Carl Joachim Classen

Carl Joachim Classen ( born August 15, 1928 in Hamburg, † September 29, 2013 in Bad Homburg, Germany ) was a German philologist Classic.

Life

Carl Joachim Classen, a great-grandson of the philologist and high school director John Classen (1805-1891) together with his older brother Peter Classen (1924-1980), attended the grammar school of Johanneums. He then studied classical philology and philosophy at the University of Hamburg, especially at Ernst tin and Bruno Snell. Snell gave him a place at the boarding school Birklehof, Georg Picht had founded in Hinterzarten. There supervised classes in the summer semester 1949, the boarders, excerpted literature for Picht Plato archive and took one of the few students at the first meeting of German scholars of antiquity after the Second World War part. Later he moved to the University of Göttingen where promoted him above all the philologist and scholar of religion Kurt Latte and the philosopher Nicolai Hartmann. A term applied to classes also at the University of Oxford, where he concluding B.Litt. completed. 1952 Classen was phil at the University of Hamburg with the dissertation research on Plato's hunting pictures to Dr.. doctorate.

After the First State Exam classes taught at a high school. After the Second State Exam (1956 ) he was appointed Assessor. In the same year he accepted a job as a lecturer in Classical Philology ( Lecturer in Classics ) at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. After three years he returned to Germany and went to the University of Göttingen, where he habilitated in 1961 for Classical Philology and in 1963 appointed a university lecturer. 1964/1965 he held a professorship at the University of Tübingen.

1966, Classen to a call to C4 - Professor of Classical Philology at the Technical University of Berlin. In 1969 he moved to the University of Würzburg, 1973 ( as a successor Chair of Wolf- Hartmut Friedrich) to Göttingen where he was twenty years active in teaching and research. In 1987 he was elected a full member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen; In the same year he became a guest in residence in Oxford the title of D. Litt .. Even after his retirement (1993 ) he lectured and continued his research. In the spring of 2011 he moved to Kronberg im Taunus.

Classen worked in addition to his research and teaching as a scientific organizer and brokers at home and abroad. He was a member of many committees of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, 1983-1987 First Chairman of Mommsen Society from 1987 to 1989 president of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric from 1997 to 2002, President of the Fédération Internationale des Associations d' Études Classiques. As a visiting professor, he worked in Austin (Texas ), Ibadan, Changchun ( China) and after his retirement in Rome and Tartu (Estonia ), where he received an honorary doctorate in 2000. He had more guest stays at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and at several colleges of the University of Oxford. He was a foreign member of the Accademia di Archeological and corresponding member of the Academy of Athens. The Polish Philological Society and the Hellenic Philological Society Parnassos took him on as an honorary member. From October 2009 on, he was a member of Matica srpska.

Research

Classen's scientific interests of ancient rhetoric and its nightlife, especially in the humanism of Greek philosophy, Roman satire, ancient history and history of science. Most recently, he was concerned with studies of the ancient values ​​and with the rhetorical interpretation of biblical texts.

Classen was ( co-) editor of several journals and series, including the contributions to archeology ( 1976-2010 ) Gnomon ( 1987-2007 ), Voces (from 1990), Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum ( since 1993), Emerita (from 2002) and Studia Humaniora Tartuensia (since 2006).

Writings (selection )

• Studies on Plato's hunting pictures. Hamburg 1951 ( dissertation). Revised version under the same title, Berlin 1960 ( writings of the Section for Classical Studies 25).
• Linguistic interpretation as a driving force Platonic and Socratic philosophizing. Munich 1959 ( habilitation thesis; Zetemata 22)
• The city in the Mirror of Descriptiones and Lauds urbium in the ancient and medieval literature to the end of the twelfth century. Hildesheim / New York 1980 ( Contributions to the archeology 2)
• Right - Rhetoric - Politics. Studies on Cicero's rhetorical strategy. Darmstadt 1985
• Approaches. Contributions to the understanding of early Greek philosophy. Würzburg / Amsterdam 1986 ( Elementa 39)
• The world of the Romans. Studies on their literature, history and religion. With the collaboration of Hans Berndorff edited by Meinolf Vielberg. Berlin / New York 1993 ( Studies on ancient literature and history 41)
• To Heinrich Bebel's life and writings. Göttingen 1997 ( News of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philology and History class. Born 1997, No. 1)
• The importance of rhetoric for Melanchthon's interpretation of secular and biblical texts. Göttingen 1998
• For literature and society of the Romans. Stuttgart 1998
• Rhetorical Criticism of the New Testament. Tübingen 2000
• Ancient Rhetoric in the Age of Humanism. Munich / Leipzig 2003 ( Contributions to Archaeology 182)
• Models - values ​​- standards in the Homeric epics. Berlin / New York 2008 ( Contributions to Archaeology 260)
• Aretai i virtutes: o vrednosnim predstavama i idea lima kod Grka i Rimljana. Belgrade 2008 German edition under the title: Aretai and Virtutes. Studies on the values ​​of the Greeks and Romans. Berlin / New York 2010 ( Contributions to Archaeology 283 )

• Sophistry. Darmstadt 1976 ( 187 lines of research )
• With Ulrich Schindel: Duration in exchange. Articles by Wolf- Hartmut Friedrich. Göttingen 1977
• Problems of Lukrezforschung. Hildesheim / Zurich / New York 1986 ( Olms- studies 18)
• The classical archeology at the Georg- August-Universität Göttingen. A lecture about its history. Göttingen 1988
• Heinz -Joachim waste Brock: The Power of the Word. Aspects of contemporary rhetoric research. Marburg 1992 ( Ars rhetorica 4)
• Kurt Latte: Opuscula inedita. Along with lectures and reports of a conference on the fortieth anniversary of the death of Kurt bar. Munich / Leipzig 2005 ( Contributions to Archaeology 219)