Latin commentaries, transmission history, editing techniques, authenticity criticism and other disciplines of textual criticism form an important field of activity. Since 2004, Zwierlein has been particularly concerned with literary sources on the history of early Christianity.

Controversy over theses on the Petrine tradition

Zwierlein subjects the literary sources on the Petrus tradition to a consistent source criticism , in the course of which numerous questions of authenticity, dating and dependency are answered anew and, as a result, all information on an alleged phase of Peter's life in Rome is questioned. They are all the result of speculative fiction formations of the second century AD without any reference to older sources. Peter was not said to have been the first bishop of Rome (he played a central role in the congregation of Jerusalem alongside his brother James ), nor had he ever visited Rome; he had never exercised an influence that extended beyond Palestine and possibly the eastern provinces of Asia Minor , and his martyrdom is also a later construct of misinterpreted and arbitrarily condensed information from the older texts, which, however, if correctly interpreted, would offer no basis for such an assumption. This thesis was received partly positively, partly criticized. For reasons of content and because of its far-reaching consequences for the foundation of the position of the papacy within the Roman Catholic Church , the papal primacy , based on the so-called Apostolic Succession , it was met with fierce opposition from both the Roman Institute of the Görres Society and the Section for ancient studies of the Görres Society, which Zwierlein rejected as unjustified. From ancient history there were some reserved statements ^; which, however, are faced by just as many positive ones ^; . In the meantime, there is also a summary of the controversial dispute of recent years. Partial aspects of this thesis, in particular the testimony of ' Ignatius of Antioch ', are touched on in the most recent publication.

Fonts

• Donat's commentary on Terence in Codex Chigianus H VII 240 ; De Gruyter, Berlin, 1970
• Prolegomena on a critical edition of Seneca's tragedies ; Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1984
• Critical commentary on Seneca's tragedies ; Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1986
• (as ed.) Seneca Tragoediae ; Oxford University Press, 1986
• On the criticism and exegesis of Plautus II. Miles gloriosus ; Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1998
• The Ovid and Virgil revision in Tiberian times ; De Gruyter, Berlin 1999
• Ancient Revisions of Virgil and Ovid ; West German Publishing House, Wiesbaden, 2000
• The she-wolf and the twins in Roman historiography ; Schöningh, Paderborn, 2003
• Lucubrationes Philologae ; De Gruyter, Berlin, 2004
• Hippolytos and Phaidra: From Euripides to D'Annunzio ; Schöningh, Paderborn, 2006
• Peter in Rome: The Literary Testimonies. With a critical edition of the Martyrdoms of Peter and Paul on a new handwritten basis (Studies on Ancient Literature and History, Vol. 96); De Gruyter, Berlin, 2009, 2nd, revised and expanded edition 2010. Table of contents online (PDF; 274 kB) Review by Pieter W. van der Horst , review by Tassilo Schmitt Review by Mario Ziegler
• Critical to the Roman Petrus tradition and the dating of the First Letter of Clement , in: Göttinger Forum für Altertumswwissenschaft 13 (2010), pp. 87–157 online here (PDF; 876 kB)
• Peter in Rome? The literary testimonies , in: Stefan Heid (ed.): Petrus and Paulus in Rom. An interdisciplinary debate. Herder, Freiburg - Basel - Vienna 2011, pp. 444–467
• Peter and Paul in Jerusalem and Rome. From the New Testament to the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles ; De Gruyter, Berlin, 2013

Web links

• Literature by and about Otto Zwierlein in the catalog of the German National Library
• Otto Zwierlein at the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and Arts
• Otto Zwierlein at the Institute for Classical and Romance Philology at the University of Bonn, Department for Greek and Latin Philology

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Entry at the University of Bochum ( Memento of the original dated December 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ member entry of Otto Zwierlein at the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz , accessed on 06.11.17
3. ↑ Otto Zwierlein: Peter in Rome. The literary certificates ; De Gruyter, Berlin, 2nd, revised and expanded edition 2010.
4. ^ Pieter W. van der Horst: Review of Otto Zwierlein, Petrus in Rom ; in: Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2010.03.25 (online) , where it says among other things: Zwierlein presents a strong case and his conclusions have a great historical plausibility (although orthodox Catholic scholars will certainly try to disprove them) .
5. ^ Christian Gnilka , Stefan Heid, Rainer Riesner : Blood witness. Death and tomb of Peter in Rome ; Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg, 1st edition 2010.
6. ↑ Stefan Heid (ed.): Petrus and Paulus in Rome. An interdisciplinary debate . Herder, Freiburg - Basel - Vienna 2011.
7. ↑ Zwierlein, Criticals of the Roman Petrus Tradition , as above under "Writings".
8. ↑ Mario Ziegler : Review of: Zwierlein, Otto: Petrus in Rom. The literary evidence. With a critical edition of the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul on a new handwritten basis. Berlin 2009, in: H-Soz-u-Kult, December 14, 2009 ( online )
9. ^ Tassilo Schmitt : Otto Zwierlein: Petrus in Rom. Sehepunkte 10, 2010 ( online ). For the correction of factually questionable arguments in this review, cf. but O. Zwierlein, Criticals on the Roman Petrustradition (as above under Literature), p. 112 with note 94 and p. 151/152 with note 217.
10. ^ William V. Harris: Time of bones , in: TLS , May 13, 2011, p. 5.
11. ↑ Bernd Kollmann : Review of: Zwierlein, Otto: Petrus in Rom. The literary evidence. With a critical edition of the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul on a new handwritten basis. Berlin 2009, in: Klio 93 (2011), pp. 266–268, with the conclusion: All in all, Z's work is of great value due to the new edition of the Martyrdoms of Peter and Paul. In addition, it offers a critical corrective to the common Petrus-Rom-Hypothesis and raises awareness that the assumption, which is often all too natural, of the activity and martyrdom of Peter in Rome not only from an archaeological point of view, but also from the literary point of view feet of clay .
12. ↑ Petrus in Rome : Interview with Otto Zwierlein (2013) ( German version, PDF, 340 kB ) ( English version, PDF, 335 kB )
13. ↑ Otto Zwierlein: The original versions of Martyria Polycarpi et Pionii and the Corpus Polycarpianum , 2 volumes (UaLG 116/1 and 116/2), Berlin / Boston 2014 (volume 1: Editiones criticae. With an Armenian-German text and English translation of D. Kölligan ; Volume 2: Text history and reconstruction. Polycarp, Ignatius and the editor Ps.-Pionius ).