William Thalbitzer

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Carl William Thalbitzer (born February 5, 1873 in Helsingør , † September 18, 1958 in Usserød ) was a Danish Eskimologist and Greenland researcher . He taught at the University of Copenhagen .

Life

Carl William Thalbitzer was the eldest son of the tobacco manufacturer Heinrich Albert Thalbitzer (1853-1893) and his wife Elisabeth Johanne Frederikke Simony (1842-1926). His brother was the economist Carl Thalbitzer (1876–1970), his grandfather the politician Carl Frederik Simony (1806–1872), which made him the cousin of the Greenland inspector Christian Simony (1881–1961). After attending school in Helsingør , he began to study Danish, English and Latin philology at the University of Copenhagen in 1891. In 1894 he received the gold medal for the work submitted to the university's prize task Om Autoritetsforholdets Væsen og etiske Betydning . In 1899, as a student of Otto Jespersen, he obtained the academic degree of Candidatus magisterii .

Soon after graduating, Thalbitzer developed his interest in Greenland. In Copenhagen he met Henrik Lund , who became his first teacher of the Greenlandic language . From 1900 to 1901 he made his first trip to Greenland, when the scientific result A Phonetical Study of the Eskimo Language appeared in volume 31 of the Meddelelser om Grønland in 1904 . In 1911 he published the work Eskimo, a Grammatical Sketch in the Handbook of American Indian Languages , with which he gained international recognition. In 1905/1906 he toured East Greenland, now accompanied by his wife Ellen Locher Thalbitzer (1883–1956), sculptor and daughter of the painter Carl Ludvig Thilson Locher , whom he had married in 1905. From this trip Thalbitzer brought back the first recordings of traditional Greenlandic music and it followed with On the Eskimo Music in Greenland and Melodies of Greenland two works, which he dedicated to the topic together with the music historian Hjalmar Thuren (1873-1912). His research interest was no longer just linguistic, but also material and artistic cultural phenomena. With works such as The Heathen Priests of East Greenland or Les Magiciens esquimaux, he made important contributions to the understanding of shamanism .

His most comprehensive monograph, The Ammassalik Eskimo ( Meddelelser om Grønland, volumes 39 and 40) , appeared in two volumes and sub-volumes between 1914 and 1941 . While the first volume mainly dealt with the results of the expedition of Gustav Frederik Holm and Georg Carl Amdrup , which were mostly worked out by Johan Petersen , the second volume Language and Folklore was mainly devoted to the East Greenland dialect , the traditions and legends and thus his own research.

As early as 1920 Thalbitzer was a lecturer in Greenlandic language and culture at the University of Copenhagen, in 1926 he was appointed associate professor there. In 1929 he was a visiting professor at the Sorbonne in Paris . Carl William Thalbitzer taught until 1943 and retired from teaching at the age of 70. In 1952 the University of Copenhagen awarded him an honorary doctorate in the run-up to his 80th birthday . In 1923 he was elected a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences . He is also an honorary member of the Greenland Society . From 1904 to 1952 William Thalbitzer was Denmark's representative at the International Americanist Congresses.

Publications (selection)

  • A Phonetical Study of the Eskimo Language (= Meddelelser om Grønland. Volume 31). Lund, Copenhagen 1904 ( digitized ).
  • Eskimo . In: Franz Boas (Ed.): Handbook of American Indian Languages. Smithsonian Institution , Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. 40, Part 1, Washington, DC 1911, pp. 967-1069 ( digitized )
  • Grønlandske Sagn om Eskimoernes Fortid. Cederquist, Stockholm 1913.
  • The Ammassalik Eskimo. Volume 1 (= Meddelelser om Grønland. Volume 39). Lund, Copenhagen 1914 ( digitized ).
  • The Ammassalik Eskimo. Volume 2, Part 1 (= Meddelelser om Grønland. Volume 40, No. 3). Lund, Copenhagen 1923.
  • The Ammassalik Eskimo. Volume 2, Part 2 (= Meddelelser om Grønland. Volume 40, No. 4). Lund, Copenhagen 1941 ( digitized ).
  • Eskimoernes cult Guddomme. Pios, Copenhagen 1926.
  • Tunumiut taigdliait; taigdlat tamalât ammassalingmit pissut ilisimatûmit katerssornek'artut uk. 1905-06. Sinerissap Kujatdliup Nak'Iteriviane, Nûngme 1931.
  • Kalâleq. Kalâtdlit itsarnitsat ilerquisa ilait . Nuuk 1932.
  • Fra Grønlandsforskningens første Dage. In: Festskrift udgivet af Københavns universitet i anledning af Hans Majestaet Kongens fødselsdag. Luno, Copenhagen 1932

literature

  • Erik Holtved: William Thalbitzer. In: Tidsskriftet Grønland. 1958, No. 12, pp. 456–461 ( PDF ; 478 kB)
  • Erik Holtved: William Thalbitzer. In: Geografisk Tidsskrift. Volume 57, 1958, p. VI f. ( PDF ; 185 kB).
  • Theodor Salfinger (Ed.): Andreas Heusler . Letters to William Thalbitzer. Copenhagen ( Ejnar Munksgaard ), Basel ( university library ) 1953
  • Lasse Meyer: William Thalbitzer - En intellektuel biografi . Ilisimatusarfik , Nuuk 2014 ( PDF ; 565 kB)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Mircea Eliade : Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. Routledge & Kegan Paul. London 1964 ( digitized version )
personal data
SURNAME Thalbitzer, William
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Thalbitzer, Carl William (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish Eskimologist and Greenland researcher
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Elsinore
DATE OF DEATH September 18, 1958
Place of death Usserød