Wilhelm Kroll
Wilhelm Kroll (/kroʊl/; German: [kʁɔl]; October 7, 1869 – April 21, 1939) was a German classicist who was a full professor at the Universities of Greifswald (1899–1906), Münster (1906–1913) and Breslau (1913–1935).
Education and career
Kroll was born in the town of
Before the end of the term, he was awarded a four-year scholarship by the Prussian Academy of Sciences that gave him the means to further his academic career. Kroll returned to Italy where he continued and expanded his research from September 1893 until April 1894. Having obtained his habilitation at Breslau University in 1894, he continued to teach and publish as Privatdozent. After five years he was appointed full professor of Classics at the University of Greifswald where he started teaching in April 1899. A year later he married Katharina Wegener, the daughter of a schoolmaster.
In March 1906, Kroll moved to the
Apart from his teaching and publications, Kroll was an important agent for international collaboration in the classics. As an editor of important journals (Bursian’s Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, 1898–1912; Glotta, 1913–1936) and the
His last years were overcast by the rise of Nazism in Germany. In 1934 he resigned as president of the Silesian Society for Patriotic Culture, a learned association that he had headed since 1927. In 1935, under new legislation, Kroll retired earlier than usual. As his successor, he opted for his long-time colleague Hans Drexler who had been an active supporter of the Nazi party. Drexler would later write Kroll's obituary in the Gnomon, apologising for his predecessor's alleged lack of a positive worldview.
While not being a victim of the Nuremberg Laws himself, Kroll witnessed the removal of his colleagues from office and the persecution of his former pupils, some of whom he aided in finding work abroad. He also continued to collaborate with Jewish scholars in editing the Realencyclopädie. For this Kroll was assaulted in the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer, after he had already relocated to Berlin with his wife early in 1937.
Meanwhile, academic institutions continued to appreciate and honor Kroll's achievement. He was elected ordinary member of the
After an operation, Kroll died of an embolism on April 21, 1939 in Berlin. He was survived by his wife, his daughter and three sons, one of whom had emigrated to Japan in 1936 and later became a renowned physicist at the University of Taipei.
Literary works
- An editor of the "Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft" (since 1906; after August Pauly, Georg Wissowa)
- Geschichte der klassischen Philologie. 1908;
2. verb. Aufl. Vereining. wissenschaftl. Verl., Berlin und Leipzig 1919 (Sammlung Göschen, 367) - C. Valerius Catullus. 1922;
7. Aufl.ISBN 3-519-24001-7 - Die wissenschaftliche Syntax im lateinischen Unterricht. Weidmann, 1925
- Studien zum Verständnis der römischen Literatur. ISBN 0-8240-2972-0
- Die Kultur der ciceronischen Zeit. 2 Teile. ISBN 3-534-01542-8
- Rhetorik, 1937
Critical editions
- Vettii Valentis Anthologiarum Libri, Guilelmus Kroll, Weidman, Berlin, 1908.
- Matheseos Libri VIII, 2 vols., ed. W. Kroll, F. Skutsch and K. Ziegler, Teubner, Stuttgart, 1897–1913.
- Historia Alexandri Magni, ed. W. Kroll, vol. 1. Weidmann, Berlin, 1926.
See also
Notes
References
- Udo W. Scholz: Die Breslauer klassische Philologie und die Realenzyklopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft. In: Jahrbuch der Schlesischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Breslau, Bd. 62–64 (2001–2003), S. 311–326, esp. S. 320–322.
- Peter Wirth: Kroll, Wilhelm. In: Neue deutsche Biographie. Vol. 13 (1982), p. 73.
External links
- Wilhelm Kroll in the German National Library catalogue
