Felix Jacoby (; 19 March 1876 – 10 November 1959) was a German

classicist Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

and

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 ...

. He is best known among classicists for his highly important work ''

Fragmente der griechischen Historiker ''Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker'', commonly abbreviated ''FGrHist'' or ''FGrH'' (''Fragments of the Greek Historians''), is a collection by Felix Jacoby of the works of those ancient Greek historians whose works have been lost, but of ...

'', a collection of text fragments of ancient Greek historians.

Biography

Jacoby was born in

Magdeburg Magdeburg (; nds, label=Low Saxon, Meideborg ) is the capital and second-largest city of the German state Saxony-Anhalt. The city is situated at the Elbe river. Otto I, the first Holy Roman Emperor and founder of the Archdiocese of Magdebur ...

to Jewish parents. There he attended the grammar school at the monastery of ''Unser Lieben Frauen'' (Our Dear Lady) in

and was baptised a Protestant in St John's Church at the age of 11. From 1906 to 1934, he was professor of Classics at

Kiel Kiel () is the capital and most populous city in the northern Germany, German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 246,243 (2021). Kiel lies approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the southeast of the J ...

. Though he was later expelled from the

University of Kiel Kiel University, officially the Christian-Albrecht University of Kiel, (german: Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, abbreviated CAU, known informally as Christiana Albertina) is a university in the city of Kiel, Germany. It was founded in ...

during the ''

Gleichschaltung The Nazi term () or "coordination" was the process of Nazification by which Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party successively established a system of totalitarian control and coordination over all aspects of German society and societies occupied b ...

'' of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

, Jacoby is said by some to have been one of a very small number of German Jews who initially supported

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 ...

. According to some witnesses, he even went so far as to make the startling comparison in 1933:

As a Jew I find myself in a difficult position. But as a historian I have long learned not to view historical events from a private perspective. I have voted for Adolf Hitler since 1927 and I am happy that in the year of the National Rising I am allowed to lecture on Augustus, because Augustus is the only figure in world history that may be compared to Adolf Hitler..

However, others doubt that this is true. In 1939, Jacoby fled to England, where he stayed at Oxford, continuing his work on the fragments of the Greek historians. He returned to Germany in 1956, and died in

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 ...

in 1959. He is best known among classicists for his highly important work ''

'', a collection of text fragments of ancient Greek historians. Also significant is his long entry in the '' Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft'' on the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

historian

Herodotus Herodotus ( ; grc, , }; BC) was an ancient Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus, part of the Persian Empire (now Bodrum, Turkey) and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria ( Italy). He is known f ...

; written in 1913, this article established many of the questions that would come to dominate modern Herodotean

scholarship A scholarship is a form of financial aid awarded to students for further education. Generally, scholarships are awarded based on a set of criteria such as academic merit, diversity and inclusion, athletic skill, and financial need. Scholarsh ...

Bibliography

* Carmine Ampolo (ed.): ''Aspetti dell’ opera di Felix Jacoby.'' Pisa 2006. * Eckart Mensching: "Finkenkrug, Neuseeland und Oxford. Über Felix Jacoby und seine Familie 1938/39." In: Eckart Mensching (ed.): ''Nugae zur Philologie-Geschichte''. Berlin 2003, pp. 42–53. * Willy Theiler: "Nachruf auf Felix Jacoby." In: ''Gnomon'' 32, 1960, pp. 387–391. * Annegret Wittram: ''Fragmenta. Felix Jacoby und Kiel. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Kieler Christian-Albrechts-Universität''. Frankfurt am Main 2004.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jacoby, Felix 20th-century German historians Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom German philologists German male non-fiction writers Jewish historians Converts to Christianity from Judaism Hellenists University of Kiel faculty Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin 1876 births 1959 deaths Writers from Magdeburg People from the Province of Saxony Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy