Theodor Bögel

Johann Heinrich Theodor Bögel (born April 7, 1876 in Brieg , Silesia , † July 2, 1973 in Halle ) was a German classical philologist and high school teacher in Silesia (1903-1918 in Kreuzburg, 1918-1938 / 45 in Breslau). As a former employee of the large-scale lexicon project Thesaurus Linguae Latinae , he worked for the company for several years and later wrote down his memories of this time in old age, which are an important source for the way the project works.

Life

Theodor Bögel was the son of the master brewer and food chemist Carl Bögel, who ran a sugar factory in Brieg. Bögel attended elementary school and the royal high school in Brieg, where he passed his school leaving examination on March 12, 1895. Shortly afterwards Bögel's father died, and a (childless) brother of his mother, the Protestant theologian Max Reischle (1858–1905), took him to Gießen and shortly afterwards to Göttingen , where Reischle was appointed professor of systematic theology. Bögel studied classical philology, German and linguistics at the universities in Gießen and Göttingen . His teachers included the linguist Wilhelm Schulze and the philologists Georg Kaibel , Friedrich Leo and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff . Bögel received a decisive stimulus from the Latinist Leo, who was actively involved in the preparatory work for the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae and who had been breaking up the material in Göttingen since 1894. From 1896 Bögel was called in as a student assistant for this preliminary work and remained involved in it until it was completed in 1899.

Bögel completed his studies in Göttingen with the state examination in Greek, Latin and German (October 25/26, 1901). He then worked from November 1, 1901 in the office of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae in Munich, where he wrote articles for volumes I and II of the thesaurus. His doctorate as Dr. phil. he reached on October 15, 1902 with a doctoral thesis in the field of Latin grammar (on the nominal forms of the verb), which Friedrich Leo had supervised in Göttingen.

Bögel's work on the thesaurus ended for the time being on April 15, 1903. He left Munich and started a school career. Bögel completed his preparatory service for grammar school teachers from April 1, 1903 to April 30, 1905 in Silesia : he completed the seminar year at the educational seminar for learned schools in Breslau , the probationary year at the royal grammar school in Oels . He then went to the high school in Kreuzburg as a senior teacher , where he stayed (with interruptions) for 13 years. In addition to teaching, he organized German reading evenings with primary school students and joined the local Philomathie educational association .

During the summer vacation, Bögel traveled to Munich and Stuttgart a few times and also visited Göttingen. There his doctoral supervisor Leo asked him if he would be ready to work for the thesaurus again. In 1909 an opportunity arose: with the support of the director and the provincial school council, Bögel received three years' leave (with full pay) and moved to Munich in April 1909, where he was again employed as an assistant from April 20, 1909. At Easter 1912 he returned to Kreuzburg.

At the First World War Bögel did not take an active part, but he participated in the home front, and received in 1917 the Order of Merit for war aid . On July 10th of the same year he received the title of professor. On October 1, 1918, Bögel moved to the König-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Breslau as a teacher, to which he remained loyal until his retirement (May 1, 1938). During the Second World War he taught there on a substitute basis.

Towards the end of the Second World War, when the Red Army approached the city of Wroclaw, Bögel left his apartment, library and scientific records and fled to Central Germany, where he initially settled in Weißenfels . His college friend Georg Baesecke , with whom Bögel had kept in contact all his life, had lived in nearby Halle since 1921 . When Baesecke died in 1951, Bögel moved into his house in Halle and lived there until his death on July 2, 1973, at the age of 97. His grave is in the old Kröllwitz cemetery.

Scientific work

Bögel's scientific work was extraordinarily diverse. Based on his work for the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, to which he remained loyal as a material collector throughout his life, he dealt with broad areas of Latin literature and language, but also with the local history of Kreuzburg and Breslau and with the Kreuzburg writer Gustav Freytag .

Studies in Latin studies, textbooks and lexicons

Scientifically, Bögel mainly dealt with the complex language levels of Late and Vulgar Latin . In doing so he came from the late antique Latin writers to the Middle Latin lexicographers; but he also dealt with classics now and then. He published his studies on Cicero's work De legibus in the Kreuzburg school program of 1907 and in the Festschrift for Friedrich Leo (1911). On Vulgar and Late Latin, Bögel wrote extensive research reports on the years 1921–1940, which appeared in Bursian's annual report on the progress of classical antiquity . This tedious work was, so to speak, an extension of Bögel's tasks in the thesaurus, which his thesaurus colleague and former fellow student Karl Münscher , who published the annual report, had asked him to do.

From the 1920s onwards, Bögel also co-authored various textbooks for ancient language teaching: the textbooks Schola Graeca and Schola Latina , first published in 1927, remained in use until after the Second World War. Another Latin book (for grammar schools and secondary schools) that appeared in 1927 contained an appendix on Bögel's Latin stylistics.

Bögel's school practice and his lexicographical work united in his collaboration on a common Latin school dictionary, the "Heinichen" ( Friedrich Adolf Heinichen's Latin-German school dictionary). Bögel and other grammar school teachers took over the processing of the 10th edition (1932) and later published the shortened edition that was still in use for a long time, the "Taschen-Heinichen", the first edition of which he brought out in 1932 together with Hans Bauer and others. In the fourth edition (1942) he and Bauer were the only editors; Bögel edited the 5th and 6th editions (1965, 1971) alone.

In addition to these tasks pursued Bögel other projects that were lost by his escape from Wroclaw, including as a contribution to the Passio SS. Perpetuae , a hagiography of the 3rd century. Chr.

Studies of local history and Silesian literature

His contributions to local history show that Bögel did not see the transfer to the Prussian province as a setback, but rather made his new home his own. In addition to the Philomathia educational association, he was also a member of the Kreuzburger Gustav-Freytag- Gesellschaft, an association that cultivated Silesian literature in memory of the writer who was born and raised in Kreuzburg. Bögel wrote several essays about Gustav Freytag, his relationship with Kreuzburg and the history of Kreuzburg. In 1929 he published Freytag's memoirs. He discussed several historical building inscriptions in Kreuzburg and Breslau in the communications of the Silesian Society for Folklore and other magazines.

Bögel and the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae

The starting point for his scientific work was Bögel's collaboration on the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, which began when he was a student in Göttingen. He experienced this work in several stages, first when sifting through and breaking down the lexicographical material, which took place in Göttingen under the direction of Paul Sakolowski and later by Georg Dittmann . Together with Dittmann, Bögel worked as an assistant in Munich from 1901 to 1903. Using the note archive, the key words ( lemmas ) were now processed in alphabetical order, that is, described in the order of their documented occurrence in Latin writers, taking into account the respective semantics and valence . Between 1901 and 1903 Bögel worked on the keywords adrogantia , aequalitas , athleta and auctor ; in the years 1909–1912 damnatus , desideo , dignus and dilectus .

After his assistantship, Bögel remained connected to the thesaurus as a material collector. By 1944 he excerpted relevant secondary literature for thesaurus work and looked through Rufin's Latin translation of Origenes ' work against the heretics ( Adamantii Origenis adversus haereticos ) in order to collect grammatically conspicuous details for the thesaurus articles.

Bögel's contributions to a Historia Thesauri Linguae Latinae were a valuable and important contribution to the thesaurus . As a collaborator from the very beginning and one of the last witnesses to the creation of the thesaurus, Bögel wrote these "contributions" between 1957 and 1960 in Halle. In addition to the early days of the thesaurus, he discussed in great detail the conditions of the Göttingen editorial team from 1894 to 1899 and those of the Munich thesaurus office from 1901 to 1903 and from 1909 to 1912. In doing so, he relied primarily on his own memories, but also obtained information from another one. His manuscript was published in 1996, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, together with other contributions by Dietfried Krömer and Manfred Flieger.

Fonts (selection)

• De nomine verbali Latino quaestiones grammaticae . Leipzig 1902 ( Yearbooks for Classical Philology . Supplement 28; = Dissertation)
• Content and division of the second book by Ciceros de legibus . Kreuzburg 1907 (school program) urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 1-272658 }
• Dietfried Krömer , Manfred Flieger (ed.): Thesaurus stories. Contributions to a Historia Thesauri linguae Latinae by Theodor Bögel (1876–1973) . Leipzig 1996. ISBN 3-8154-7101-X (with biography, portrait and list of publications)

Web links

• Literature by and about Theodor Bögel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Personnel form from Theodor Bögel in the personnel file of the BIL expert body in the archive database of the Library for Research on Educational History (BBF)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Personalblatt A for directors, academic teachers and candidates for the higher education authority . Library for Research on Educational History. S. 1. Archived from the original on May 25, 2015. Retrieved May 25, 2015.
2. ^ Personnel sheet A for directors, academic teachers and candidates for the higher education authority . Library for Research on Educational History. S. 2. Archived from the original on May 25, 2015. Retrieved May 25, 2015.
3. ↑ Complete list: Dietfried Krömer, Manfred Flieger (Hrsg.): Thesaurus stories. Contributions to a Historia Thesauri linguae Latinae by Theodor Bögel (1876–1973) . Leipzig 1996, p. 173f.