Martin Ostwald
Encyclopedia
Martin Ostwald was a German-American classical scholar, who taught until 1992 at Swarthmore College
and the University of Pennsylvania
. His main field of study was the political structures of Ancient Greece
.
, where he attended the Municipal Gymnasium (Städtliches Gymnasium). He had always intended to become a classical scholar, but when this possibility was removed by the passage of the Nuremberg Laws
of 1935, which closed the German universities to Jews, he decided instead to pursue his interests in teaching and scholarship by becoming a rabbi
. But during the Reichskristallnacht on November 9, 1938, Ostwald was arrested together with his father and his younger brother, Ernest. Forced to leave his parents behind in Germany, Ostwald and his brother were able to emigrate to England
via the Netherlands
on a Kindertransport
. In England, however, Ostwald and other German refugees were, in the wake of the British defeat at Dunkirk, sent to a detention camp in Canada, where he first met Thomas G. Rosenmeyer
(who would also find his way to the United States and become a noted classicist and would write a book together with Ostwald and James W. Halporn).
Following his release, Ostwald enrolled at the University of Toronto
, where he was able to resume his original interest in classical studies. After graduation in 1946 he continued his studies in the (at that time still quite new) Committee on Social Thought
at the University of Chicago
, where he wrote an M.A. thesis on the treatment of the Orestes
myth by Aeschylus
, Sophocles
, and Euripides
. In 1949 he became a doctoral student under fellow German immigrant Kurt von Fritz at Columbia University
in New York City
. In 1951 he published his first scholarly article on the Prytaneion Decree (IG 13 131). The following year Ostwald received his Ph.D. after completing his dissertation on the Athenian constitution.
After receiving his Ph.D. Ostwald taught for one year at Wesleyan University
. He then returned to Columbia and taught there until 1958, when he joined the Classics Department at Swarthmore College
. A few years later he transferred one-third of his teaching to the graduate programs in Classical Studies and Ancient History at the University of Pennsylvania
, an arrangement made possible by a special agreement between the two institutions. Ostwald continued to teach undergraduates at Swarthmore and graduate students at Penn until his retirement in 1992. In addition to these primary appointments, Ostwald taught as visiting professor at Princeton University
, the University of California at Berkeley, Balliol College, Oxford
, at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
in Paris and, for many years, at Tel Aviv University
.
Among Ostwald's many publications, some of the most notable include a translation of Aristotle
's Nicomachean Ethics
; a handbook on the meters of Greek and Roman poetry (on which Ostwald, Rosenmeyer, and Halporn collaborated) and several books on ancient Greek constitutional history: Nomos and the Beginnings of the Athenian Democracy; Autonomia: Its Genesis and Early History; and his magnum opus, From Popular Sovereignty to the Sovereignty of the Law, for which Ostwald received the Goodwin Award of Merit from the American Philological Association
in 1990. A selection of Ostwald's more important papers was published under the title Language and History in Ancient Greek Culture (Philadelphia 2009).
Ostwald was elected President of the American Philological Association in 1987. In 1991 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
, and in 1993 he was inducted into the American Philosophical Society
. Ostwald was awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Fribourg
(Switzerland) in 1995, and by the University of Dortmund, Germany, in 2001.
Ostwald died of heart failure on April 10, 2010.
Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College is a private, independent, liberal arts college in the United States with an enrollment of about 1,500 students. The college is located in the borough of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, 11 miles southwest of Philadelphia....
and the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
. His main field of study was the political structures of Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
.
Life
Born the elder son of a German-Jewish lawyer, Ostwald was raised in DortmundDortmund
Dortmund is a city in Germany. It is located in the Bundesland of North Rhine-Westphalia, in the Ruhr area. Its population of 585,045 makes it the 7th largest city in Germany and the 34th largest in the European Union....
, where he attended the Municipal Gymnasium (Städtliches Gymnasium). He had always intended to become a classical scholar, but when this possibility was removed by the passage of the Nuremberg Laws
Nuremberg Laws
The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were antisemitic laws in Nazi Germany introduced at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. After the takeover of power in 1933 by Hitler, Nazism became an official ideology incorporating scientific racism and antisemitism...
of 1935, which closed the German universities to Jews, he decided instead to pursue his interests in teaching and scholarship by becoming a rabbi
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...
. But during the Reichskristallnacht on November 9, 1938, Ostwald was arrested together with his father and his younger brother, Ernest. Forced to leave his parents behind in Germany, Ostwald and his brother were able to emigrate to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
via the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
on a Kindertransport
Kindertransport
Kindertransport is the name given to the rescue mission that took place nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Free City of Danzig...
. In England, however, Ostwald and other German refugees were, in the wake of the British defeat at Dunkirk, sent to a detention camp in Canada, where he first met Thomas G. Rosenmeyer
Thomas G. Rosenmeyer
Thomas Gustav Rosenmeyer was a German-American classical scholar. He was a Professor Emeritus for Classics and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. His main interest was the literature of classical Greece, especially Plato.- External links :*...
(who would also find his way to the United States and become a noted classicist and would write a book together with Ostwald and James W. Halporn).
Following his release, Ostwald enrolled at the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
, where he was able to resume his original interest in classical studies. After graduation in 1946 he continued his studies in the (at that time still quite new) Committee on Social Thought
Committee on Social Thought
The Committee on Social Thought is one of several PhD-granting committees at the University of Chicago. It was started in 1941 by historian John Ulric Nef along with economist Frank Knight, anthropologist Robert Redfield, and University President Robert Maynard Hutchins.The committee is...
at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, where he wrote an M.A. thesis on the treatment of the Orestes
Orestes
Orestes was the son of Agamemnon in Greek mythology; Orestes may also refer to:Drama*Orestes , by Euripides*Orestes, the character in Sophocles' tragedy Electra*Orestes, the character in Aeschylus' trilogy of tragedies, Oresteia...
myth by Aeschylus
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
, Sophocles
Sophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
, and Euripides
Euripides
Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...
. In 1949 he became a doctoral student under fellow German immigrant Kurt von Fritz at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. In 1951 he published his first scholarly article on the Prytaneion Decree (IG 13 131). The following year Ostwald received his Ph.D. after completing his dissertation on the Athenian constitution.
After receiving his Ph.D. Ostwald taught for one year at Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...
. He then returned to Columbia and taught there until 1958, when he joined the Classics Department at Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College is a private, independent, liberal arts college in the United States with an enrollment of about 1,500 students. The college is located in the borough of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, 11 miles southwest of Philadelphia....
. A few years later he transferred one-third of his teaching to the graduate programs in Classical Studies and Ancient History at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
, an arrangement made possible by a special agreement between the two institutions. Ostwald continued to teach undergraduates at Swarthmore and graduate students at Penn until his retirement in 1992. In addition to these primary appointments, Ostwald taught as visiting professor at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, the University of California at Berkeley, Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....
, at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
The École des hautes études en sciences sociales is a leading French institution for research and higher education, a Grand Établissement. Its mission is research and research training in the social sciences, including the relationship these latter maintain with the natural and life sciences...
in Paris and, for many years, at Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University is a public university located in Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel. With nearly 30,000 students, TAU is Israel's largest university.-History:...
.
Among Ostwald's many publications, some of the most notable include a translation of Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
's Nicomachean Ethics
Nicomachean Ethics
The Nicomachean Ethics is the name normally given to Aristotle's best known work on ethics. The English version of the title derives from Greek Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια, transliterated Ethika Nikomacheia, which is sometimes also given in the genitive form as Ἠθικῶν Νικομαχείων, Ethikōn Nikomacheiōn...
; a handbook on the meters of Greek and Roman poetry (on which Ostwald, Rosenmeyer, and Halporn collaborated) and several books on ancient Greek constitutional history: Nomos and the Beginnings of the Athenian Democracy; Autonomia: Its Genesis and Early History; and his magnum opus, From Popular Sovereignty to the Sovereignty of the Law, for which Ostwald received the Goodwin Award of Merit from the American Philological Association
American Philological Association
The American Philological Association , founded in 1869, is a non-profit North American scholarly organization devoted to all aspects of Greek and Roman civilization...
in 1990. A selection of Ostwald's more important papers was published under the title Language and History in Ancient Greek Culture (Philadelphia 2009).
Ostwald was elected President of the American Philological Association in 1987. In 1991 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
, and in 1993 he was inducted into the American Philosophical Society
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society, founded in 1743, and located in Philadelphia, Pa., is an eminent scholarly organization of international reputation, that promotes useful knowledge in the sciences and humanities through excellence in scholarly research, professional meetings, publications,...
. Ostwald was awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Fribourg
University of Fribourg
The University of Fribourg is a university in the city of Fribourg, Switzerland.The roots of the University can be traced back to 1582, when the notable Jesuit Peter Canisius founded the Collège Saint-Michel in the City of Fribourg. In 1763, an Academy of law was founded by the state of Frobourg...
(Switzerland) in 1995, and by the University of Dortmund, Germany, in 2001.
Ostwald died of heart failure on April 10, 2010.