Friedrich Maurer (linguist)
This article needs additional citations for verification. (July 2012) |
Friedrich Maurer | |
---|---|
Federal Republic of Germany | |
Academic background | |
Influences | Otto Behaghel |
Academic work | |
Main interests | Germanistics |
Notable works | Nordgermanen und Alemannen, Deutsche Wortgeschichte |
Friedrich Maurer (5 January 1898 – 7 November 1984) was a German philologist who specialized in
Biography
Maurer started to study
In 1922, Maurer obtained a doctorate under the supervision of
Having previously been a member of
After World War II, the allied military government of Germany called on Maurer, who then founded scientific institutes at the partially-destroyed University of Freiburg and the University of Erlangen. In 1958 and 1959, Maurer chaired the League of German Scholars and cofounded the Institute for the German Language (Institut für Deutsche Sprache, IDS) at Mannheim.
In 1979, Maurer fell gravely ill and had to cease his work.[1] He died in 1984.
Work
Like Behaghel, his thesis supervisor, Maurer directed much attention to the study of dialects (dialectology and dialect geography) and to the comparative linguistics of German. He published numerous works on medieval literature and poetry that were notable for their connections between literature studies, cultural history, prehistoric archaeology and sociology. With Friedrich Stroh, Maurer published Deutsche Wortgeschichte ("History of German Words") in 1943.
Maurer's 1942 linguistic work Nordgermanen und Alemannen ("Northern
Seeing a connection between supratribal groupings described (though marginally) by the Roman historians Pliny the Elder and Tacitus, he estimated that during a period ranging from roughly 50 BCE to c. 300 CE, five protolanguages (or dialect groups) emerged that included the direct, unattested, predecessors of all (West, North and East) Germanic languages, which have always remained in various degrees of contact.[5]
In the third edition of 1952, Maurer added archaeological evidence to support his classification, most notably citing Rafael von Uslar's article of the same year, "Archäologische Fundgruppen und germanische Stammesgebiete vornehmlich aus der Zeit um Christi Geburt." Maurer equated the five groups of findings discussed in that article with five linguistic groups. His theory has been criticized by later linguists, but they focused mainly on the terms that Maurer used by equating tribes and peoples to language groups and use of nationalistic jargon, which was then considered acceptable. No written evidence of the Germanic languages prior to the 7th century CE exists to prove or to disprove Maurer's thesis.[6]
Awards
- Brüder-Grimm-Preis der Philipps-Universität Marburg, 1963
- Honorary doctorate of the University of Glasgow, 1966
- Jacob-Burckhardt-Preis, 1976
References
- ^ a b Otto zu Stolberg-Wernigerode, ed. (1990). "Maurer, Friedrich". Neue Deutsche Biographie. Duncker & Humblot.
- ^ a b Hutton, Christopher (2002). Linguistics and the Third Reich: Mother-tongue Fascism, Race and the Science of Language. Routledge. p. 325.
- ^ Hempel-Küter, Christa (2000). Germanistik zwischen 1925 und 1955: Studien zur Welt der Wissenschaft am Beispiel von Hans Pyritz (in German). Akademie Verlag. p. 297.
- ^ Pliny, Nat. Hist. IV, 99.
- ^ Friedrich Maurer (1942). Nordgermanen und Alemannen: Studien zur germanische und frühdeutschen Sprachgeschichte, Stammes- und Volkskunde, Strasbourg: Hünenburg.
- ISBN 9783110114454(pp. 113–114).
Further reading
- Friedrich Maurer (1942). Nordgermanen und Alemannen: Studien zur germanischen und frühdeutschen Sprachgeschichte, Stammes- und Volkskunde, Strasbourg: Hünenburg.