Friedrich Solmsen

Friedrich Heinrich Rudolf Solmsen ( born February 4, 1904 in Bonn, † January 30, 1989 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina) was an American classical scholar of German origin. He emigrated to England in 1933 and in 1937 to the USA, where he worked as a professor at various universities. After the Second World War, he was a key contact person for the science of antiquity between Germany and the English-speaking world. As a researcher, he focused particularly with Greek philosophy.

Life

Youth, studies and early years in Berlin

Friedrich Solmsen was the son of the linguist Solmsen Felix and his wife Lily, born fallow. His father Felix died when he was only seven years old. Friedrich Solmsen studied from 1922 Classical Philology at the universities of Bonn, Heidelberg and Berlin. In Berlin, he joined Ulrich von Wilamowitz - Moellendorff, who received him into his Graeca. His real mentor but was Werner Jaeger, whose combination of philology and philosophy Solmsens influenced research sustainable. In 1928 he received his doctorate with a thesis on Aristotle's Methodology and the late Platonic Academy. His habilitation he reached in 1929 with the Scriptures The development of Aristotelian logic and rhetoric, the fourth book in the series Jaegers New Philological studies appeared (Berlin 1929). In 1932 he married the classical philologist Lieselotte Salzer.

Exile in Cambridge (1933-1937)

After the accession of the Nazis was Solmsen, who was by both parents of Jewish descent, denounced as senior assistant at June 30, 1933. On September 2, 1933 his teaching license was revoked as a lecturer and he was granted a publication ban. He emigrated with his wife in the same year to England, where he worked at the University of Cambridge as a visiting researcher. He published at this time several smaller writings, including a series of articles in the Realencyclopädie of classical antiquity Sciences; whose publisher Wilhelm Kroll enabled Solmsen as the circumvention of a publication ban in the German Reich.

As a professor in the United States

1936 became Solmsen in Cambridge his second doctoral degree ( Ph.D.) and was able to advance his academic career in English speaking countries. In 1937 he was a professor of philosophy at the College in the small American town in Olivet Michigan. In 1940, he joined as an Assistant Professor at Cornell University in Ithaca (New York), where he was eventually promoted to full professor. Since 1953 he was also Chairman of the Department of Classics. 1962 moved Solmsen to the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where he was appointed in 1964 to Moses Slaughter Professor of Classics.

1974 joined Solmsen at the age of 70 years in retirement. However, he remained active in teaching and research. The effect of place of his late years was the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he taught from 1964 to 1965 as Paddison Visiting Professor from 1975 to 1976 as an Adjunct Professor of Classics.

Services

When researchers looked Solmsen employed with a wide range of Greek literature. Special focus of his research was the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus and the Stoics. Even the Theogony of Hesiod, the Greek tragedians, the Greco-Roman mythology and the Roman reception of Greek philosophy put Solmsen before numerous articles. His little writings published from 1968 to 1982 in three volumes in Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim.

An important merit Solmsens is beyond that he helped after the Second World War to renew the contact between Germany and the American language. From 1958 to 1959 he held a scholarship from the Fulbright Foundation on at the universities of Frankfurt and Kiel; the University of Kiel in 1965 awarded him an honorary doctorate. In the same year Solmsen kept on as a visiting professor at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. In the summer semester 1968 and 1973 he was a visiting professor at the University of Heidelberg. Solmsen was also a corresponding member of the British Academy and the German Archaeological Institute.