Theodor Hopfner

Theodor Hopfner (born April 7, 1886 in Trautenau , † February 9, 1946 in the Ruzyně internment camp near Prague ) was a Czech classical philologist and religious scholar .

Life

Theodor Hopfner, the son of the Realschuldirektor Friedrich Hopfner and brother of the future geodesist Friedrich Hopfner , studied Classical Philology and Egyptology at the German University of Prague (with Carl Holzinger and Alois Rzach ), where he received his doctorate in 1910 . He then worked as a teacher at the German state high school ( Graben-Gymnasium ) in Prague's New Town , and from 1914 on at the German-language high school in Prague- Lesser Town . Habilitation in 1919he graduated from the University of Prague and in 1923 (as successor to Rzach) was appointed associate professor for classical philology. In 1928 he was appointed full professor. From 1936 he was a member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts in Prague .

After the destruction of the rest of Czech Republic by the German Reich, Hopfner was not removed from his office, but he had to endure professional reprisals. He was not accepted as a Reichsbeamter and expelled from the Academy of Sciences and Arts. After the Second World War he was deported together with other Prague residents of the German nation and died in an internment camp near Prague.

While Hopfner dealt with the entire Greek and Latin literature of antiquity in his university teaching, as a researcher he was almost exclusively concerned with the ancient history of religion and culture. He published several books and articles on Egyptian cults, mystery cults and the history of early Christianity in the Orient and Egypt. His main works are the five-volume collection of the Fontes historiae religionis Aegyptiacae (1922–1925) and the depiction of the Greek-Egyptian magic of revelation (1921–1924), which have not been outdated to this day (status: 2003). His late work was dedicated to the Plutarchic book About Isis and Osiris , to which he published a two-volume commentary (1940-1941).

Fonts (selection)

• Thomas Magister, Demetrios Triklinios, Manuel Moschopulos: A study of their language use in the scholias of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Hesiod, Pindar and Theocrit . Vienna 1912
• The animal cult of the ancient Egyptians according to the Greco-Roman reports and the more important monuments . Vienna 1913
• About the form and use of the Greek loanwords in the Coptic-Sa'idic version of apophthegms . Vienna 1918
• About the Coptic-Sa'idic Apophthegmata patrum Aegyptiorum and related Greek, Latin, Coptic-Bohairian and Syrian collections . Vienna 1918
• Greco-Egyptian magic of revelation. With a detailed presentation of the Greek syncretistic belief in demons and the requirements and means of magic in general and magical divination in particular . Two volumes, Leipzig 1921–1924
  • Volume 1 (1921): Modified reprint Amsterdam 1983
  • Volume 2 (1924): Modified reprint Amsterdam 1990
• Fontes historiae religionis Aegyptiacae . Five parts, Bonn 1922–1925
  • Part 1 (1922): Auctores from Homero usque ad Diodorum continens
  • Part 2 (1923): Auctores from Horatio usque ad Plutarchum continens
  • Part 3 (1923): Auctores a Clemente Romano usque ad Porphyrium continens
  • Part 4 (1924): Auctores from Eusebio usque ad Procopium Caesarensium continens
  • Part 5 (1925): Auctores aetatis Byzantinae mediae, addenda et corrigenda, conspectum auctorum omnium, indices nominum et rerum continens
• Iamblichus: About the secret doctrines. Translated, introduced and explained from the Greek . Leipzig 1922. Reprints Hildesheim 1987, Graz 2008
• Greek mysticism . Leipzig 1923
• The Greco-Oriental Mysteries . Prague 1924
• Ancient commerce and money . Prague 1924
• Orient and Greek Philosophy . Leipzig 1925
• Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Graeca. Index locupletissimus tam in opera omnia omnium auctorum veterum quam in adiectas praefationes, dissertationes, commentationes omnes omnium virorum doctorum recentium per capitula operum omnium argumenta complectens . 2 volumes, Paris 1928–1945
• The sex life of the Greeks and Romans from the beginning to the 6th century AD . Prague 1938
• Plutarch on Isis and Osiris: text, translation and commentary . Two parts, Prague 1940–1941. Reprints Darmstadt 1967, Hildesheim 1974
• Greek-Latin-German source book on the settlement and history of the Teutons in the Bohemian-Moravian, Silesian and Carpathian regions . Stuttgart / Prague 1943
• The Jewish question among Greeks and Romans . Prague 1943

literature

• Hopfner, Theodor. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 2, Publishing House of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1959, p. 415 f. (Direct links on p. 415 , p. 416 ).
• Franz Brunhölzl : Theodor Hopfner (1886–1945), Viktor Stegemann (1902–1948), Albert Rehm (1871–1949) . In: Eikasmós , Volume 4, 1993, pp. 203-216.
• Martin Sicherheitsl : Memories of Prague (1933–1937) . In: Eikasmós , Volume 4, 1993, pp. 85-94.
• Martin Sicherheitsl: Classical Philology at the German University of Prague 1849–1945 . In: Eikasmós , Volume 14, 2003, pp. 393-419, here pp. 409-411 and 417-418.

Web links

Wikisource: Theodor Hopfner  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by Theodor Hopfner in the catalog of the German National Library