Manu Leumann

Manu Leumann ( born October 6, 1889 in Strasbourg, † July 15, 1977 in Zurich ) was a German Indo-Europeanist.

Life and work

Manu Leumann, son of Ernst Leumann Indologist (1859-1931), visited the Strasbourg Protestant school and began in 1909 to study classical philology and linguistics at the university there. He spent three semesters in Göttingen ( with Friedrich Leo ) and Berlin (with Ulrich von Wilamowitz- Moellendorff ). In 1914 he received his doctorate in Strasbourg at Albert Thumb with a dissertation on the Latin adjectives in -lis. Shortly thereafter Leumann was drafted at the outbreak of the First World War as a soldier.

After his return in 1919 he went to Munich, where he was assistant at the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. In 1922 he was appointed editor of the project and Lecturer in Indo-European linguistics at the University of Munich. In 1927 Leumann a chair at the University of Zurich to the Chair of Indo-European philology, related disciplines of classical philology and Sanskrit (as successor Eduard Schwyzers ), where he displayed his greatest effectiveness. Here he founded the " Leumann - school" of Indo-European and Latin linguistics. Among his pupils were Peter Frei, Ernst Risch, Meinrad Scheller and others. 1958 Leumann withdrew from the presidency of the International Thesaurus Commission, 1959, he became Professor Emeritus. Until 1961 he was Chairman of the Indo-European society. In 1964 he left the Swiss National Science Foundation. Visiting professor he was in Nijmegen (1962) and Fribourg (1968).

In the comparative linguistics and the reconstruction of Indo-European itself Leumann limited to a selection of Indo-European languages, including particularly Latin and Sanskrit. He dealt with historical changes in word formation, word meaning, inflection and syntax. In his essay Homeric words ( Basel 1950) he presented ( the loss of the sense ) as an important criterion for the change of word meanings out the discontinuity. Leumann treated in the interests of philology especially the historical language of Latin stage and described comprising the Latin and Greek language relationships.

Retired to Leumann devoted mainly the revamp of his Latin grammar (together with Johann Baptist Hofmann ) is no longer satisfied with that their first processing of 1926-28 it. In 1977, he then issued the Latin phonetic and morphology. Shortly thereafter, he died at the age of 87 years.