Rudolf Ernst Keller

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Dedication by Rudolf Ernst Keller for Rudolf Hotzenköcherle in his book German Dialects
(Bibliothek des Schweizerischen Idiotikons , Zurich)

Rudolf Ernst Keller , in personal communication Ruedi Keller, (born March 3, 1920 in Winterthur ; † October 19, 2014 in Altrincham , Cheshire ) was a Swiss German studies scholar who held the chair for German language at the University of Manchester (Great Britain) from 1960–1982 and held older German literature . Both his work on the history of language and his studies on colloquial German and German dialects became well known .

Life

Keller grew up in Winterthur, attended the canton school there and studied English and German at the University of Zurich from 1939 to 1944 . His teachers included Eugen Dieth , Rudolf Hotzenköcherle , Manu Leumann , Otto Gröger and Manfred Szadrowsky . In 1944 he did his doctorate under Eugen Dieth with a dissertation on the ellipse in the New English language as a semantic-syntactic problem . He then worked as a teacher in his hometown for two years before moving to England.

In 1946, Keller was employed at the University of Manchester as a "Lecturer" and in 1947 as an "Assistant Lecturer". In 1949 he did his M.A. in Manchester, worked as a "Lecturer" at the Royal Holloway College of the University of London until 1952 and then again in Manchester as a "Senior Lecturer" until 1959. In 1960 he received the "Henry Simon Chair of German Language and Medieval German Literature" there, which he held until his retirement in 1982. During this time, the German Department of the University of Manchester became one of the largest and most successful in Great Britain; In the mid-1980s, five out of nine German language professorships that had become vacant were filled with graduates from Manchester.

From 1968 to 1970 Keller also served as dean of his faculty and from 1976 to 1979 as Pro-Vice Chancellor of the university.

Keller was one of the first corresponding members of the Institute for the German Language in Mannheim, which taught in Great Britain. In 1981 the Goethe-Institut awarded Keller the “ Goethe Medal ” for his positive contribution to the “deepening of a lively and fruitful dialogue between Great Britain and the Federal Republic of Germany” , and in 1990 he was awarded a “Special Number” by the German Life magazine and Letters honored.

research

Keller published on the German language in general, on colloquial German , the German- Swiss diglossia and on German dialects . It was also important to him to promote understanding of the German language and culture in Great Britain.

His work on spoken German exerted a great influence on German research in Germany and resulted in numerous further studies on the subject.

The work German Dialects. Phonology and Morphology from 1961 (reprinted 1979) was the first comprehensive presentation of German dialects in English and was also widely recognized in the German-speaking area. For the linguist William G. Moulton it was an “excellent book […] so good that one cannot help wishing there were even more of it”. In it he presented the sound and form system of eight dialects synchronously and diachronically - Zurich German , Bern German , North Alsatian , Hessian (around Darmstadt), Upper Austrian , Luxembourgish , Westphalian (Münsterland) and North Saxon (Lower Elbe near Hamburg) - supplemented by one each transcribed text and a glossary. Other dialectological publications dealt with the Lower Alemannic sound system and the High Alemannic dialect of Jestetten (South Baden).

His language story The German Language from 1978, which is aimed at both German studies students and interested laypeople, was also popular. The translation into German made by Karl-Heinz Mulagk (The German language and its historical development) achieved two editions (1986 and 1995).

Publications (selection)

Monographs

  • The ellipse in the New English language as a semantic-syntactic problem. Gehring, Winterthur 1944 (also Diss. Univ. Zurich).
  • German dialects. Phonology and Morphology. With selected texts. Manchester University Press, Manchester 1961, reprinted 1979.
  • Jestetten, Waldshut district. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1970 (Phonai, Deutsche Reihe, Volume 7), pp. 11-89.
  • The German Language. Faber and Faber, London 1978 (The Great Languages); deutsch: The German language and its historical development. Edited and translated from English, provided with an accompanying word and a glossary by Karl-Heinz Mulagk. Buske, Hamburg 1986, 2nd, unchanged edition 1995.

Essays

  • The preservation of the old high tongue vowels in Lower Alemannic. In: ZMaF 29 (1962), pp. 329-340.
  • On the phonology of the high Alemannic dialect of Jestetten. In: Phonetica 10 (1963), pp. 51-79.
  • The Language of the Franks. In: BJRL 47 (1964), pp. 101-122.
  • Some Problems of German slang. In: TPhS (1966), pp. 88-106.
  • The transformation process of a dialect phonetic system. In: Negotiations of the 2nd International Dialectological Congress. Volume 2. Ed. By Ludwig Erich Schmitt. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1967, pp. 446-451.
  • Diaglossia in German-Speaking Switzerland. In: BJRL 56 (1973), pp. 130-149.
  • Spoken German. In: BJRL 64 (1981), pp. 117-140.
  • The Impact of Ideology on the German Vocabulary. In: TPhS (1981), pp. 118-135.

literature

  • Linguist's Handbook. Biographical and bibliographical data of German-speaking linguists of the present. Edited by Wilfried Kürschner. Narr, Tübingen 1994. ISBN 3-8233-5000-5 . Vol. 2, p. 444.
  • Martin Durrell : Professor R. E. Keller (1920-2014). Obituary in the magazine of the Germanic Institute, University of London, 2015.
  • Rudolf Ernst Keller: Jestetten, Waldshut district. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1970 (Phonai, Deutsche Reihe, Volume 7), p. 11.

Web link

Individual evidence

  1. Two generations later, another Swiss man worked for this chair for a short time, namely Guido Seiler .
  2. a b Martin Durrell: Professor R. E. Keller (1920–2014). Obituary in the magazine of the Germanic Institute, University of London.
  3. Language 30/1 (1963), pp. 136-140.
  4. What is striking is the lack of dialects of the former GDR - and thus of all East Central German , which Ingo Reiffenstein's book review in the German literary newspaper 84/4 (1963), pp. 318-320 accused Keller .