Charles Brink
- 2.1 Philosophy: Aristotle and the Peripatetics
- 2.2 Historiography: Tacitus
- 2.3 Literary Theory: Horace
- 2.4 History of Science
Life
Karl Oskar Levy was the eldest son of an assimilated Jewish family of the upper middle class. His father Arthur Levy II was a PhD attorney. In his youth, Levy showed great musical talent and has won both the school teaching private lessons in composition. He later decided against a career as a conductor and a humanities degree.
Levy's family belonged to the Jewish faith, but did not practice it. Karl Oskar Levy came on 31 August 1931, the Evangelical Church in and changed his surname to " Brink ".
Studies in Berlin and Oxford (1925-1931)
After graduation examination Brink studied from 1925 Philosophy and Classics at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. He attended lectures by the philosopher Eduard Spranger and the philologist Eduard Norden, Paul Maas, Ulrich von Wilamowitz- Moellendorff and Werner Jaeger, who influenced him greatly. In Jaeger's advice he spent the summer semester 1928 at the University of Oxford, where he heard the philosopher William David Ross, the philologist Albert Curtis Clark and the historian Hugh Macilwain load. 1931 Brink graduated his studies in Berlin with his first state examination for teachers at secondary schools from.
1933 Brink was with Werner Jaeger Dr. phil. doctorate. His dissertation dealt with the Aristotle attributed font Magna Moralia and established itself as a specialist for the school of philosophy of Aristotle, the Peripatetics.
Work at Thesaurus in Munich (1933-1938)
As of April 20, 1933 Brink worked as an assistant at the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae in Munich, where he worked on the creation of lexicon entries. His body was funded by a five-year fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation. That he was further employed as a Jew during the time of National Socialism, was also on the passive resistance of the thesaurus management: you put the required questionnaires in 1933 their Rockefeller fellows not before, in which the Aryan origin should be assigned. At Brinks colleagues were Wolfgang Schmid and Hans Julius Wolff, who was like Brink Rockefeller Fellow.
A small additional income offered Brink employees at the Realencyclopädie of classical antiquity science, for which he wrote several articles about single Greek philosopher and a 50 -column overview article about the Peripatetic.
From enemy alien to the British subject: CO Brink in England
As a German Emigrant (1938-1947)
Until March 25, 1938 Brink worked for the thesaurus. A further funding was impossible because of the political situation in Germany. After several unsuccessful applications in Switzerland, the USA and Great Britain, he received through the mediation of WD Ross a job with the Oxford Latin Dictionary, which he took up in March 1938. Brink improved his command of the English language during this time and wrote his later writings in English only.
Once the profession has been prohibited by law in October 1938 Jewish lawyers in Germany, Brink tried to allow his parents to emigrate. In April 1939, he was successful: His parents traveled to England and settled in Oxford.
During this time, Brink was still a German citizen. For this reason, he was imprisoned as an enemy alien ( citizen of an enemy state ) from June to October 1940. 1941 saw the German Reich all emigrants from the German citizenship. In October 1941, Brink lost his job at the Oxford Latin Dictionary, when the work was mind set for the duration of the war. A new work, he was a tutor at Magdalen College, where he was appointed the following year to Senior Classical Master. In the same year he joined the Church of England and married Daphne Hope Harvey.
Naturalization and admission to the academic teaching
In February 1947, Brink received British citizenship and thus the possibility to enter the academic teaching of the country. In March 1948, he anglicized his German name Karl Oskar Charles Oscar. In the same year he was hired as a Senior Lecturer at the University of St Andrews. Three years later ( 1951) he was appointed to the Chair of Latin at the University of Liverpool. In 1954, he joined as Kennedy Professor of Latin at Cambridge University, where he worked until his retirement (1974 ) in teaching and research. From 1973 to 1985 he served as a Trustee and Chairman at Robinson College, which named him when he left an Honorary Fellow.
During his years in Cambridge Brink involved in the reform of teaching classical languages in the UK. He played a crucial role in the creation of the Joint Association of Classical Teachers and the Cambridge Schools Classics Project. In addition, Brink renewed his contacts with the University of Oxford, who chose him shortly after his appointment to Cambridge for Professorial Fellow of Gonville and Caius College.
As a classic philologist acquired Brink since the 1950s international reputation. 1960 and 1966 he spent as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1970 he was a visiting professor at the University of Bonn. In 1964 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, 1973, a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. The University of Cambridge awarded him in 1973 the degree of Doctor of Letters.
Thesaurus Linguae to Latinae Brink had a long relationship. After his time as an assistant in the 1930s, he kept the project 's objective. In his Horazbuch he demonstrated how the archives and the volumes already published can support philological work. In 1967, he appeared as a delegate of the British Academy in the thesaurus Commission. In 1979, he joined the company as Vice President in the Executive Committee, 1988, he was elected President of the thesaurus Commission. He died on 4 March 1994 after six years in office.
Services
As a researcher, Charles Oscar Brink employed with the ancient spirit and history of ideas. The focus was on ancient philosophy (especially the Peripatetics ), historiography ( Tacitus ) and literary theory ( Horace ).
Philosophy: Aristotle and the Peripatetics
At the beginning of Brinks career is ancient philosophy. His dissertation dealt with ( as before him Jaegers student Richard Rudolf Walzer) the Magna Moralia pseudoaristotelische font. As Walzer also pointed Brink Aristotle's authorship back, but with different arguments. For formal reasons, he dated the font in the generation of grand-disciple of the philosopher.
Since Brink as 26- year-old was already a recognized expert on the Peripatetic philosophy, commissioned him Wilhelm Kroll, edited by him for the Realenzyklopädie to write an article about the Peripatetic school. Brink completed this task in the years 1935 and 1936 and wrote next to some smaller articles on individual philosophers. In the 1940s and 1950s he wrote some essays, including a fragment collection of the philosopher Praxiphanes.
Historiography: Tacitus
Also Brinks employment with the ancient history goes back to his student days, especially on his teachers Wilamowitz in Berlin and AM Clark, Oxford. Since 1932, Brink dealt with the imperial author Tacitus. He worked out the specific formal aspects of the Roman Tacitus historical work, by comparing the representation of the Julio- Claudian dynasty and the Flavian with the parallel tradition.
In addition, Brink led in a text-critical study of the evidence that the Codex Laurentianus Mediceus 68.1 was not always reliable textual witness for the first six books of the Annals. So Brink shook the foundation on which the annals text based since the issuance of the Justus Lipsius ( 1574 ). At the scientific controversy that followed this thesis, Brink took no more as of 1953. He advised Francis Richard David Goodyear in his edition of the first six books of the Annals.
Literary Theory: Horace
Brinks largest and most noted work Horace on Poetry treated those Horatian satires, whose main subject is the literature. The work on the Brink worked since 1957, appeared in long time intervals in three volumes (1963, 1971 and 1982). In the first volume ( Prolegomena ) attacked Brink to the method of the Oxford Professor Eduard Fraenkel, who (most recently in his book, Horace, 1957) championed the view that to understand a text, only the text itself was necessary. In contrast Brink interpreted the satires in the context of other horazischer writings, especially the Ars Poetica. For this procedure Brink was heavily criticized by Fraenkel - students. In the rest of the UK remained the behavioral reactions, while the book in the rest of Europe was very well received.
Brink treated Horace in his book four research problems:
History of Science
Brinks study of the history of classical philology came in the course of his work into being at the Horace book. He worked these " by-products " to a lecture series that was holding at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa in 1977: Studi e critica classici testuale in Inghilterra ( " Classical studies and textual criticism in England "). On this basis, he wrote his late work English Classical Scholarship ( Cambridge 1986). In this book, which was translated into German by Marcus Deufert 1997 ( Classical Studies in England), Brink came in for his fundamental belief that mastery of Greek and Latin literature and language of central importance for the understanding of the ancient world was. He attributed this in front of three British philologist Richard Bentley (1662-1742), Richard Porson (1759-1808) and Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936), which he regarded as the most important philologists England. In Bentley Brink saw a forerunner of the modern science of antiquity that arose in Germany in the late 18th century. Housman dealing with basic philological questions he compared with that of his contemporaries Ulrich von Wilamowitz- Moellendorff ( 1848-1931 ).
Writings (selection )
- Style and form of the Magna Moralia pseudaristotelischen. Ohlau 1933 ( abridged version of his dissertation )
- Varron: six exposés et discussions; Vandoeuvres -Genève, 3-8 sept. In 1962. Geneva 1963
- Horace on Poetry. Three volumes, Cambridge 1963-1982 Volume 1: Prolegomena to the Literary Epistles. Cambridge 1963
- Volume 2: The " Ars Poetica ". Cambridge 1971
- Volume 3: Epistles Book 2: the letters to Augustus and Florus. Cambridge 1982
- German translation by Marcus Deufert: Classical Studies in England: Historical Reflections on Bentley, Porson and Housman. Stuttgart / Leipzig in 1997