Paul Maas (classical philologist)

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Paul Maas (1933). Charcoal drawing by Emil Stumpp .

Paul Maas (born November 18, 1880 in Frankfurt am Main , † July 15, 1964 in Oxford ) was a German classical philologist and Byzantinist . His most important achievements were in the fields of Greek metrics and textual criticism.

Life

Maas was born in 1880 as the eldest son of a Jewish academic family. His father Maximilian Maas was a banker and private scholar. The son attended school in Frankfurt, later the grammar schools in Freiburg im Breisgau and Baden-Baden . After graduating from high school, he studied classical philology at Berlin University . He had lively but fruitful arguments with his teacher Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff . He later continued his studies at the University of Munich , where he began to deal intensively with Byzantine literature at Karl Krumbacher's suggestion. In 1901 he published his first article in this field. An article on Porson's law , written in Berlin as early as 1899 , which he expanded to include the dactyloepitritic poetry of Bakchylides , was published in the Philologus in 1904 . Maas received his doctorate in 1903 from Wilhelm von Christ with a dissertation on the poetic plural in Latin, which earned him various praise. In 1909 he married Karen Ræder, the sister of the Danish classical philologist Hans Ræder .

In 1910 Maas completed his habilitation in Berlin and was appointed private lecturer for Byzantine literature. With Wilamowitz's support, he was also able to obtain the license to teach ancient Greek literature. As a research assistant to Wilhelm Crönert , he participated in the revision of Passow's concise dictionary of the Greek language . When the First World War broke out , he had to interrupt his work and was deployed as a medic in Istanbul . He was one of the signatories of the declaration initiated by Wilamowitz of the university teachers of the German Reich . Many months after the end of the war he returned to Berlin via Odessa in 1920 , where he was appointed associate professor. He became Wilamowitz's closest collaborator in the years that followed. Wilamowitz also deeply regretted that Maas accepted a call to Königsberg in 1930 for a full professorship. Wilamowitz made Maas one of the editors of his small writings .

In 1934, after the National Socialists seized power , Maas was forced to retire as a professor of Jewish descent on the basis of the law for the restoration of the civil service . He led a withdrawn life before he decided to emigrate to Oxford shortly before the outbreak of World War II in 1939 .

In Oxford, Maas first found work as an advisor to the Clarendon Press . He accepted his impoverishment and all the restrictions in exile without complaint and tried to establish contact with British experts and other emigrants. In addition to his old friend Gilbert Murray , whom he had met in 1909, numerous young British students gathered around Maas. His knowledge of textual criticism, which Wilamowitz had already praised, earned him a position in the publication of the English Book of Common Prayer . He also participated with great success in the additions to the revised version of the Greek lexicon by Liddell and Scott . Together with Constantine A. Trypanis , Maas produced the first critical edition of the songs of Saint Romanos Melodos , which appeared in a revised edition after his death (Berlin 1970). An important merit of Maas was the reestablishment of research contacts between Germany and the world after the Second World War, which he promoted through his rich correspondence. On November 10, 1955, the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin appointed him a corresponding member.

Maas's health deteriorated rapidly in the last few years of his life, but he continued to work. The University of Oxford awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1959. In 1962 King Paul of Greece accepted him into the King George I Order . In 1963 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon . Maas was a corresponding member of the British Academy and was accepted into the peace class of the Pour le Mérite order . He died in Oxford on July 15, 1964 at the age of 83. His grave is in the Hebrew section of Wolvercote Cemetery . His wife died in 1960. Both left three daughters, one of whom was buried with him; one son died in childhood.

Wolfgang Buchwald , who had been Maas 'pupil during the Königsberg years 1930-34 and had been in contact with him until his death, edited Maas' Kleine Schriften according to his wishes and published them in 1973 posthumously. They contain a directory of the author's nearly 2000 publications.

Services

Although Romanos Maas was the only major publication, its importance for classical philology should not be underestimated. He has published hundreds of articles in international journals on text criticism, grammar, metrics (verse theory), palaeography and style. His essays on Greek palaeography and metrics in the Introduction to Classical Studies by Alfred Gercke and Eduard Norden (1923 ff.) Took important positions, which were unsurpassed until the publication of the Introduction to Greek Philology (1997, edited by Heinz-Günther Nesselrath ) were and were also translated into English. Mathematical studies put Maas in a position to solve old problems of Greek metrics with his research or at least to offer plausible solutions. He was the first to base a publication on the quantitative principle of Greek metrics , which Friedrich Nietzsche had already recognized in 1871 (1923). This means that the Greek verses did not pay attention to the stress on the words, only to the length of their syllables. The system introduced by Richard Bentley to mark the ictus ("blow", the equivalent of the hypothetical verse accent), which had previously assumed an accentuating character of the Greek verse theory, had become obsolete . The Greek Metric was translated into English by Hugh Lloyd-Jones in 1962 ( Greek Meter , Oxford University Press, 1962), with some changes and additions made by the translator and Eduard Fraenkel .

Maas also coined the term brevis in longo ("short [syllable] in long [element]"). He describes the metric phenomenon that there must always be a length at the end of the message that may include a short syllable. According to Maas, the length of the syllable is not decisive for the length of the element at this point. It is not an elementum anceps ("two-headed", ambivalent), which can be long or short, but always an elementum longum at this point. If, on the other hand, a short syllable occurs, this also constitutes an elementum longum , not an elementum breve .

Maas was the first to explain and classify the dactyloepitrites used by the poets Stesichoros , Simonides von Keos , Bakchylides and Pindar . The sequence of dactylic and Cretan kola with connecting elements in between (so-called synartetic elements, which can be long or short) he divided into two basic groups, the dactylic and the epitritic members, whose structural elements he further differentiated. His short notation for the analysis of dactyloepitritic pieces is still in use today. A discovery of a variety of anacreontic and dramatic glyconic he named after his teacher and longtime colleague "wilamowitzianus".

In the field of textual criticism, Maas made a special contribution to the methodical area and in particular to the Middle Greek (Byzantine) authors. In addition to the above-mentioned edition of St. Romanos, he dealt with the Byzantine scholars. He attached great importance to linking the textual criticism with the metric. His monograph Textkritik was published in the first edition in 1927 and had three further, improved editions until his death, the last one in 1960. The Critica del testo in the translation by Nello Martinelli with an introduction by Giorgio Pasquali was first published in 1952 by Le Monnier in Florence and experienced various new editions, since 1972 with a comment by Luciano Canfora . La critica del testo secondo Paul Maas: testo e commento combined a comment by Elio Montanari with a reprint of the translation by Martinelli in the 1990 version, published in 2003 by SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo in Florence. In 2017, Giorgio Numbers presented a new translation based on the last German edition from 1960 (Paul Maas, “La critica del testo”, Edizioni Storia e Letteratura, Rome 2017).

Proverbial for Maas' style was the “maasful brevity” with which he succeeded in getting to the heart of difficult issues. This is also reflected in the brevity of his studies, which are nevertheless not lacking in depth and content.

Fonts (selection)

  • Greek metric . BG Teubner, Leipzig 1923 ( Alfred Gercke , Eduard Norden (Hrsg.): Introduction to Classical Studies , Volume 1, Issue 7).
  • Textual criticism . 4th edition. BG Teubner, Leipzig 1960.
  • Sancti Romani Melodi Cantica. Volume 1: Cantica Genuina . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1963. Volume 2: Cantica Dubia . De Gruyter, Berlin 1970. Edited by Paul Maas and Constantine A. Trypanis .
  • Small fonts . Edited by Wolfgang Buchwald. CH Beck, Munich 1973, ISBN 3-406-02083-6 .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Colometry in the dactyloepitrites of Bakchylides . In: Philologus 63 (1904), 297–301 = Kleine Schriften , Munich 1973. pp. 8–18.
  2. ↑ cf. Declaration by the university teachers of the German Reich
  3. ^ Hugh Lloyd-Jones: Paul Maas † , in: Gnomon 37/1965, p. 219.
  4. ^ Hugh Lloyd-Jones (1965) p. 220.
  5. ^ Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott: A Greek-English lexicon. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1843; 9th edition, obtained from Henry Stuart Jones with Roderick McKenzie, ibid. 1940; 7. Anastatic reprint, with A supplement by EA Barber with the participation of P. Maas, M. Scheller and ML West, ibid 1968; several reprints up to 1996, ISBN 0-19-864226-1 .
  6. ↑ a b New German Biography (see literature).
  7. ↑ Evidence in the Opac des Servizio Bibliotecario Nazionale (SBN)
  8. ^ Evidence in the Opac of the SBN. The comment was first published without the text by Maas in 2000: evidence in the SBN
  9. ↑ Info at IBS.it
  10. ^ Evidence in the SBN

Web links

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on September 10, 2007 .
personal data
SURNAME Maas, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German classical philologist and Byzantinist
DATE OF BIRTH November 18, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH July 15, 1964
Place of death Oxford