Wolfgang Fleischer (Germanist)

Wolfgang Fleischer

Wolfgang Julius Bruno Fleischer (born August 26, 1922 in Großschirma ; † April 28, 1999 in Leipzig ) was a German specialist in German who studied lexicology , word formation , phraseology , stylistics and nomination theory as well as onomastics , dialectology , language history and graphematics . He is best known for his handbooks on word formation and phraseology in contemporary German.

Scientific career

Fleischer studied German , Dutch and Old Northern Studies in Leipzig from 1952 to 1956 . In 1958 he received his doctorate under Theodor Frings . He completed his habilitation seven years later. In 1969 he was appointed professor for contemporary German language in Leipzig, where he worked until his retirement in 1987. He received numerous honors and awards for his achievements: in 1977 he became a member of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR and a little later a foreign member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences. In 1982 he received the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Prize of the GDR . The University of Augsburg made him an honorary doctorate in 1990 .

In his dissertation, Fleischer devoted himself to onomastics and dialectology, in the context of the research on the linguistic history of East Central German initiated by Frings . It is precisely here that the origin of his interest in the history of language can be assumed (cf. Fleischer's phonological-graphematic analysis of Early New High German ).

The preoccupation with the namesake also directed his attention to the overall vocabulary. The lexicology, word formation and phraseology of contemporary German moved into the focus of his work. With the word formation of the German contemporary language (1969) Fleischer presented the first completely synchronous overall representation of the German word formation. This work marks a sharp turning point in Germanistic word formation research: word formation patterns in contemporary language were described in their part of speech specifics and taking into account their gradual productivity, structurally, morphologically and semantically. At the center of his interest were both samples of the appellative native and foreign vocabulary and samples of proper names. Lexicological and text-linguistic aspects were also taken into account , in particular various paradigmatic relationships between complex lexemes as well as text type conditions for word usage.

Fleischer's works on the phraseology of German are just as important . He dealt with the structure and meaning of phrases , their typology, functions and the relationship of phraseology to word formation and paremiology . One of Fleischer's achievements is that he recognized the uniformity in the variety of phrases and uncovered their specifics in relation to terms and onyms, as well as the effects of the phrases.

The analysis of the interplay of different types of naming in the assignment of signifier and signified has led Fleischer to important insights from nomination theory. With the description of the differences between onymic and non-anonymous names he made an important contribution to the theoretical foundation of onomastics.

In addition to stylistics , which Fleischer dealt with primarily from a functional stylistic perspective, his fields of work also included language culture and the history of science .

Fleischer also made great contributions in the 1950s by making Russian-language specialist literature accessible to German specialist readers. In this context, his translation of the German dialect by VM Schirmunski as well as the joint work with MD Stepanowa on German word formation should be mentioned.

Work (selection)

• W. Fleischer: Structural studies on the history of New High German. Berlin 1966 (session reports of the Saxon Academy of Sciences: Philol.-hist. Class 112, fasc. 6).
• W. Fleischer: The German personal names: history, education and meaning. 2nd edition Berlin 1968.
• W. Fleischer: Word formation in contemporary German. 1st edition, Leipzig 1969.
• W. Fleischer, G. Michel: Stylistics of the contemporary German language. Leipzig 1975.
• MD Stepanowa, W. Fleischer: Basic features of German word formation. 1st edition. Leipzig 1985.
• W. Fleischer, I. Barz, with the collaboration of M. Schröder: Word formation of the German contemporary language. 2nd, revised and supplemented edition, Tübingen 1995.
• W. Fleischer: Phraseology of contemporary German. 2nd edition Tübingen 1997.

Literature (selection)

• I. Barz: Wolfgang Fleischer. In: H. Stammerjohann et al. (Ed.): Lexicon Grammaticorum. A Bio-Biobliographical Companion to the History of Linguistics. Tübingen 2009, pp. 468-469.
• J. Korhonen: Wolfgang Fleischer in memoriam. In: European Society for Phraseology (Ed.): Bulletin 1, pp. 6–9.
• J. Herrmann: Laudation to Wolfgang Fleischer. In: On the theory of word formation in German: Dedicated to the work of Wolfgang Fleischer. Berlin 1987 (meeting reports of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR 4), pp. 5–7.
• H. Wellmann: From the laudation for Wolfgang Fleischer on the occasion of the honorary doctorate on July 4, 1990 in Augsburg. In: R. Große, G. Lerchner, M. Schröder (eds.): Phraseology, word formation, lexicology. Festschrift for Wolfgang Fleischer on his 70th birthday. Frankfurt / M. et al. 1992, pp. 9-12.

Web links

• Wolfgang Fleischer in the list of professors at the University of Leipzig from 1945–1991