Wilhelm Meyer (philologist)

Wilhelm Meyer from Speyer

Wilhelm Meyer (born April 1, 1845 in Speyer ; † March 9, 1917 in Göttingen ), known as "Wilhelm Meyer from Speyer", was a German classical philologist , Middle Latin philologist and librarian. He is one of the founders of Middle Latin philology in Germany.

Meyer studied classical philology from 1863 in Würzburg and then in Munich , especially with Karl Halm . From 1872 he worked on the cataloging of the Latin manuscripts of the court and state library in Munich, whose director was Halm, and was employed there in 1875 as library secretary. On February 23, 1882, he received an honorary doctorate from the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen, one year later, in 1886, he went to the University of Göttingen as a full professor of classical philology , but continued cataloging the manuscripts with the holdings of the university library there. Between 1889 and 1895 he was relieved of lectures in order to draft a plan for cataloging all manuscripts in Prussian libraries at Friedrich Althoff's suggestion , but the Ministry found it impracticable to implement it in full, especially since Meyer also fell behind with his edition obligations towards the Monumenta Germaniae Historica was.

From then on, Meyer devoted himself exclusively to Middle Latin philology in teaching and research and, together with Ludwig Traube in Munich, was the first university professor of this discipline in Germany. He was a member of the Bavarian and Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

In his research on ancient metrics , he dealt with the development of the hexameter . By comparing the works of Homer with those of the poetic Hellenistic scholars, he discovered the metrical laws by which the refined meter of the later differs from the hexameters of the earlier. These are the Wilhelm-Meyer's laws of hexameters named after him .

Meyer was married to Pauline Riefstahl. Her son Rudolf Meyer Riefstahl also became a classical philologist and Medievalist.

Fonts (selection)

• On the history of the Greek and Latin hexameters . 1884.
• Collected treatises on Middle Latin rhythm . 3 volumes. 1905-1936.

literature

• Kurt Plenio: Wilhelm Meyer from Speyer. An obituary . In: New year books for classical antiquity, history and German literature and for pedagogy . Volume 39 (1917), pp. 269-277 (with picture)
• Karl Langosch : Wilhelm Meyer from Speyer and Paul von Winterfeld. Founder of Middle Latin Science. With bibliography , Berlin 1936.
• Ulrich Pretzel: Contributions to the history of Middle Latin philology , in: Middle Latin Yearbook , Vol. 5, 1968, pp. 242–269.
• Fidel Rädle : Wilhelm Meyer, Professor of Classical Philology 1886–1917 . In: Classical Antiquity at the Georg-August University of Göttingen. A lecture series on their history . Edited by Carl Joachim Classen. Vandenhoeck u. Ruprecht, Göttingen 1989 (Göttinger Universitätsschriften, Series A, Schriften, 14) pp. 128–148, ISBN 3-525-35845-8 .
• Gabriel Silagi:  Meyer, Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , p. 376 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Christel Meier: Queen of the auxiliary sciences? Reflections on the history, self-image and future of Middle Latin Philology . In: Early Medieval Studies. Yearbook of the Institute for Early Medieval Research at the University of Münster 35 (2001), pp. 1–21 (especially pp. 1–6).
• Stefan Weber , The award of an honorary doctorate from the University of Erlangen to Wilhelm Meyer from Speyer on February 23, 1882. The first doctorate of a Middle Latin philologist in the Spiegel Erlanger archives and books , in: Middle Latin Yearbook , Vol. 53, 2018, pp. 273-298 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Wilhelm Meyer in the catalog of the German National Library