Edward Schröder (18 May 1858 – 9 February 1942) was a

Germanist German studies is the field of humanities that researches, documents and disseminates German language and literature in both its historic and present forms. Academic departments of German studies often include classes on German culture, German hi ...

and

mediaevalist Medievalism is a system of belief and practice inspired by the Middle Ages of Europe, or by devotion to elements of that period, which have been expressed in areas such as architecture, literature, music, art, philosophy, scholarship, and variou ...

who was a professor at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...

and published editions of numerous texts.

Life and career

Born in

Witzenhausen Witzenhausen is a small town in the Werra-Meißner-Kreis in northeastern Hesse, Germany. It was granted town rights in 1225, and until 1974, it was a district seat. The University of Kassel maintains a satellite campus in Witzenhausen at which i ...

and educated in Kassel, Schröder studied German studies at the Universities of Strasbourg and

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

and was a

docent The title of docent is conferred by some European universities to denote a specific academic appointment within a set structure of academic ranks at or below the full professor rank, similar to a British readership, a French " ''maître de con ...

at the University of Göttingen and then at Berlin. In 1889 he was appointed professor at the

University of Marburg The Philipps University of Marburg (german: Philipps-Universität Marburg) was founded in 1527 by Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, which makes it one of Germany's oldest universities and the oldest still operating Protestant university in the wor ...

and in 1902 at Göttingen, where he spent the rest of his career and died in 1942.Friedrich Neumann, ''Studien zur Geschichte der deutschen Philologie: Aus der Sicht eines alten Germanisten'', Berlin: Schmidt, 1971, , p. 112 His PhD thesis was on the early Middle High German '' Anegenge''; his main work for his '' Habilitation'', which was granted on 20 January 1883, was an unprinted edition of the Legend of

Crescentia ''Crescentia'' (calabash tree, huingo, krabasi, or kalebas) is a genus of six species of flowering plants in the family Bignoniaceae, native to southern North America, the Caribbean, Central America northern South America. The species are mode ...

from the ''

Kaiserchronik The ''Kaiserchronik'' (''Imperial Chronicle'') is a 12th-century chronicle written in 17,283 lines of Middle High German verse. It runs from Julius Caesar to Conrad III, and seeks to give a complete account of the history of Roman and German emp ...

'';Ulrich Hunger, "Deutsche Philologie in Göttingen um 1896: Moriz Heyne und Gustav Roethe zwischen 'Deutschem Wörterbuch' und deutscher Literaturwissenschaft", in ''Zur Geschichte und Problematik der Nationalphilologien in Europa: 150 Jahre Erste Germanistenversammlung in Frankfurt am Main (1846–1996)'', ed. Frank Fürbeth, Pierre Krügel, Ernst Erich Metzner and Olaf Müller, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1999, , pp. 295–312
p. 297
he had been commissioned to edit the entire work for the '' Monumenta Germaniae Historica''.Dorothea Ruprecht
"Schröder, Edward Karl W."
'' Neue Deutsche Biographie'', Volume 23 ''Schinzel – Schwarz'', 3rd ed. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2007, , pp. 559–60 In 1896, he became a member of the ''Akademischer Verein für Studierende der neueren Philologie zu Marburg'' (academic association for students of modern philology at Marburg), a student association later renamed the Marburger Burschenschaft Rheinfranken. From 1891 to 1937, he was either editor or co-editor of the '' Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur''. From 1908 on, he headed the central collection office for the '' Deutsches Wörterbuch'' in Göttingen. In November 1933 he was one of the 300 academics who signed the professorial pledge of allegiance to

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

and the National Socialist State. In the conflict between the 'Berlin' and 'Leipzig' schools of Germanic

philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...

, Schröder was an adherent of the Berlin school of

Karl Lachmann Karl Konrad Friedrich Wilhelm Lachmann (; 4 March 1793 – 13 March 1851) was a German philologist and critic. He is particularly noted for his foundational contributions to the field of textual criticism. Biography Lachmann was born in Brun ...

and of his teacher,

Wilhelm Scherer Wilhelm Scherer (26 April 18416 August 1886) was a German philologist and historian of literature. He was known as a positivist because he based much of his work on "hypotheses on detailed historical research, and rooted every literary phenomeno ...

, and against, for example,

Friedrich Kluge Friedrich Kluge (21 June 1856 – 21 May 1926) was a German philologist and educator. He is known for the Kluge etymological dictionary of the German language (''Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache''), which was first published in 1 ...

. He and his lifelong friend Gustav Roethe both appear to have chosen to begin their careers at Göttingen because of its potential as a centre of rigorous Germanic studies scholarship. In 1887 Schröder married Gertrud Röthe, Roethe's sister; she died in 1935.

Publications

Schröder edited a number of mediaeval German texts, including in addition to the ''Kaiserchronik'' (1892) a collection of verse tales by

Konrad von Würzburg Konrad von Würzburg (c.1220-1230 – 31 August 1287) was the chief German poet of the second half of the 13th century. As with most epic poets of the age, little is known of his life, and his origin is disputed. There have been German s ...

, ''Zwei altdeutsche Schwänke'' (1919) and ''Zwei altdeutsche Rittermaeren'' (1894), containing '' Moriz von Craûn'' and '' Peter von Staufenberg''. He worked throughout his life on a book about

Till Eulenspiegel Till Eulenspiegel (; nds, Dyl Ulenspegel ) is the protagonist of a German chapbook published in 1515 (a first edition of ca. 1510/12 is preserved fragmentarily) with a possible background in earlier Middle Low German folklore. Eulenspiegel is ...

, ''Untersuchungen zum Volksbuch von Eulenspiegel'', finally published in 1988. He had extremely broad professional interests—from

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...

and

Old Saxon Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Europe). It i ...

Klopstock Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (; 2 July 1724 – 14 March 1803) was a German poet. His best known work is the epic poem ''Der Messias'' ("The Messiah"). One of his major contributions to German literature was to open it up to exploration outsid ...

and

Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treat ...

— but loved the

High Middle Ages The High Middle Ages, or High Medieval Period, was the periodization, period of European history that lasted from AD 1000 to 1300. The High Middle Ages were preceded by the Early Middle Ages and were followed by the Late Middle Ages, which ended ...

best.J. S. ( Julius Schwietering)
"Edward Schröder †"
''Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur'' 79 (1942) 1–2, p. 1 He also assisted Roethe in completing the revised edition of

Jacob Grimm Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm (4 January 1785 – 20 September 1863), also known as Ludwig Karl, was a German author, linguist, philologist, jurist, and folklorist. He is known as the discoverer of Grimm's law of linguistics, the co-author of th ...

's ''Deutsche Grammatik'', and after Scherer's death produced the revised edition of his ''Geschichte der deutschen Literatur''. His studies of

onomastics Onomastics (or, in older texts, onomatology) is the study of the etymology, history, and use of proper names. An ''orthonym'' is the proper name of the object in question, the object of onomastic study. Onomastics can be helpful in data mining, w ...

helped establish the field in Germany. His focus in etymologies was on the inventors of the words, and he sought whenever possible to relate a placename to an event in the life of a person who had originated it.J. S., p. 2.

Honours

Schröder was a member of the Academies of Sciences of

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...

Prussia Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an em ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

and

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...

and of the Strasburg Scientific Society in Heidelberg, an honorary member of the

Modern Language Association of America The Modern Language Association of America, often referred to as the Modern Language Association (MLA), is widely considered the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature. The MLA aims to "st ...

and the Historical Association of Lower Saxony, was appointed a '' Geheimer Regierungsrat'' in 1907, and was awarded the Prussian Order of the Crown 3rd class in 1913 and the

Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art The Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art (german: Bayerischer Maximiliansorden für Wissenschaft und Kunst, links=no) was first established on 28 November 1853 by King Maximilian II von Bayern. It is awarded to acknowledge and reward exc ...

in 1927. He received an honorary doctorate in law from the University of Göttingen in 1931 and was an honorary citizen of Witzenhausen (1925) and Göttingen (1937).

References

External links

*
Books by and about Edward Schröder
in the

German National Library The German National Library (DNB; german: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek) is the central archival library and national bibliographic centre for the Federal Republic of Germany. It is one of the largest libraries in the world. Its task is to colle ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schroder, Edward 1858 births 1942 deaths Academic staff of the University of Göttingen Germanists German medievalists German male non-fiction writers

Life and career

Publications

Honours

References

Further reading

External links