Katana VentraIP

Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff

Enno Friedrich Wichard Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (22 December 1848 – 25 September 1931) was a German classical philologist. Wilamowitz, as he is known in scholarly circles, was a renowned authority on Ancient Greece and its literature.

Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff

Enno Friedrich Wichard Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff

(1848-12-22)22 December 1848
Markowitz, Province of Posen, Prussia (now Markowice, Poland)

25 September 1931(1931-09-25) (aged 82)

Berlin, Germany

Prussian, German

Schulpforta

University of Bonn

Classical philology

Otto Jahn, Hermann Usener, Anton Springer

Jacoby, Bosch i Gimpera, H. Fränkel, Schadewaldt, E. Fraenkel, Jaeger, Maas, Schwartz, Murray, Friedländer, Kranz, Pasquali, Cherniss

Life[edit]

Youth[edit]

Wilamowitz-Moellendorff was born in Markowitz (Markowice), a small village near Hohensalza (Inowrocław), in the then Province of Posen (now part of the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship), to a Germanized family of distant Polish ancestry. His father, a Prussian Junker, was Arnold Wilamowitz, of Szlachta origin and using the Ogończyk coat of arms, while his mother was Ulrika, née Calbo. The couple settled in a small manor confiscated from a local noble in 1836. The Prussian part of their name, von Moellendorf, was acquired in 1813 when Prussian field marshal Wichard Joachim Heinrich von Möllendorf adopted Ulrich's ancestors. Wilamowitz, a third child, grew up in East Prussia.


In 1867 Wilamowitz passed his Abitur at the renowned boarding school at Schulpforta. Here he was educated and learned, amongst the rest, the English language, also studying privately with Dietrich Volkmann, teacher and then Master of the school.[1][2]

Studies[edit]

Until 1869, he studied Classical Philology at the University of Bonn. His teachers, Otto Jahn and Hermann Usener, had a formative influence on him. Willamowitz's relationship with Usener was strained. He developed a lifelong rivalry with his fellow student Friedrich Nietzsche and a close friendship with his contemporary Hermann Diels.


Together with Diels, he moved to Berlin in 1869, where he graduated as a Doctor of Philosophy cum laude in 1870. After voluntary service in the Franco-Prussian War, he embarked on a study tour to Italy and Greece.

Conflict with Nietzsche and Wagner[edit]

Even before he gained a professorial title, Wilamowitz was a member of a scholarly dispute about Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy that attracted much attention. In 1872–73, he published two unusually aggressive polemics (German: "Zukunftsphilologie", i.e. "Philology of the future"), which strongly attacked Nietzsche (then Professor at the University of Basel) and Professor Erwin Rohde (University of Kiel). Richard Wagner, whose views on art had influenced Nietzsche and Rohde, reacted by publishing an open letter and Rohde wrote a damning response. The issue at stake was the deprecation of Euripides, on whom Nietzsche blamed the destruction of Greek tragedy. Wilamowitz saw the methods of his adversaries as an attack on the basic tenets of scientific thought, unmasking them as enemies of the scientific method. His polemic was considered as Classical philology's reply to Nietzsche's challenge.[3]


At the age of 80 when Wilamowitz wrote his memoirs, he saw the conflict with Nietzsche less passionately but did not retract the essential points of his critique. He stated that he had not fully realised at the time that Nietzsche was not interested in scientific understanding but rather in Wagner's musical drama, but also that he was nevertheless right to take his position against Nietzsche's "rape of historical facts and all historical method".[4]

Achievements[edit]

Wilamowitz is one of the central figures of 19th and 20th century Classical philology. As a great authority on the literature and history of Ancient Greece, Wilamowitz took a stance against traditional methodology and textual criticism. As a representative of Postclassicism, he concentrated less on literary history but rather aimed to extract biographical information on the respective authors from the preserved texts. Thus, he employed historical perspectives to serve philology.


Apart from his seminal general works (Greek Literature from Antiquity, Hellenistic Poetry), he published numerous detailed studies of Euripides, Homer, Aeschylus, Pindar and Aristotle. As a scientific organiser, he was also responsible for the publication of important standard-setting source material publications, such as Inscriptiones Graecae.


He also passionately supported the preservation of Classical education in the German school system.


Notable pupils of his include Felix Jacoby, Karl Mittelhaus, Wolfgang Schadewaldt, Eduard Fraenkel, Werner Jaeger, Johannes Geffcken, Paul Maas, Eduard Schwartz, Gilbert Murray, Paul Friedländer, Friedrich Solmsen and Johannes Sykutris.


In recent decades, the American scholar William M. Calder III has been publishing a series of important documents about and by Wilamowitz, including much of his correspondence with Diels, Eduard Norden, Mommsen, Paul Wendland, and others.

1910 Honorary doctorate in Theology at the

University of Berlin

1911 Honorary doctorate,

Oslo University

Griechische Literatur des Altertums

Einleitung in die griechische Tragödie

Homerische Untersuchungen (1884)

Die Ilias und Homer (1916)

Platon (vollständig in 2 Bänden) (1919)

Hellenistische Dichtung (1924)

Erinnerungen 1848–1914. Verlag von K. F. Koehler, Leipzig 1928. (Memoirs)

Michael Armstrong, Wolfgang Buchwald, William M. Calder III.: Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff bibliography 1867–1990 (Hildesheim, Weidmann, 1991).

Braun, Maximilian, William M. Calder, III & Dietrich Ehlers, eds., "Lieber Prinz". Der Briefwechsel zwischen Hermann Diels und Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1869–1921) (Hildesheim: Weidmann, 1995).

Calder, William M. III and Bernhard Huss, eds., 'The Wilamowitz in Me': 100 Letters between Ulrich von Wilamovitz-Moellendorff and Paul Friedlaender (1904–1931) (Los Angeles: Charles Young Research Library, University of California, 1999).

Candio, Antonella, "Ein lebendiges Ganzes": la filologia come scienza e storia nelle "Coefore" di Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 2008) (Supplementi di Lexis, 57).

"Wilamowitz at War", International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 15/1, (2008), pp. 74–97.

Norton, Robert E.

Original texts by Wilamowitz on German Wikisource

in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

Newspaper clippings about Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff