Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Alfred Fleckeisen
Encyclopedia
Wolfenbüttel
Wolfenbüttel is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, located on the Oker river about 13 kilometres south of Brunswick. It is the seat of the District of Wolfenbüttel and of the bishop of the Protestant Lutheran State Church of Brunswick...
- August 7, 1899, Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
) was a German philologist and critic. He is best known for his work on Plautus
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as "Plautus", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus...
and Terence
Terence
Publius Terentius Afer , better known in English as Terence, was a playwright of the Roman Republic, of North African descent. His comedies were performed for the first time around 170–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought Terence to Rome as a slave, educated him and later on,...
.
Biography
He was educated at the HelmstedtHelmstedt
Helmstedt is a city located at the eastern edge of the German state of Lower Saxony. It is the capital of the District of Helmstedt. Helmstedt has 26,000 inhabitants . In former times the city was also called Helmstädt....
gymnasium and the University of Göttingen. After holding several educational posts at Frankfurt am Main and Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
, in 1861 he was appointed in the vice-principalship of the Vitzthum-Gymnasium at Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
, which he held until his retirement in 1889. Fleckeisen is chiefly known for his labors on Plautus
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as "Plautus", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus...
and Terence
Terence
Publius Terentius Afer , better known in English as Terence, was a playwright of the Roman Republic, of North African descent. His comedies were performed for the first time around 170–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought Terence to Rome as a slave, educated him and later on,...
; in the knowledge of these authors he was unrivalled, except perhaps by Ritschl
Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl
Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl was a German scholar best known as a student of Plautus.-Biography:He was born in Großvargula, Thuringia. His family, in which culture and poverty were hereditary, were Protestants who had migrated several generations earlier from Bohemia...
, his lifelong friend and a worker in the same field.
His chief works are: Exercitationes Plautinae (1842), one of the most masterly productions on the language of Plautus; Analecta Plautina, printed in Philologus (1847); Plauti Comoediae (Vols. I and II, 1850-1851, unfinished), introduced by an “Epistula critica ad F. Ritschelium”; P. Terenti Afri Comoediae (new ed., 1898). In his editions he endeavoured to restore the text in accordance with the results of his researches on the usages of the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
language and meter. He attached great importance to the question of orthography, and his short treatise Fünfzig Artikel (1861) is considered most valuable. Fleckeisen also contributed largely to the Jahrbücher für Philologie und Pädagogik, the philology department of which he was for many years editor of.