Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff

Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff
Born	December 22, 1848 Markowice, East Prussia
Died	September 25, 1931
Occupation	Philologist

Enno Friedrich Wichard Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (* 22 December 1848 in Markowitz/Markowice, then part of Posen province, Prussia, now Poland; † 25 September 1931 in Berlin) was a German Classical Philologist. Wilamowitz, as he is known in scholarly circles, was a renowned authority on Homer.

Life

Youth

Wilamowitz-Moellendorff was born in Markowice (or Markowitz), a small village near Inowrocław in Kuyavia to a Germanized family of distant Polish ancestry. His father, a Prussian Junker, was Arnold Wilamowitz of 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 marshall Wichard Joachim Heinrich von Möllendorf adopted Ulrich's ancestors. Wilamowitz, a third child, grew up in East Prussia.

In 1867 he passed his Abitur at the well-renowned boarding school at Schulpforta.

Studies

Until 1869 he studied Classical Philology in Bonn. His teachers, Otto Jahn and Hermann Usener had a formative influence on him. Willamowitz-Moellendorff's relationship with Usener was tense. He developed a lifelong rivalry with his fellow student Friedrich Nietzsche and close friendship with his contemporary Hermann Diels. Together with Diels, he moved to Berlin in 1869. there he graduated as a Doctor of Philosophy cum laude in 1870. After coluntary service in the Franco-Prussian War, he embarked on a study tour to Italy and Greece.

Conflict with Nietzsche und Wagner

Before he even gained a professorial title, Wilamowitz was a main protagonist in a scholarly dispute about Nietzsche's ''Birth of tragedy'' that attracted much attention. In 1872-73, he published two unsually aggressive polemics ([[German language|german: "Zukunftsphilologie", ie "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 depreciation 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.

At 80, when Wilamowitz wrote his memoirs, he saw the conflict with Nietzsche less passionately, but did not go back on 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 position against Nietzsche's "rape of of historical facts and all historical method"..

Greifswald

In 1875 he gained a professorial title for his study Analecta Euripidea. In the same year he gave his forst public academic lecture in Berlin. In 1876 he was employed as Ordinarius (full professor) for Classical Philology at Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität at Greifswald. During this period, he also married Maria Mommsen and published Homeric Studies (Homerische Studien).

Göttingen

In 1883, he took a further professorial position at Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen. Here, he continued to teach Classical Philology but also gave replacement lectures in Ancient History. His influence ensured the emplyment of his Greifswald college, Julius Wellhausen. In 1891, he became vice-chancellor of the university and was appointed a member of Göttingen's Royal Academy of Sciences. When Wilamowitz left Göttingen, he was succeeded by Georg Kaibel, a close associate from student days and his successor at Greifswald.

Berlin

In 1897, with the support of his friend Diels, Wilamowitz was offered a position at the Royal Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität at Berlin, as successor to Ernst Curtius. He stayed until his retirement in 1921. In 1915 he was appointed chancellor of the university for one year. Together with Diels, he founded the Berlin Institute for Ancient Studies (Institut für Altertumskunde) in 1897. His public lectures on subjects of Classical antiquity, which took place twice a week, attracted large audiences.

Teaching activities and memberships

In 1891, Wilamowitz was elected a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, from 1899 he was a full member. In 1902 he took the academy's presidency, during which he made a special effort to achieve a publication of [[Adolf Kirchhoff]'s Inscriptiones Graecae. For the Göttingen academy, he strongly encouraged the publication of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. Since 1897 he also worked as a member to the academy's Commison for Patristics. In 1894 he was elected full member of the German Archaeological Institute. He also was editor of the series Philologische Untersuchungen from 1880 to 1925.

Further, Wilamowitz taught as a guest lecturer in Oxford (1908) and Uppsala (1912), was a corresponding member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (1909) and the Scientific Society of Lund (1912).

World War I

Wilamowitz was an initiator of the pamphlet Erklärung der Hochschullehrer des Deutschen Reiches (Declaration by the University Teachers of the German Reich, in which 3,016 signatories supported German participation in the First World War. Shortly after, he also signed the Manifesto of the Ninety-Three, from which he distanced himself later. In 1914, his son, Tycho von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, who was also active as a Classical Philologist, fell in the battle of Ivangorod in 1914.

Family

In 1878 he married Maria Mommsen, the oldest daughter of the famous Ancient historian, Theodor Mommsen, whom he actively assisted in the completion of his Roman History. Wilamowitz spent his last years in reclusion, suffering froma severe kidney problems. He died in Berlin on September 25, 1931, having been in a coma for a short time. He is buried in his native village, along with his wife Marie (1855 – 1936) and their only son, Tycho.

Achievements

Wilamowitz is one of the central figures of 19th and 20th century Classical Philology. As a great authority of 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, Aischylos, and Aristotle. As a sceientific organiser, he was also repsonsible for the publication of encyclopaedic standards like Inscriptiones Graecae.

He also passionately supported the presevartion 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 und Gilbert Murray, Johannes Sykutris.

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

Awards

• 1886 Knight's Cross of the Hohenzollern House
• 1908 Pour le Mérite Order
• 1910 Honorary doctorate in Theology at the [[Humboldt University of Berlin|University of Berlin]
• 1911 Honorary doctorate, Oslo University
• 1928 Adlerschild des Deutschen Reiches (Non-wearable decoration of the Weimar republic)

Works

• Griechische Literatur des Altertums
• Einleitung in die griechische Tragödie
• Homerische Untersuchungen (1884)
• Die Ilias und Homer (1916)
• Hellenistische Dichtung (1924)
• Erinnerungen 1848-1914. Verlag von K. F. Koehler, Leipzig 1928. (Memoirs)

Literature

• Michael Armstrong, Wolfgang Buchwald, William M. Calder III.: Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff bibliography 1867−1990. Weidmann, Hildesheim u. a. 1991, ISBN 3-615-00062-5

External Links

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Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff