Wilhelm Kergel

Wilhelm Kergel (born November 30, 1822 in Grochwitz , Glogau district , Lower Silesia ; † December 3, 1891 in Graz ) was an Austrian classical philologist .

Wilhelm Kergel, the son of a hunter, grew up in poor circumstances and lost his parents at an early age. So in December 1832 he came to Pastor Samuel Pfotenhauer with his two younger siblings. The pastor gave his protégés elementary lessons and made it possible for Wilhelm to attend the grammar school in Groß-Glogau (from 1836). Here he decided to study Classical Philology.

In the fall of 1841 he went to the University of Breslau , where his academic teachers Karl Ernst Christoph Schneider , Julius Ambrosch and especially Friedrich Haase were. After completing his doctorate and teaching qualification, Kergel worked as an assistant teacher at the Maria Magdalenen grammar school in Breslau from the summer of 1846 . On the recommendation of his teacher Haase, he was appointed associate professor for classical philology at the University of Olomouc in autumn 1849 (without habilitation ) . Since then he has worked at various Austrian universities. On October 9, 1851, he became a full professor at the University of Lemberg , where he was in a difficult position due to the ethnic tensions between Poles and Germans. Nevertheless, he married the widow Anna Stankowska here, with whom he had five children, three of whom died in childhood. In 1862/1863 he was elected Dean of the Philosophical Faculty and in 1866/1867 Rector of the University.

On July 26, 1871, Kergel left Lemberg with his family and went to the University of Graz , where he was given a third professorship in addition to the two chairs for Classical Philology . Kergel stayed in Graz until the end of his life; in the years 1873/1874 and 1881/1882 he acted as dean of the philosophy faculty. At the Philological Seminar he held stylistic and exegetical exercises in Greek and Latin, as well as lectures and seminars mainly on Attic prose and poetry, but also on Cicero ( Pro Milone ) and Tacitus ( Annales ).

In addition to his extensive activity in academic teaching and self-administration, Kergel produced little scientific publications. In addition to his dissertation in Breslau ( De tempore quo scriptus sit libellus qui vulgo fertur Xenophontis de republica Atheniensium ), he wrote several reviews and advertisements on school books, text comments and translations of Latin and Greek scripts.

literature

• Max Theodor von Karajan : Wilhelm Kergel . In: Biographisches Jahrbuch für Altertumskunde , 15th year (1892), pp. 73–75.