Hermann Hirt

Hermann Hirt ( born December 19, 1865 in Magdeburg, † September 12, 1936 in Gießen ) was a German Indo-Europeanist.

After the study of Indo-European Linguistics at the Universities of Leipzig and Freiburg Hirt received his doctorate in 1889 at the University of Leipzig, where he habilitated in 1891. 1891-1896 Shepherd worked as a lecturer in Indo-European languages ​​at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Leipzig, followed by an Extraordinary Professor of Indo-European Linguistics 1896-1912 there. From 1912 until his death in 1936 Hirt was Professor of Sanskrit and Indo-European Linguistics at the University of Giessen.

Hirt made ​​fundamental contributions to the study of accent and ablaut of the Indo-European proto-language. Its Indo-European grammar was published in 1921-1927 in seven volumes. A new edition of these volumes appeared in November 2009 in paperback by Cambridge University Press.

Hirt stood by the archaeologists who alleged that the original homeland of the Indo-Europeans had to be in Northern Europe - a controversial and even then as well as today refuted the opinion. In his tribal society, there was a peasant democracy. It was only during the expansion, the conquerors had settled as aristocracy. This image of the Germans, not a nazi, was common in the 19th century. Moreover practiced Hirt criticism of the racist anthropological speculation about the Indo-Europeans; he warned, inter alia, against the risk to describe the urindoeuropäische era as a golden age. He cherished works which compared the Germans with " racially foreign" peoples.

Works

  • The Indo-European accent. A handbook. Strasbourg 1895.
  • Etymology of the New High German language. Munich 1909.
  • Indo-European grammar. 7 volumes. Heidelberg from 1921 to 1937.
  • Manual of Primitive Germanic. 3 parts. Heidelberg from 1931 to 1934.
  • The Indo-Europeans. Their distribution, their homeland and their culture. 2 vols. Strasbourg from 1905 to 1907.

About Hermann Hirt

  • Winfred P. Lehmann: Theoretical Bases of Indo-European Linguistics. Taylor & Francis Ltd.. , 1996, ISBN 978-0415138505 (English ).
  • Günter Neumann: Hirt, Hermann. In: New German Biography ( NDB ). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7, pp. 235 f ( digitized ).
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