Philipp Wegener

Hugo Paul Theodor Christian Philipp Wegener (born July 20, 1848 in Neuhaldensleben , † March 15, 1916 in Greifswald ) was a German linguist and high school director. Outstanding among his linguistic works, which are influenced by philosophical and psychological currents, are his investigations into the basic questions of linguistic life (1885), in which he formulated fundamental theoretical concepts on functional syntax .

Life

Philipp Wegener was the son of pastor Gustav Hermann Wegener and Bertha geb. Joesting. He received his first lessons from his father, who was first head of a boys' school in Neuhaldensleben and later pastor in Süplingen and Olvenstedt . At Easter 1859 he went to the education department at the monastery of Our Dear Women in Magdeburg , where he obtained his school-leaving certificate at Easter 1867. He then studied Protestant theology and philosophy at the University of Marburg . In the winter semester of 1868/69 he moved to the Berlin University , where he turned to philology and linguistics. He attended lectures and seminar exercises with the classical philologists and Germanists Moriz Haupt , Karl Müllenhoff , Adolf Kirchhoff and with the linguist Hermann Steinthal . On June 24, 1871 he was promoted to Dr. phil. PhD . In his dissertation he dealt with the development of different case functions in Latin and Greek in the sense of historical linguistics. On April 30, 1872, he passed the teaching examination in Latin, Greek and German.

After graduating, Wegener entered the Prussian school service. He completed his probationary year from April to September 1872 at the cathedral high school in Magdeburg , then at the high school in Treptow an der Rega , where he was also employed as a regular assistant teacher. There he met his future wife Martha Tietzen (1856–1943), the daughter of the country doctor Heinrich Wilhelm Tietzen. On October 1, 1873, Wegener was given a permanent position as a full teacher in Treptow. A year later he moved to the Stiftsgymnasium Zeitz , on April 1, 1876 to the pedagogy of the monastery of Our Dear Women in Magdeburg. He had previously married Martha Tietzen on July 15, 1875. With her he had three daughters whose language development he carefully observed, which gave important impulses to his research work.

In addition to the school service, Wegener continued his research work steadily. He collected folk songs, sayings and traditions about customs. His publications appeared in supplements to school programs and in magazines. Wegener joined various scientific associations, including the Association for Low German Linguistic Research , the Association for History and Archeology of the Duchy and Archbishopric of Magdeburg (where he was a board member from 1878) and the Association for Research into the Low German Language and Literature in Magdeburg, where he played a decisive role engaged as a specialist and secretary.

On April 1, 1886, Wegener was appointed director of the Neuhaldensleben grammar school, which he directed for twelve years. In 1898 he moved with his family to Greifswald, where he was appointed director of the municipal grammar school with real department on April 1st . For his merit, Wegener received the Order of the Red Eagle, 4th Class on January 21, 1906, and the Order of the Crown, 3rd Class, on June 29, 1911 . In addition, he was appointed a secret councilor .

Wegener's eldest daughter Katharina (1876–1945) married the classical philologist Wilhelm Kroll (1869–1939) in 1900 ; Among the couple's four children was the physicist Wolfgang Kroll . His second daughter Marie (1878–1973) married the pharmacist Kurt Helfritz (1869–1949), with whom she had the son Hans Helfritz (1902–1995) and the daughter Magdalene (1906–2002). The youngest daughter Helene (1881–?) Married the doctor Ernst Wex.

Scientific work

Wegener's research was based on classical philology, in which he was influenced by his teachers Haupt, Kirchhoff and Müllenhoff. In Kirchhoff's sense, he divided the fifth book of the Odyssey and the Homeric Hymns to Apollo and Diana into several individual songs. He also dealt with the Middle High German sagas.

Linguistics was already part of his dissertation, in which he dealt with the development of various case functions (the ablative , instrumental , locative and dative ) in Latin and Greek and, in addition to the functions, also examined the development of suffixes . Following on from this, he wrote a study on the Latin relative clause . However, Wegener was more interested in the Low German language , which he had encountered in his native Brandenburg since childhood. He published poems and songs in Middle and New Low German.

Through the contact with the Germanist Hermann Paul , Wegener came close to the “ young grammarians ”. He advised Paul on his work Principien der Sprachgeschichte (1882), which is fundamental in this direction, and in 1885 he himself published a highly regarded monograph with his investigations into the basic questions of linguistic life. He advocated equal consideration of physiological and psychological aspects of language. He had first presented the description of dialects programmatically at the meeting of German philologists and schoolmen in Trier in 1879; he later presented them in writing in Hermann Paul's Grundriss der Germanistik (1901).

From his school practice, Wegener reported several times with educational and didactic writings on ancient language and German lessons. In the course of the grammar school reforms, he spoke out in favor of abolishing Latin lessons in secondary schools in order to meet the needs of the middle class.

Fonts (selection)

• De casuum nonnullorum Graecorum Latinorumque historia . Berlin 1871 (dissertation)
• The Latin relative clause . Treptow an der Rega 1874 (school program)
• Directory of the manuscripts in the Zeitz Abbey Library . Zeitz 1876 (school program)
• Three Middle Low German poems from the 15th century with critical remarks . Magdeburg 1878 (school program)
• Popular songs from Northern Germany, especially the Magdeburg region and Holstein, from own collections and from contributions by Carstens and Pröhle . 3 parts, Leipzig 1879–1880
• Investigations into the basic questions of language life . Hall 1885
  • English translation by Wilfred Abse: Speech and Reason. Language Disorder in Mental Disease . Bristol (Virginia) 1971
  • New edition by Konrad Koerner, with an English foreword by Clemens Knobloch, Amsterdam / Philadelphia 1991
• Director's Inaugural Address given May 4, 1886 . Neuhaldensleben 1887 (school program)
• On the methodology of Horace lessons in the grammar school Prima . 2 parts, Neuhaldensleben 1889–1890 (school program)
• On the methodology of Latin and Greek teaching . Greifswald 1899 (school program)
• Preface on the value of the Latin-less Realschulen . Greifswald 1900 (school program)
• To the legend of the Nibelungs . Greifswald 1901 (school program)
• On the history of the Greifswald grammar school . 2 parts, Greifswald 1904–1905 (school program)
• On the history of German teaching . Greifswald 1906 (school program)

literature

• Hans Ziegler : Privy Councilor Philipp Wegener, Director of the Greifswald High School, † March 15, 1916 . In: Tageblatt für Vorpommern , March 16, 1916.
• Albert Leitzmann : Philipp Wegener . In: Indo-European Yearbook . Volume 4, 1916 (1917), pp. 246-250.
• Johann Georg Juchem : The construction of speaking. Communication semantic considerations on Philipp Wegener . In: Journal of Linguistics . Volume 3 (1984), pp. 3-18 DOI .
• Clemens Knobloch : Philipp Wegener (1848–1916) and the linguistic psychological discussion around 1900 . In: Journal for Phonetic Linguistics and Communication Research . 42: 232-245 DOI (1989) .
• Brigitte Nerlich: Philipp Wegener's (1848-1916) Theory of Language and Communication . In: Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas Bulletin . Volume 11 (1988), pp. 11-13 DOI .
• Irmingard Hildburg Grimm-Vogel: Philipp Wegener. 1848-1916. Essence, work, ways . Bonn 1998 (dissertation; with list of publications).

Web links

Wikisource: Philipp Wegener  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Philipp Wegener in the catalog of the German National Library
• Guido Heinrich: Philipp Wegener in the Magdeburg Biographical Lexicon
• Philipp Wegener's personnel form in the personnel file of the BIL expert body in the archive database of the Library for Research on Educational History (BBF)