See also: Lachmann
Karl Konrad Friedrich Wilhelm Lachmann (born on March 4th 1793 with Braunschweig; † on March 13rd 1851 with Berlin) was a German Philologue specialized in the Latin literature and the old German dialects. He revolutionized the method of edition of the traditional texts by a scientific classification of the manuscripts available.
Biography
Karl Lachmann, wire of a preacher named Carl Ludolf Friedrich Lachmann, attended initially the institution of the Catharineum of Braunschweig. It devoted to the traditional letters starting from 1809 with Leipzig, then with the German literature with Göttingen under the direction of Georg Friedrich Benecke. It supported its thesis of enabling in Göttingen in 1815, but preferred to undertake its research as franc-tireur rather than to limit itself to a university career.
Initially replacing in a college of Berlin at the beginning of 1816, and Privatdocent of the university of this same city, it left the summer following for Kœnigsberg where one offered to him a place of main teacher to the Frederic college. In 1818, the university Albertina de Kœnigsberg proposed an associated post of professor to him. Then in 1825 it was named temporary professor of Latin and Germanic Philologie to the Université of Berlin, and full professor in 1827. It was named with the Academy of Science of Prussia in 1830.
Lachmann maintained the close links with Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.
Contributions
Lachmann is the father of the historico-critical edition of the texts. It substituted for the subjective preferences of the lessons of the firm criteria in the establishment, not only of the traditional Greeks and Latin (what was generally the case) but also of the old German literature: thus the editions of the poets of the Average high-German Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Walther von der Vogelweide are great classics of the German edition. These editions rest on a stemmatic recension existing manuscripts.
In the field of the traditional ones of Antiquity, it is necessary to distinguish its Considérations on the Iliade from Homère (1837), where this work is analyzed like a joining of several juxtaposed poems, and its edition hétérodoxe of Lucrèce (1850). It also restored following works:
- Properce (1816), Tibulle (1829), Catulle (1829)
- the New Testament (1831), the Genesis (1834)
- Terence (1836), Gaius (1841), Babrius (1845), Avianus (1845)
- the Roman agrimenseurs (with Blume, Theodor Mommsen and Rudorff, 1848-52)
- Lucilius (posthumous, published on the news of Lachmann, 1876)
- finally of the various notes, inter alia: “Observationes criticæ” (1815), “Of choricis systematis tragicorum græcorum” (1819), “Of will mensura tragœdiarum” (1822)
It published also the philological Notices of his friend Klenze (1839).
The Loi of Lachmann remains regarded until today as an essential mechanism of Latin linguistics.
For the forefront of its work of Germanistique, it is necessary to quote its test on the Chant of Niebelungen, very discussed at the time of its publication, and regarded today as dated; a note “ On the primitive form of the poem the misery of Nibelung” (1816) like “the lament of Niebelung” (1826; notice and recommendations, 1837). It is necessary to also evoke a volume published in de luxe edition for the jubilee of the invention of printing works, “Twenty old songs of Niebelungen” (1840), which contains the only poems considered as authentic by Lachmann. It in addition published a “Anthology of the poets High-German S of XIIIe century” (1820), of the “Specimina linguæ francicæ” (1825), works of Walther von der Vogelweide (1827), “Yvon” (as a coll with Benecke, 1827), and the “Gregoire” of Hartmann von Aue (1838), Wolfram von Eschenbach (1833), Ulrich von Lichtenstein (as a coll with Theodor von Karajan, 1841) as well as the following notes: “Fragments of German poems of XIIe and XIIIe centuries” (1829), “On the stressing and the versification of the old high-German” (1831), by whom it was made known like the Master of metric allemande; “On Hildebrandslied” (1833), “Songs and legends” (1833), “the prolog of Perceval” (1835), etc
He translated also the Sonnets (1820) and Macbeth (1829) of Shakespeare into German. He gave a critical edition of works of Lessing (1838-40, in 13 volumes). Starting from his papers, Mr. Haupt published an anthology of Minnesänger late discovered by Lachmann (“the spring of the Minnesanger” 1857).
Legacy of Lachmann
What remains of the Lachmann funds since the bombardments of the Second world war is stored in Staatsbibliothek of Berlin (SBB-PK). Lachmann indeed had a sizeable collection of manuscripts of the Middle Ages, among which fragments of the Willehalm of Ulrich von dem Türlin and songs of Niebelungen, which survived.
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