Primus Lessiak

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Primus Lessiak (born March 5, 1878 in Köttmannsdorf , Carinthia ; † January 26, 1937 in Klagenfurt-St. Martin ) was an Austrian old Germanist , linguist, dialect geographer , name researcher , who worked as a university professor in Freiburg (Switzerland) , Prague and Würzburg . He was pioneering in dialect geography and polyglot toponomics .

Life

Lessiak (pronounced “Lessíak”) was born and raised in the mixed-language area of Carinthia . The name of his father, an elementary school teacher, as well as the maiden name of his mother, Josefine Sablatnig, are of Slovenian origin. The Lesiaks - his uncle Primus Lesiak, Pörtschach mayor, fire brigade man and restaurant owner, wrote himself with just an S - were an old-established family in Pörtschach am Wörthersee.

Primus Lessiak attended elementary school in Köstenberg near Velden am Wörther See and in Klagenfurt, then the grammar school in Klagenfurt. From 1898 to 1902 he studied English and German in Vienna a. a. with Richard Heinzel , Carl von Kraus and Max Hermann Jellinek , the son of the chief rabbi of Vienna Adolf Jellinek , in between two semesters in Leipzig with Eduard Sievers . As a pupil he was a member of the striking Pennäler fraternity Tauriska in Klagenfurt and then founding boy of the Academic Landsmannschaft “Carinthia” in Vienna . After graduating from school, Lessiak had served as a one-year volunteer in 1897/98 , so he had to work as a reserve officer during the First World War in 1916 until the end of the war from the Prague chair to the front.

In 1903 Lessiak had passed the teaching examination for higher schools (at that time "middle schools") and received his doctorate from Heinzel with a dissertation on the dialect of Pernegg in Carinthia (phonetic and inflection theory) . The work “impresses on the one hand with the sovereign overview of the material, which goes far beyond the immediate research area, which represents a first attempt at a rough breakdown of the Bavarian-Austrian dialects and a classification of the Carinthian dialects. […] Above all, however, the methodological progress is important, which has been achieved through the systematic inclusion and interpretation of the German loanwords in the Slovenian ( Windisch ) dialects of Carinthia and, conversely, the Slovenian borrowing (especially place names) into German. This gained an inestimable source area for the history of sounds. "

After three years of teaching at Viennese and Prague schools, Lessiak's habilitation at the German University of Prague was completed in 1906 as a private lecturer for older German language and literature, phonetics and modern dialect studies due to his contributions to the dialect geography of the Austrian Alpine countries. In the same year he was appointed full professor of German philology at the University of Friborg-Freiburg in Switzerland, where he joined the student association Die Rodensteiner . Anton Pfalz also sought him out in Freiburg for practical questions on dialect research before he joined the Vienna dictionary office . In 1911 Lessiak was appointed professor for older German language and literature at the German University in Prague and at the same time worked at the dictionary office at the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna for the publication of the Bavarian-Austrian dictionary . However, when he was to be appointed to head it, he had to refuse because of his illness with encephalitis lethargica , which struck Europe as an epidemic between 1917 and 1928, because the illness led to paralysis of his speech tools and partly also of his legs from 1921 onwards. Previously, Lessiak had been appointed full public professor of German philology at the University of Würzburg in 1920 , but he had to retire there in 1922. He then lived, cared for by his wife Hedwig, severely disabled for 15 years in Winklern near Pörtschach in the Lesiak Villa, where scientists from Europe visited him and where he continued to work as far as he could. His work was continued by Eberhard Kranzmayer .

In 1971 the Lessiakgasse in Vienna- Donaustadt (22nd district) was named after him.

meaning

Grave plaque for Primus Lessiak on the vestibule of the parish church of St. Martin, XII. "Sankt Martin" district of Klagenfurt, capital of Carinthia, Austria

Lessiak was pioneering in dialect geography and polyglot names. During his time as a professor in Prague, Lessiak undertook a series of field research trips in conjunction with the Vienna Academy of Sciences to record dialect phonograms in the southern Bavarian language islands in Upper Carniola , whose settlement he was able to prove from Tyrol, and he went with Anton Pfalz in 1912 with heavy equipment on mules to the plateau of the seven municipalities in what was then Welsch-Tirol (Province of Trento), in order to use a phonograph for sound recording on wax plates to make phonogram recordings of the Cimbrian , which still exist today. As a result, the Cimbrian of the Seven Congregations is one of those privileged languages ​​of which authentic tape recordings already existed from such an early age. His research work in the field of dialect geography and name research was honored by his appointment as a member of several scientific societies: In 1908 the Society for the German Language in Zurich made him a “foreign” and in 1915 a “full member”; the Society for the Promotion of German Science, Art and Literature in Bohemia made him a "corresponding member" in 1920 and the History Association for Carinthia made him an honorary member, and in the same year 1920 he also became a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna .

"Familiarity with the Slovene dialects and their history on the one hand and the thorough knowledge of the German-dialectic conditions on the other hand enabled Lessiak to master the new instruments of polyglot dialectology." Since then, however, he has also been accused of being more linguistic To have worked as a propagandist for the German nationality by the fact that his research results had contributed to the argument that the language of the so-called Windischen in Carinthia had little in common with the Slovene language south of the Karawanken border, the difference was very big, mutual understanding was difficult, the Carinthians Slovenian dialects have been a mixed language for a long time .

Publications

  • The dialect of Pernegg in Carinthia (phonetic and inflection theory). Diss. Vienna (= contributions to the history of the German language and literature [PBB] 28 (1903)), 1–227. Reprint: Deutsche Dialektgeographie 61, Elwert Verlag, Marburg 1963, ISBN 978-3-487-14027-8
  • Contributions to the dialect geography of the Austrian Alpine countries. In: ZS für Mundarten No. 1 (1906), pp. 308-315 and No. 4 (1909) pp. 1-24
  • Alpine Germans and Alpine Slavs in their linguistic relationships . In: Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 2 (1910) pp. 274–288.
  • The vowelism of the tone syllables in the German names of the oldest Carinthian documents . In: Prager German Studies 8 (1908), pp. 241–272
  • The German dialect of Zarz in Upper Carniola. A. Grammar. With additions by Eberhard Kranzmayer and Annemarie Richter (= Carinthian Research Volume III.) Hermann Böhlaus successor. Weimar 1944. Reprint: Deutsche Dialektgrographie 50, Marburg 1959, ISBN 978-3-487-14014-8
  • Primus Lessiak, Eberhard Kranzmayer: Dictionary of the German language island vernacular of Zarz / Sorica and Deutschrut / Rut in Yugoslavia . Edited by Maria Hornung a. Alfred Ogris (= Archive for Patriotic History and Topography Vol. 68) Verlag des Geschichtsverein für Kärnten, Klagenfurt 1983
  • The Carinthian station names. With a detailed introduction to the Carinthian place name formation. In: Messages from the history association for Carinthia , Klagenfurt. Carinthia I , 1922, pp. 1-124 , accessed October 28, 2019 .
  • The unity of Carinthia in the light of naming and language . Published by Kärntner Heimatbund, Klagenfurt 1927².
  • Contributions to the history of German consonantism (= writings of the Phil. Faculty of the German University in Prague 14), Verlag Rohrer, Brünn-Prag-Leipzig-Wien 1933
  • Primus Lessiak, Anton Pfalz: Speech samples from the seven parishes (Sette Comuni Vicentini), Italy. With an introduction to the phonology of classical Cimbrian. In: 48th communication of the phonogram archive commission at the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna. (= Communication of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna XXXI) Vienna 1918, pp.59-73,
  • Primus Lessiak, Karl Liebleitner (ed.): In the trenches, Carinthian soldiers, love and joke songs for our soldiers . Austrian folk song company, Carinthia Working Committee, Klagenfurt 1916
  • Editor of the magazine Teuthonista - magazine for German dialect research and language history

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry on Primus Lessiak in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
  2. ↑ Primus Lessíak: Gout. In: Journal for German Antiquity and German Literature 53, 1911, pp. 101–182.
  3. ↑ a b page no longer available , search in web archives: Pörtschacher Zeitung, April 2007, p. 41@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.poertschach.at
  4. ↑ Horst Grimm / Leo Besser-Walzel, Die Corporationen Frankfurt am Main 1986
  5. ↑ Ingo Reiffenstein: The phonetic description principle as the result of young grammatical and dialectological research . In: Werner Besch: Sprachgeschichte: A handbook on the history of the German language and its exploration Walter de Gruyter, Berlin-New York 1982, 1st part, p. 30
  6. ↑ Remigius Geiser: Basic Course in Classical Cimbrian: Supplementary Lesson E2: Why “Classical” Cimbrian?
  7. ↑ Audio sample with Anthony Rowley: A journey into the time of the minstrels. From the linguistic islands of the Zimbri and the Fersentaler . S 20 (PDF; 5.3 MB)
  8. ↑ Ingo Reiffenstein: The phonetic description principle as the result of young grammatical and dialectological research , p. 30
  9. ↑ Tom Priestly: Linguistic propaganda against perceived irredentism In: International Journal of Applied Linguistics Volume 9, Issue 1, Blackwell Publishers, Edmonton, Canada, 2008, pp. 37-75, Online: April 3, 2007
personal data
SURNAME Lessiak, Primus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian old Germanist, linguist, dialect geographer, name researcher
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Köttmannsdorf , Carinthia , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 1937
Place of death Klagenfurt-St. Martin , Klagenfurt am Wörthersee , Carinthia , Austria