August Fischer (14 February 1865 in

Halle an der Saale Halle (Saale), or simply Halle (; from the 15th to the 17th century: ''Hall in Sachsen''; until the beginning of the 20th century: ''Halle an der Saale'' ; from 1965 to 1995: ''Halle/Saale'') is the largest city of the German state of Saxony-Anh ...

– 14 February 1949 in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...

) was a German orientalist. From 1883 to 1889 he studied

theology Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

and Oriental philology at the universities of

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

Marburg Marburg ( or ) is a university town in the German federal state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district (''Landkreis''). The town area spreads along the valley of the river Lahn and has a population of approximate ...

and Halle, receiving his doctorate with a thesis on the source biographies of

Ibn Ishaq Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Yasār ibn Khiyār (; according to some sources, ibn Khabbār, or Kūmān, or Kūtān, ar, محمد بن إسحاق بن يسار بن خيار, or simply ibn Isḥaq, , meaning "the son of Isaac"; died 767) was an 8 ...

, ''Biographien von Gewährsmännern des Ibn Ishaq''. In 1890 he obtained his

habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...

for Oriental philology at the

University of Halle Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (german: Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg), also referred to as MLU, is a public, research-oriented university in the cities of Halle and Wittenberg and the largest and oldest university i ...

, and several years later became an associate professor in Berlin. From 1900 to 1930 he was a full professor of Oriental philology at the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...

, where in 1914/15 he served as dean to the faculty of philosophy. For several years he was secretary of the philological-history group at the

Saxon Academy of Sciences The Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig (german: Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig) is an institute which was founded in 1846 under the name ''Royal Saxon Society for the Sciences'' (german: Königlich Sächsische G ...

of Leipzig (1926–32).Prof. Dr. phil. habil. August Fischer
Professorenkatalog der Universität Leipzig

Published works

With Rudolf Ernst Brünnow, he was author of the highly acclaimed ''Arabische Chrestomathie aus Prosaschriftstellern'' (6h edition, 1953), an Arab

chrestomathy A chrestomathy ( ; from the Ancient Greek (, “desire of learning”) = (, “useful”) + (, “learn”)) is a collection of selected literary passages (usually from a single author); a selection of literary passages from a foreign language ...

translated into English and published with the title ''Chrestomathy of classical Arabic prose literature'' (2008). He was also an editor of the periodicals ''Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft'' (Journal of the German Oriental Society) and ''Islamica'' (1925–35; a journal for the study of languages and cultures of Islamic peoples). Among his other numerous writings were ''Die indirekte Rede im Altfranzösischen'' (

Indirect speech In linguistics, indirect speech (also reported speech or indirect discourse) is a grammatical mechanism for reporting the content of another utterance without directly quoting it. For example, the English sentence ''Jill said she was coming' ...

Old French Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligib ...

, 1900) and the necrology for orientalist Christoph Ludolf Ehrenfried Krehl (''Nekrolog auf Ludolf Krehl'', 1901).HathiTrust Digital Library
published works

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fischer, August 1865 births 1949 deaths People from Halle (Saale) Academic staff of Leipzig University University of Halle alumni German orientalists German Arabists Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin