Helmut Rix (4 July 1926, in

Amberg Amberg () is a town in Bavaria, Germany. It is located in the Upper Palatinate, roughly halfway between Regensburg and Bayreuth. In 2020, over 42,000 people lived in the town. History The town was first mentioned in 1034, at that time under t ...

– 3 December 2004, in

Colmar Colmar (, ; Alsatian: ' ; German during 1871–1918 and 1940–1945: ') is a city and commune in the Haut-Rhin department and Grand Est region of north-eastern France. The third-largest commune in Alsace (after Strasbourg and Mulhouse), it is ...

) was a German linguist and professor of the Sprachwissenschaftliches Seminar of Albert-Ludwigs-Universität,

Freiburg Freiburg im Breisgau (; abbreviated as Freiburg i. Br. or Freiburg i. B.; Low Alemannic: ''Friburg im Brisgau''), commonly referred to as Freiburg, is an independent city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. With a population of about 230,000 (as o ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. He is best known for his research into

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...

and

Etruscan __NOTOC__ Etruscan may refer to: Ancient civilization *The Etruscan language, an extinct language in ancient Italy *Something derived from or related to the Etruscan civilization **Etruscan architecture **Etruscan art **Etruscan cities ** Etrusca ...

languages, as well as for being the author of the hypothesis of

Tyrrhenian languages Tyrrhenian may refer to the: * Tyrrhenian Stage, a faunal stage from 0.26 to 0.01143 million years ago * Tyrrhenians, an ancient ethnonym associated with the Etruscans * Tyrrhenian Sea * Tyrrhenian Basin * Tyrrhenian languages See also * * ...

Biography

Helmut Rix was born in 1926 in Amberg to a family of teachers. Following high school and conscripted service in the Nazi navy during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, he studied Indo-European studies, classical philology, and history at Wurzburg in 1946 and

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...

from 1947. There he received his doctorate in 1950 with his dissertation ''Bausteine zu einer Hydronymie Alt-Italiens''. From 1951 he was assistant to

Hans Krahe Hans Krahe (7 February 1898 – 25 June 1965) was a German philologist and linguist, specializing over many decades in the Illyrian languages. He was born in Gelsenkirchen. Work Between 1936 and 1946 he was a professor at the University of W ...

Tübingen Tübingen (, , Swabian: ''Dibenga'') is a traditional university city in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, and developed on both sides of the Neckar and Ammer rivers. about one in thr ...

and from 1955 lecturer in Latin and Greek at the Lutheran

Augustana Divinity School The Augustana-Hochschule Neuendettelsau is a divinity school of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria in Neuendettelsau, Germany. History The Augustana-Hochschule was founded in 1947 as an outcome of the Church’s struggle with National Soc ...

Neuendettelsau Neuendettelsau is a local authority in Middle Franconia, Germany. Neuendettelsau is situated 20 miles southwest of Nuremberg and 12 miles east of Ansbach. Since 1947 it has a Lutheran seminary ( ''Augustana Hochschule''). Diakonie Neuendettelsau ...

. In 1959 he qualified as a full professor at Tübingen with the

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 ...

thesis, ''Das etruskische Cognomen'' (published in 1963 by

Harrassowitz Harrassowitz Verlag is a German academic publishing house, based in Wiesbaden. It publishes about 250 scholarly books and periodicals per year on Oriental, Slavic, and Book and Library Studies. The publishing house is part of the company Otto Ha ...

). In 1966, Rix took a position at the newly established

University of Regensburg The University of Regensburg (german: link=no, Universität Regensburg) is a public research university located in the medieval city of Regensburg, Bavaria, a city that is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university was founded on 18 ...

and in 1982 professorship at the

University of Freiburg The University of Freiburg (colloquially german: Uni Freiburg), officially the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (german: Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg), is a public university, public research university located in Freiburg im Breisg ...

. He retired in 1993 and died in 2004 in

from a traffic accident.

Bibliography

Proto-Indo-European

* "Anlautender Laryngal vor Liquida oder Nasalis sonans im Griechischen", ''Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft'' 27 (1970): 79–110. ormulation of the Rix law* ''Historische Grammatik des Griechischen: Laut- und Formenlehre''. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1976 (2nd ed., 1992). * ''The Proto-Indo-European Middle: content, forms and origin''. Munich: R. Kitzinger, 1988. * ''

Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben The ''Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben'' (''LIV'', ''"Lexicon of the Indo-European Verbs"'') is an etymological dictionary of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) verb. The first edition appeared in 1998, edited by Helmut Rix. A second edition follow ...

: Die Wurzeln und ihre Primärstammbildungen''. With contributions by Martin Kümmel, Thomas Zehnder, Reiner Lipp and Brigitte Schirmer. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert, 1998, 754 p.; 2nd expanded and improved ed., edited by Martin Kümmel and Helmut Rix, 2001, 823 p. * ''Kleine Schriften: Festgabe für Helmut Rix zum 75. Geburtstag'', ed. Gerhard Meiser. Bremen: Hempen Verlag, 2001.

Ancient Italian culture and language (except Etruscan)

* "Zum Ursprung des römisch-mittelitalischen Gentilnamensystems", in ''Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung'' (ANRW), vol. 1: ''Von den Anfängen Roms bis zum Ausgang der Republik''. Berlin–NY:

Walter de Gruyter Walter de Gruyter GmbH, known as De Gruyter (), is a German scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature. History The roots of the company go back to 1749 when Frederick the Great granted the Königliche Realschule in Be ...

, 1972, 700–758. * "Die lateinische Synkope als historisches und phonologisches Problem", ''Kratylos'' 11 (1966): 156–165. Republished in: Klaus Strunk, ed., ''Probleme der lateinischen Grammatik''. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973, 90–102. * ''Die Termini der Unfreiheit in den Sprachen Altitaliens''. Stuttgart 1994. * ''Sabellische Texte: Die Texte des Oskischen, Umbrischen und Südpikenischen''. Heidelberg: Carl Winter University Press, 2002 Sabellic_(Osco-Umbrian)_inscriptions.html" ;"title="Osco-Umbrian languages">Sabellic (Osco-Umbrian) inscriptions">Osco-Umbrian languages">Sabellic (Osco-Umbrian) inscriptions

Etruscan

* ''Das etruskische Cognomen: Untersuchungen zu System, Morphologie und Verwendung der Personennamen auf den jüngeren Inschriften Nordetruriens''. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1963, + 410 p. * "La scrittura e la lingua", in ''Gli Etruschi: una nuova immagine'', ed. M. Cristofani. Florence: Giunti Martello, 1984, 210–238. hort Etruscan grammar* "Etruskisch ''culs'' ‘Tor’ und der Abschnitt VIII 1–2 des Zagreber ''liber linteus''", ''Vjesnik Arheološkog Muzeja u Zagrebu'', 3rd series, 19 (1986): 17–40. * "Etrusco ''un, une, unuc'' ‘te, tibi, vos’ e le preghiere dei rituali paralleli nel ''liber linteus''", ''Archeologia Classica'' 43 (1991): 665–691. * ''Etruskische Texte'', 2 vols., co-edited by Gerhard Meiser. Tübingen: G. Narr, 1991, vol. 1: 320 p., 2: 370 p. * "Les prières du ''liber linteus'' de Zagreb", in ''Les Étrusques, les plus religieux des hommes'', eds. Françoise Gaultier &

Dominique Briquel Dominique Briquel (21 January 1946, Nancy) is a French scholar, a specialist of archaeology and etruscology. Briquel studied at the École Normale Supérieure from 1964 to 1969 and was a member of the École française de Rome from 1971 to 1974 ...

. Paris: La Documentation française, 1997, 391–397. * ''Rätisch und Etruskisch''. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck, 1998, 67 p. Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, Vorträge und Kleinere Schriften, No. 68.

Edited volumes

* ''Flexion und Wortbildung: Akten der V. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, Regensburg, 9. bis 14. September 1973''. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1990. * ''Sprachwissenschaft und Philologie. Jacob Wackernagel und die Indogermanistik heute: Kolloquium der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft vom 13. bis 15. Oktober 1988 in Basel'', co-edited by Heiner Eichner. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1990. * ''Oskisch – Umbrisch: Texte und Grammatik. Arbeitstagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft und der Società Italiana di Glottologia vom 25. bis 28. September 1991 in Freiburg''. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1994.

External links

In memoriam Helmut Rix

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rix, Helmut Linguists from Germany Linguists of Indo-European languages Linguists of Tyrsenian languages Etruscan scholars Paleolinguists 1926 births 2004 deaths 20th-century linguists