Friedrich Maurer (linguist)

Friedrich Maurer ( born January 5, 1898 in lime rock; † November 7, 1984 in Merzhausen ) was a German medievalist and linguist germanistischer.

Life

Maurer began his studies in classical philology and comparative linguistics in 1916 to two years previously opened University of Frankfurt / Main. In the same year he was drafted into military service in 1917 and severely wounded; He spent the time after that in a military hospital in Heidelberg. This year, he enrolled again in order to continue studying as wounded with limited university teaching can. The full study of the German language, he continued after the war in 1918, first in Heidelberg, 1919 in Giessen, where he also studied Comparative Indo-European linguistics and classical philology. He received his doctorate in 1922 with Otto Behaghel, the lasting influence him in the focus of his later research. Maurer was from 1917 a member of the Heidelberg and from 1919 in Giessen Wingolf. Later, he also joined the Freiburg Wingolf. He habilitated in 1925 in Giessen for the subject " German philology " and in 1929 was appointed extraordinary professor. In 1931 he was appointed as professor to the chair of the University of Erlangen.

Was a mason who is a member of the Stahlhelm, the National Socialists after the "seizure of power " incorporated into the SA, from which he resigned in 1935 but. In 1937 he joined the NSDAP, the Nazi Teachers 'Association, the NSD Bund and the Nazi - old boys' Federation of German students. In the same year he became professor at the Albert -Ludwigs- University of Freiburg, where he headed the Institute for Germanic Philology until his retirement in 1966. 1937 and 1938 he was Dean of the Faculty of Arts and from 1940 until the cessation of teaching activities in 1944 Vice-Rector of the University of Freiburg. Since 1938/39, Maurer worked with the SS - Ahnenerbe and set up a collection point for Baden folk tales, legends and fairy tales. 1941 Maurer was within the Faculty of Freiburg University confidant of NSD Federal.

During the reconstruction of the partially destroyed University since 1945, he essential functions have been delegated by the military government. He initiated, among others, the establishment of the Institute of Historical Geography in Freiburg and the Institute of Franconian language research in Erlangen.

Friedrich Maurer was 1958-1959 Chairman of the German Association of German studies and in 1964 one of the founders of the Institute for German Language in Mannheim.

Work

As his doctor father Otto Behaghel in casting Maurer turned particularly to the linguistic research of dialects ( dialectology and dialect geography ) and the German comparative linguistics. He produced a number of works on medieval literature and poetry, and numerous editions that emerged particularly by the combination of literary studies, cultural history, prehistoric archeology and sociology. In 1943 he published in collaboration with Friedrich straw the first edition of the three -volume work " German word story".

As his most important work is considered a linguistic work ( "North Germanic and Alemanen ", 1942), with whom he the ideological nationalist theories of the time for Germanic language development, who claimed a high degree of linguistic unity of the Germanic tribes in ancient times, own, sober, but today turned against controversial theory. Especially the concept of " West Germanic ", which was seen as a precursor of German, Mason tried to deconstruct it. In contrast to the classical tripartite division in North, East and West Germans, he postulates that there are five different cultural and linguistic areas of the Germans were already in the Roman Empire, which he northern Germanic ( in Skandinawien ), North Sea Germans ( Saxons, Frisians, etc. ), Rhine -Weser Germanic ( Cherusker, chatting, subsequent franc), Elbgermanen ( Suebi, Marcomanni, Lombards, Alamanni later ) and the Oder - Vistula - Germanic ( Vandals, Burgundians, Goths ) calls. He relied mainly on Tacitus and Pliny the Elder. Especially in the latter, he found a set in his Naturalis historia, where this explicitly by Germanorum genera quinque, five types of Germans reported ( Plin.nat 4.99).

In the third edition of the work from 1952 he based this assumption on archaeological finds. He goes mainly to Rafael Uslar and its published in the same year article " Archaeological groups and Germanic tribal territories mainly from the time of Christ's birth" back. He equates the identified five of this archaeological groups with five different Germanic language or dialect groups. The admissibility of this equation of archaeological groups with language groups sparked a fierce debate that is still not complete. As to the 7th and 8th century text evidence of Germanic languages ​​( with the exception of the Gothic Bible from the late 4th century ) are meager, his thesis until today could be neither confirmed nor rejected. Maurer acknowledges the linguistic proximity between Frankish (ie after its disposition Rhine -Weser Germanic ) and Alemannic and Bavarian ( Elbgermanen ) texts of the early Middle Ages, but justifying them with a secondary unifying process it in the Merovingian period of the 4th to 6th centuries dated. Cultural, religious and linguistic similarities he saw between Scandinavia and the Alemanni, he established the fact that the elbgermanischen Alemanni had been direct neighbors of the North Germans still in the time of Christ's birth on the Baltic Sea and retains similarities to her later train to the southwest have.

In the field of dialectology Maurer contributed with the released of him and wrote large parts book " Upper Rhine area, Swabia, Südalemannen " (1942 ) made ​​a vital contribution to the explanation of the recent dialectal linguistic landscape in the " German Southwest" at. He formulated the Swabian-Alemannic " major barriers" and " head movements " and worked out the " altalemannischen and Swabia education ", the " scales, spaces and movements in the Upper Rhine area" and the " südalemannischen room, his unit and its parts ." Mason understood the band explicitly as a continuation of his book on the "North Germanic and Alemanni ."

Later Maurer worked together with his students Konrad Kunze, Wolfgang Heinrich Löffler Kleiber and the first historical linguistic atlas of the German language. Mason was the founder of the " Südhessische dictionary" and the author and editor of the "Religious seals of the 11th and 12th century."

Awards

• Brothers Grimm Prize of the University of Marburg (1963 )
• Dr. Litt. H.C. the University of Glasgow ( 1966)
• Jacob Burckhardt Prize of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe -Stiftung Basel (1976 )