Wilhelm Scherer
Encyclopedia
Wilhelm Scherer German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 philologist and historian of literature.

Life

He was educated at the academic gymnasium at Vienna and afterwards at the University of Vienna
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...

, where he was the favorite pupil of the distinguished Germanist, Karl Müllenhoff
Karl Mullenhoff
Karl Viktor Müllenhoff was a German philologist and a student of Teutonic antiquities.-Biography:...

 (1818-1884). Having taken the degree of doctor philosophiae
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

, he became Privatdozent
Privatdozent
Privatdozent or Private lecturer is a title conferred in some European university systems, especially in German-speaking countries, for someone who pursues an academic career and holds all formal qualifications to become a tenured university professor...

for German language and literature in 1864.

In 1868 he was appointed ordinary professor, and in 1872 received a call in a like capacity to the University of Strasbourg
University of Strasbourg
The University of Strasbourg in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, is the largest university in France, with about 43,000 students and over 4,000 researchers....

, and in 1877 to the University of Berlin, where in 1884 he was made member of the Academy of Sciences.

Works

Scherer's literary activity falls into three categories: in Vienna was the philologist, at Strasbourg the professor of literature and Berlin the author.

His earliest work was a biography of the philologist Jakob Grimm (1865, 2nd ed. 1885); the next, in conjunction with his former teacher Müllenhoff, published Denkmäler deutscher Poesie und Prose aus dem 8. bis 12. Jahrhundert (1864, ed. 1892). His first major work was Zur Geschichte deutschen Sprache (Berlin, 1868; 3rd ed., 1890), a history of the German language with special reference to phonetic laws
Phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...

.

He contributed the section on Alsatian
Alsace
Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...

 literature to Ottokar Lorenz
Ottokar Lorenz
Ottokar Lorenz was an Austrian-German historian and genealogist who was a native of Iglau ....

's Geschichte des Elsasses (1871, 3rd ed. 1886). Other important works are Geschichte Poeten der deutschen Kaiserzeit (Strassburg, 1875); Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung im 11. und 12. Jarhundert (1875); and Vorträge und Aufsätze zur Geschichte des geistlichen Lebens in Deutschland und Österreich (1874).

Scherer's best known work is his history of German literature, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur (Berlin, 1883; 10th ed., 1905; English translation Mrs F. C. Conybeare, 1883; new ed., 1906). This work is distinguished by the clearness with which details are co-ordinated with general and comprehensive survey of German literature from the beginning to the death of Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...

.

Besides many other philological treatises, Scherer wrote largely on Goethe (Aus Goethes Frühzeit, 1879; Aufsätze über Goethe, 1886), and took an active part in the foundation of the Goethe archives at Weimar. A small treatise on Poetik, a biography of Karl Müllenhoff, and two volumes of Kleine Schriften
Kleine Schriften
is a German phrase often used as a title for a collection of articles and essays written by a single scholar over the course of a career. "Collected Papers" is an English equivalent. These shorter works were usually published previously in various periodicals or in collections of papers written...

were published after his death.
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