Jakob Bernays

Jacob Bernays ( born September 11, 1824 in Hamburg, † May 26, 1881 in Bonn ) was a German philologist Classic.

Life

Bernays's father, Isaac Bernays (1792-1849), was the first orthodox German rabbi who preached in German, his brother was Michael Bernays. Jacob studied 1844-1848 at the University of Bonn, whose philological faculty under Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker and Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl (whose favorite pupil Bernays was ) then the center of classical philology was in Germany.

Bernays was awarded his doctorate in 1848 with a thesis on Heraclitus and habilitated immediately thereafter. Because of his Jewish faith, he could not obtain a professorship at a German state university and therefore he accepted in 1853 the chair of classical philology at the newly founded Jewish Theological Seminar Fraenckel'scher Foundation in Breslau, where he entered into a close friendship with Theodor Mommsen. The "normal" academic career, he was able to embark in 1866 which brought the final legal emancipation of the Jews only after the founding of the North German Confederation. As Ritschl left after the famous " Bonner philologists dispute" with Otto Jahn Bonn to Leipzig in 1866, Bernays was appointed to his old university as an associate professor and chief librarian. He remained until his death in Bonn. He had great influence on many philologists, among them Ulrich von Wilamowitz- Moellendorff and Theodor Heyse.

Bernays known all his life to Orthodox Judaism and refused to convert to Christianity, to then to embark on a career as a university teacher can. Therefore, he had to wait a long time until he was appointed professor at a Prussian university. His case caused a sensation and was even discussed in the Prussian parliament. Since January 12, 1865 Bernays was a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

Jacob Bernays was the uncle of Martha Bernays, Freud's wife.

Work

Bernays ' scientific interests lay mainly in the field of Greek philosophy. Despite his extensive knowledge of ancient texts and the whole philological literature since the Renaissance Bernays has always held on narrowly defined topics and often in seemingly offbeat authors, whom he treated with the utmost precision and exact imagination and represented in polished language. For the shape of the large monographic treatise he lacked in his own admission, at the superficiality it necessary. Thus, Bernays was a sharp profiled shape that of the during his lifetime evolving, by his friend Mommsen decisively promoted the development of the research operation with the own organization start-ups and decades to acquiring major projects stand out clearly and, as such, in the last few decades great attention to the historiography of science was, as Arnaldo Momigliano at and Jean Bollack.

His treatment of Heraclitus' fragments represented the first and standard-setting example of how pre-Socratic philosophers and omissions can be recovered from their tradition context. So he has in a methodical epoch-making treatise of Theophrastus lost treatise On the piety of quotations in the writings of Porphyry reconstructed. Since this text is also the first witness to the knowledge of the Greeks from Judaism, it was for Bernays not only a demonstration of philological method as the this work from the beginning was admired.

On the interaction of Greek and Hebrew philology was also based the fascination that Joseph Scaliger had on Bernays, the " prince of the philologists ," which he dedicated in 1855 a biography. The union of the Hebrew Bible with the Greco-Roman education was the declared goal of Bernays efforts ( Ges Abh, Vol 2, p 195 ), with which he as a scientist against the rejected him assimilation of Jews from Christianity dominated society of the nineteenth century took place. When his brother, who later became known as Goethe scholar Michael Bernays, was baptized, Jacob Bernays broke off relations from him to never resume.

However, the greatest sensation drew the outlines of the lost treatises of Aristotle on the effect of tragedy ( 1857), in which he Aristotle's only fragmentary poetics reconstructed. Today known and recognized is Bernays ' contribution to the understanding of the catharsis theory of poetics. The elucidation of Aristotle's theory of tragic effect had great influence on Friedrich Nietzsche's essay " The Birth of Tragedy " and on the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud.

Writings

  • The Life of J. J. Scaliger (1855 )
  • About the Phokylideische poem (1856 )
  • The Chronicle of Sulpicius Severus (1861 )
  • The dialogues of Aristotle, in proportion to his other works (1863 )
  • Theophrastus ' treatise on piety (1866 )
  • The Heraclitus Letters (1869 )
  • Aristotle's Politics. First, second and third book. Transferred with explanatory additions into German ( 1872), online access
  • Lucian and the Cynics (1879 )
  • Two Treatises of Aristotle's theory of drama (1880 ).
  • Phocion and his recent Beurtheiler (1881 )
  • Collected Essays. Edited by Hermann Usener. 2 vols Berlin 1885.
  • History of classical philology. Vorlesungsnachschrift by Robert Münzel. Hildesheim / New York: Olms 2008 ( Spudasmata, Vol 120), ISBN 9783487136974, review by Jochen Lückoff, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2009.01.37
  • "You, of where I live! ". Letters to Paul Heyse. Edited by William M. Calder III and Timo Günther. Göttingen: Wallenstein, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0743-8
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