August Schleicher

August Schleicher ( born February 19, 1821 in Meiningen, † December 6, 1868 in Jena ) was a German linguist; regarded as the founder of the family tree theory in comparative linguistics, and together with Franz Bopp as a pioneer of Indo-European Studies.

August Schleicher explored the relationships within the Indo-European language family. The linguistics he saw as part of the natural sciences. He defined language as a natural part of life, its changes - similar to the development of biological species - are subject to the laws of evolution. On the basis of his findings he recorded in August 1853 the origin of the Indo-European languages ​​in one of the first " family trees " after that were ( there, for example by Charles Darwin) published in the history of linguistics and biology. His main work, the Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European languages ​​(1861 ) is considered.

Life

August Schleicher was born in the Thuringian town of Meiningen residence, the son of the physician Johann Gottlieb Schleicher ( 1793-1864 ). His father was involved in the summer of 1815 as a student in Jena in founding the first student fraternity, the then agitated for democratic reforms and against feudal particularism in Germany. 1822 the family moved to Meiningen to Sonneberg, where his father worked as a medical officer at the Meininger Oberland. The progressive -minded father and the musically talented mother stayed on a good education of linguistically gifted boys. His children and youth years spent August Schleicher in Sonneberg, where he attended the Gymnasium Casimirianum from the age of 14 at the nearby Coburg. His professor at the school came to the conclusion that he was not well suited because of its wider interests for language studies and had better study theology.

Following this advice, August Schleicher in 1840 in Leipzig began to study theology. After the first semester, he moved briefly to the Protestant University in Erlangen and realized that theology appealed to him less and less. From Erlangen he went to Tübingen and came up with the philosophy of Hegel in touch. Hegelians of the Tübingen pin as David Strauss, Jacob Reiff, Ferdinand Baur and Friedrich Vischer taught there. Thus Schleicher dealt with philosophical questions that came from the theology and devoted himself as a pupil Heinrich Ewald to the study of Oriental languages. In no time, he learned Hebrew and Sanskrit except, Arabic and Persian. Only reluctantly agreed to his father in 1843 changing to the University to Bonn. In a letter his father warned him: "A philologist is a miserable wretch, especially if he really is one. At this study to address money is not worth while. It is quite different ... but a village priest, when he built his church and their hearts softened. "

In Bonn Schleicher studied classical languages ​​, was introduced by philologists as Friedrich Ritschl and Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker in linguistics Wilhelm von Humboldt and ended 1846 with a Ph.D..

After graduating, August Schleicher returned to Thuringia back to his hometown Sonnenberg and researched first as a private scholar spoke on the scientific field. In Bonn was Prince George of Saxony -Meiningen, who had also held up as a student there, become aware of him. The Prince had, August Schleicher not only offered his friendship, but also gives him a generous scholarship, the 1848-1850 extended trips and longer research stays in Paris, London and Vienna allowed him. During trips abroad, he worked as a correspondent for the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung and the Cologne newspaper. In its coverage of the political events of 1848 from Paris and later in Vienna he showed open sympathy for the liberal- democratic faction of the National Assembly in St. Paul Church. He was targeted by the Habsburg police who spied on him during his stays in Vienna and Prague for several years. In 1849 he traveled to deal with Slavic languages ​​and to learn Czech in Prague. In addition to his correspondent work, August Schleicher had published some important linguistic works, so that it the University of Prague in 1850 as an associate professor of Classical Philology and 1853 appointed full professor of comparative linguistics, German and Sanskrit. The study of the oldest Slavic script monuments led him to his " theory of forms of Church Slavonic language" ( 1852). In this example imaging standard work he introduced the term " Church Slavonic " in linguistics one.

During his professorship in Prague, he focused on Slavic languages, Lithuanian, which occupies a special role in the Indo-European studies. In 1852 he received a scholarship to the Vienna Academy of Sciences for a research trip to East Prussia. There he stayed for six months, learned in discussions with Lithuanians to speak their language fluently and collected a lot of material for the handbook of the Lithuanian language, which he published in Prague 1855/56. Besides the scientific significance of this manual until today inestimable value for the linguistic and cultural self-determination of the Lithuanians. 1856, August Schleicher withdrew due to political repression and probably for health reasons for over a year after Sonnenberg, where he undertook linguistic field research. In Sonneberger space is spoken Itzgründisch, a main Franconian dialect that linguists today offers a fruitful field of activity.

1857, August Schleicher received the offer as a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Jena to change and thus linked high hopes for his scientific work. The disappointment was great when he came in Jena on a conservative professors and with his scientific and political views led considered outsiders. Schleicher reported to have said: " Jena is a big swamp, and I am the frog in it." From 1861 onwards, a congenial friendship developed between him and Ernst Haeckel. With him it was possible to discuss the evolutionary and scientific issues that bothered him as a linguist. In the same year the Bavarian Academy of Sciences appointed him a corresponding member. As a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, August Schleicher worked on three major works: the comparative grammar of Slavic languages ​​, the comparative grammar of the Baltic languages ​​and the grammar of the Slavo - Baltic proto-language. His early death in 1868 crossed this project and contributed to the fact that he was arrested in German linguistics in an outsider role.

August Schleicher died possibly from pulmonary tuberculosis whose symptoms occurred already at the time students. Following the treatment recommendations of his father, he met the threat of tuberculosis with healthy lifestyle. In Bonn he started gymnastics and practiced this sport even later together with Ernst Haeckel from. He also regularly sought recovery in the healthy mountain air of his hometown Sonnenberg, where he was often with his parents, in-laws and friends to visit. After his death, he built the city of Sonneberg a memorial stone and gave the street its name Schleicher.

The Indo-Europeanist

Schleicher was the first linguist who very seriously devoted himself to the reconstruction of the Indo-European proto-language. Schleicher's request goes beyond the acquisition of the oldest language level addition to the development of all common ancestral form, not of romantic primal desire, but everything Different to the original Common reduce, so that when it is no longer the Sanskrit is the end point, but the Indo-European as a proto-language before the separation into the individual languages. He was very confident and even wrote a short fable in this reconstructed Indo-European proto-language. Schleicher's work was sustained for the Indo-European studies in three ways. For one goes back to him, the Convention to provide reconstructed forms with asterisks. Secondly, Schleicher was the first who represented the Indo-European languages ​​in a pedigree. The commonly cited phonetic laws are compatible with Schleicher's family tree. Finally, a famous student Schleicher, August Leskien, co-founded the Junggrammatische school in Leipzig.

It is no coincidence therefore comes from the Leipzig school a researcher who has understood the Indo-European studies as a kind of natural science. The first sentences of his main work ( Compendium ... ) are:

" The grammar forms a part of the sprachwißenschaft or glottik. Dise itself is part of the natural history of man. Irishman method is essentially that of naturwißenschaften at all ... One of the main tasks of the glottik is the determination and description of language or language- sippen tribes, ie the spoke of one and the same original language derived from the arrangement and images this sippen for a natural systems. "

Bibliography

• Language, comparative studies. / For a comparative historical linguistics. ( 2 vols ) Bonn, H. B. King (1848 )
• Linguistic studies. Part 2: The languages ​​of Europe in a systematic overview. Bonn, H. B. King (1850 ); reissued by Konrad grains, Amsterdam, John Benjamins (1982 )
• Morphology of the Church Slavonic language. Bonn, H. B. King (1852 ); Reprint Hildesheim, Gerstenberg Verlag (1976 )
• The first divisions of the Indo-European Urvolkes. Allgemeine Zeitung of Science and Literature ( August 1853 )
• Manual of the Lithuanian language. ( 2 vols ) Weimar, H. Böhlau (1856 /57)
• Lithuanian fairy tales, proverbs, riddles and songs. Weimar, H. Böhlau ( 1857)
• Volkstümliches from Sonneberg Meininger upper landing - phonology of Sonneberg dialect. Weimar, H. Böhlau (1858 )
• Brief outline of the history of Italian languages. Rhenish Museum of Philology 14329-46. (1859 )
• The German language. Stuttgart, JG Cotta (1860 ); revised and edited by Johannes Schmidt, Stuttgart, JG Cotta (1888 )
• Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European languages ​​. ( Brief outline of the Indo-European proto-language, the Old Indic, Old Iranian, ancient Greek, ancient Italian, ancient Celtic, Old Slavic, Lithuanian and Old German. ) (2 vols ) Weimar, H. Böhlau (vol. 1 in 1861 and digitized full text in German Text Archive, Vol 2 1862 digitized and full text archive in the German text ); Reproduction Minerva GmbH, Scientific Publishing, ISBN 3810210714
• The Darwinian theory and linguistics - open letters to Dr. Ernst Haeckel. Weimar, H. Böhlau (1863 )
• The importance of language in the natural history of man. Weimar, H. Böhlau (1865 )
• Christian Donalitius Lithuanian seals ( with Lithuanian- German glossary edited by A. Schleicher ), St. Petersburg, Russian Academy of Sciences ( 1865)
• Darwinism Tested by the Science of Language. (Translation from the German by Alexander VW Bikkers ) London, JC Hotten (1869 )
• The Darwinian theory and linguistics. Weimar, H. Böhlau (1873 )
• Phonetics and teaching of the language polabischen. Reproduction Sändig Reprint Publisher H.R. Wohlwend, ISBN 325301908X
• Language, comparative studies. Reproduction Minerva GmbH, Scientific Publishing, ISBN 3810210722
• The morphology of the Church Slavonic language represented explanatory and comparative. Reprint H. Buske Verlag, Hamburg (1998), ISBN 387118540X

References

• Gertrud Bense: Schleicher, August. In: New German Biography ( NDB ). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3, p.50 ( digitized ).
• Gertrud Bense, Maria Kozianka, Gottfried Meinhold: German -Lithuanian cultural relations: colloquium in honor of August Schleicher at the Friedrich -Schiller- University Jena. Mayer, Jena / Erlangen 1994, ISBN 3-925978-38-0.
• Karl -Heinz Best: August Schleicher ( 1821-1868 ). In: Glottometrics 13, 2006, pages 73-75. ( The contribution deals with Schleicher's importance for the Quantitative Linguistics. )
• Joachim Dietze: August Schleicher Slawist. His life and work in the perspective of Indo-European Studies. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1966.
• Konrad grains: Linguistics and evolutionary theory ( Three Essays by August Schleicher, Ernst Haeckel and Wilhelm Bleek ). John Benjamins, Amsterdam - Philadelphia 1983.
• Salomon Lefmann: August Schleicher. Sketch. Leipzig 1870.
• John Schmidt: Schleicher, August. In: General German Biography (ADB ). Volume 31, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig, 1890, pp. 402-416.
• Theodeor Syllaba: August Schleicher and Bohemia. Karolinum, Prague 1995, ISBN 80-7066-942- X.
• Liba Taub: Evolutionary Ideas and " Empirical " Methods: The Analogy Between Language and Species in the Works of Lyell and Schleicher. British Journal for the History of Science 26, 1993, pp. 171-193.
• Horst Traut: The songs handwriting of Johann Georg Steiner from Sonneberg in the tradition by August Schleicher. Grove, Rudolstadt 1996, ISBN 3-930215-27-6.
• Harald Wiese: A journey to the origins of our language. As the Indo-European studies, our words explained. Logos, Berlin, 2007.