Gábor Döbrentei (1 December 1785 – 28 March 1851) was a Hungarian philologist and

antiquary An antiquarian or antiquary () is an fan (person), aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient artifact (archaeology), artifac ...

Background

He was born in a city in the Kingdom of Hungary called

Somlószőlős Somlószőlős is a village in Veszprém county, Hungary. External links Street map Populated places in Veszprém County {{Veszprem-geo-stub ...

. As the son of itinerant Lutheran preacher Lajos Döbrentey, his early schooling was in Pápa; he remained in grammar school in Sopron on the Austrian border until 1805. For most of his life he lived in what was then the Austrian Empiure. He completed his studies at the universities of Wittenberg and Leipzig, and was afterwards engaged as a tutor in Transylvania. In 1814 he originated and edited the '' Erdélyi Muzeum'', which, notwithstanding its important influence on the development of Hungarian language and literature, soon failed for want of support. In 1820, Döbrentei settled at

Pest Pest or The Pest may refer to: Science and medicine * Pest (organism), an animal or plant deemed to be detrimental to humans or human concerns ** Weed, a plant considered undesirable * Infectious disease, an illness resulting from an infection ** ...

, and there he spent the rest of his life. He held various official posts, but continued zealously to pursue the studies for which he had early shown a strong preference. His great work is the ''Ancient Monuments of the Magyar Language'' (''Régi Magyar Nyelvemlékek''), the editing of which was entrusted to him by the

Hungarian Academy The Hungarian Academy of Sciences ( hu, Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, MTA) is the most important and prestigious learned society of Hungary. Its seat is at the bank of the Danube in Budapest, between Széchenyi rakpart and Akadémia utca. Its ma ...

. The first volume was published in 1838, and the fifth was in preparation at the time of his death. Döbrentei was one of the twenty-two scholars appointed in 1825 to plan and organize, under the presidency of Count Teleki, the Hungarian Academy. In addition to his great work he wrote many valuable papers on historical and philological subjects, and many biographical notices of eminent Hungarians. These appeared in the Hungarian translation of Brockhaus's ''Conversations-Lexikon''. He translated into Hungarian ''

Macbeth ''Macbeth'' (, full title ''The Tragedie of Macbeth'') is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. It is thought to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those w ...

'' and other plays of Shakespeare, Sterne's ''Letters from Yorick to Eliza'' (1828), several of

Schiller Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (, short: ; 10 November 17599 May 1805) was a German playwright, poet, and philosopher. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller developed a productive, if complicated, friendsh ...

's tragedies, and Molière's ''A vare'', and wrote several original poems. Döbrentei does not appear to have taken any part in the revolutionary movement of 1848. He died at his country house, near Pest.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Doebrentei, Gabor 19th-century Hungarian people Philologists from the Austrian Empire Hungarian philologists Members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Hungarian nobility 1785 births 1851 deaths