Ernst Moritz Ludwig Ettmüller (5 October 180215 April 1877), German

philologist 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 ...

, was born at Gersdorf near

Löbau Löbau ( Upper Sorbian: Lubij) is a city in the east of Saxony, Germany, in the traditional region of Upper Lusatia. It is situated between the slopes of the Löbauer Berg and the fertile hilly area of the Upper Lusatian Mountains. It is the ga ...

, in

Saxony Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a landlocked state of ...

Biography

He was privately educated by his father, the

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...

pastor of the village. He entered the gymnasium at

Zittau Zittau ( hsb, Žitawa, dsb, Žytawa, pl, Żytawa, cs, Žitava, Upper Lusatian Dialect: ''Sitte''; from Slavic "'' rye''" (Upper Sorbian and Czech: ''žito'', Lower Sorbian: ''žyto'', Polish: ''żyto'')) is the southeasternmost city in the Ge ...

in 1816, and studied from 1823 to 1826 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 ...

. After a period of about two years during which he was partly abroad and partly at Gersdorf, he proceeded to

Jena Jena () is a German city and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 inhabitants, while the city itself has a po ...

, where in 1830 he delivered, under the auspices of the university, a course of lectures on the old Norse poets. Three years later he was called to occupy the mastership of German language and literature at the

Zürich , neighboring_municipalities = Adliswil, Dübendorf, Fällanden, Kilchberg, Maur, Oberengstringen, Opfikon, Regensdorf, Rümlang, Schlieren, Stallikon, Uitikon, Urdorf, Wallisellen, Zollikon , twintowns = Kunming, San Francisco Zürich ...

gymnasium;Ettmüller, Ludwig
Historischen Lexikon der Schweiz and in 1863 he left the gymnasium for the university, with which he had been partially connected twenty years before. He died at Zürich in April 1877.

Published works

Ettmüller contributed to the study of English with an alliterative translation of '' Beowulf'' (1840), an Anglo-Saxon

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 ...

entitled ''Engla and Seaxna scopas and boceras'' (1850), and a well-known ''Lexicon Anglo-Saxonicum'' (1851), in which the explanations and comments are given in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

, but the words unfortunately are arranged according to their

etymological Etymology () The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words a ...

affinity, and the letters according to phonetic relations. He edited a large number of standard German and Low German texts, and to the study of the

Scandinavian literature Scandinavian literature or Nordic literature is the literature in the languages of the Nordic countries of Northern Europe. The Nordic countries include Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway (including Svalbard), Sweden, and Scandinavia's assoc ...

s he contributed an edition of the ''

Völuspá ''Vǫluspá'' (also ''Völuspá'', ''Vǫlospá'' or ''Vǫluspǫ́''; Old Norse: 'Prophecy of the völva, a seeress'; reconstructed Old Norse: ) is the best known poem of the ''Poetic Edda''. It tells the story of the creation of the world and ...

'' (1831), a translation of the ''Lieder der Edda von den Nibelungen'' (1837) and an old Norse reading book and vocabulary. He was also the author of a ''Handbuch der deutschen Literaturgeschichte'' (1847), which includes the treatment of the Anglo-Saxon, the Old Scandinavian, and the Low German branches; and he popularized a great deal of literary information in his ''Herbstabende und Winternächte: Gespräche über Dichtungen und Dichter'' (1865–1867). The alliterative versification which he admired in the old German poems he himself employed in his ''Deutsche Stammkönige'' (1844) and ''Das verhängnissvolle Zahnweh, oder Karl der Grosse und der Heilige Goar'' (1852).

Additional works

* ''Chronick von Coellen : aus der Cronica der hilligen statt van Coellen v. 1499''. — Leipzig : Verlagsbureau, 1847
Digital Ed.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ettmuller, Ernst Moritz Ludwig 1802 births 1877 deaths German philologists German scholars University of Zurich faculty Leipzig University alumni