Martin Schanz (12 June 1842 – 15 December 1914) 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
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
scholar. He was a
Dozent
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 conf ...
and Professor at the
University of Würzburg
The Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg (also referred to as the University of Würzburg, in German ''Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg'') is a public research university in Würzburg, Germany. The University of Würzburg is one of ...
from 1867 to 1912, and is especially known for his history of Roman literature and his ground-breaking, critical edition of Plato's dialogues.
Life
Schanz came from an old and well-established farming family in Lower Franconia. His father, Melchior Schanz, worked as a high school teacher (''Volksschullehrer'') in Üchtelhausen. The family moved to
Bad Königshofen
Bad Königshofen im Grabfeld is a small spa town in the German state of Bavaria, located in the Rhön-Grabfeld district in northeast Lower Franconia, Bavaria, Germany. According to the Bavarian State Office for Statistics and Data, Bad Königsh ...
in 1845 and to
Großbardorf
Großbardorf is a municipality in the district of Rhön-Grabfeld in Bavaria in Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Rus ...
in 1850. Four of Schanz's eight sisters died in childhood. His brother
Georg von Schanz became a famous economist.
After his graduation in
Münnerstadt
Münnerstadt is a town in the district of Bad Kissingen in Bavaria, Germany. It has a population of around 7,600.
Geography
It borders on the towns of Burglauer, Bad Bocklet, Nüdlingen, Maßbach, Großbardorf, and Strahlungen. The municipal ...
, Schanz studied classical philology and philosophy from 1861 to 1866 at the
University of Munich
The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's List of universities in Germany, sixth-oldest u ...
under
Karl Felix Halm
Karl Felix Halm (also ''Carl''; ''Karl Felix Ritter von Halm'' after 1872; 5 April 1809 – 5 October 1882), was a German classical scholar and critic.
Life
He was born at Munich. In 1849, having held appointments at Speyer and Hadamar, he ...
und
Carl von Prantl and at the
University of Würzburg
The Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg (also referred to as the University of Würzburg, in German ''Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg'') is a public research university in Würzburg, Germany. The University of Würzburg is one of ...
under
Ludwig von Urlichs. After studying for a semester at the
University of Bonn
The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine U ...
(1864/1865) with
Otto Jahn
Otto Jahn (; 16 June 1813, in Kiel – 9 September 1869, in Göttingen), was a German archaeologist, philologist, and writer on art and music.
Biography
After the completion of his university studies at Christian-Albrechts-Universität in Kiel, ...
and
Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl
Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl (6 April 1806 – 9 November 1876) was a German scholar best known for his studies of Plautus.
Biography
Ritschl was born in Großvargula, in present-day Thuringia. His family, in which culture and poverty were hereditar ...
, he returned to Würzburg and was promoted in 1866 with a dissertation on the reconstruction of Socrates' philosophy from Plato's writings. Afterwards he spent a year 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 ...
with
Hermann Sauppe. He was graduated ('habilitiert') after returning again to Würzburg in 1870 and joined the faculty (as an 'außerordentlichen Professor'). In the same year, he traveled to
Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
in order to collate the Plato manuscripts there. In 1872 and 1873 he did research in
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus (legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
and
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...
.
In 1874 Schanz was promoted to a full professor ('ordentlichen Professor') in classical philology at the University of Würzburg. His research there won him great renown. He became a member of many scholarly societies and academies and was ennobled in 1900. In the academic year 1901-2, Schanz was rector of the university. In 1912 he was promoted to Geheimrat and retired.
Scholarship
Schanz made enduring contributions to several areas of classical studies.
His great, unfinished edition of Plato's dialogues filled seven volumes (1875–1887) and was the fruit of many years spent comparing manuscripts in the great libraries of Europe and his exhaustive critical editorial work on these sources. This edition created for the first time a secure and critical foundation for Plato's writings and led to the way to the now standard Oxford Classical Text edition of Plato.
Schanz's magnum opus was, however, his four-volume ''History of Roman Literature'' (1875–1887). This replaced the obsolete and inconvenient work of
Wilhelm Siegmund Teuffel
Wilhelm Siegmund Teuffel (; September 27, 1820March 8, 1878), German classical scholar, was born at Ludwigsburg in the Kingdom of Württemberg. In 1849 he was appointed extraordinary, in 1857 ordinary professor in the university of Tübingen, whic ...
and appeared in the ''Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft''. Schanz died while working on the second part of the last volume, which was completed by his successor at Würzburg, Carl Hosius. Even today, parts of Schanz's history remain indispensable.
In 1881, he published a still influential paper on
stichometry
Stichometry is the practice of counting lines in texts: Ancient Greeks and Romans measured the length of their books in lines, just as modern books are measured in pages. This practice was rediscovered by German and French scholars in the 19th ...
. Three years before,
Charles Graux had shown that the numbers found at the end of many medieval manuscripts represented the total number of 'standard lines' in each work. Just as modern books are measured in pages, ancient authors and scribes counted the lines in prose compositions. Each line was equal to a Greek hexameter (about 15 syllables or 35 letters). While studying the famous Clarke Codex of Plato's dialogues at Oxford, Schanz noticed that the isolated letters in the margins of two dialogues formed an alphabetic series and marked every hundredth standard line. He was able to show that other manuscripts had similar marginal markings and named this kind of line-counting 'partial stichometry' (in contrast to the total stichometry studied by Graux). Fifty years later, Ohly's definitive monograph on stichometry built on the pioneering work of Graux and Schanz and surveyed all the known total and partial stichometry in ancient manuscripts. Stichometry now plays a small but useful role in the study of ancient Greek and Latin papyri, and especially of the scrolls evacuated in
Herculaneum
Herculaneum (; Neapolitan and it, Ercolano) was an ancient town, located in the modern-day ''comune'' of Ercolano, Campania, Italy. Herculaneum was buried under volcanic ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.
Like the nea ...
.
Schanz's last great contribution was in the area of Greek syntax. From 1882 to 1912 he edited twenty volumes of the ''Beiträge zur historischen Syntax der griechischen Sprache.''
Honors
*1882 Order of St. Michael
*1883 Corresponding member of the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
*1885 Honorary member of the Greek Society (Griechischen Gesellschaft) in Constantinople
*1900 ennobled (Verdienstorden der Bayerischen Krone)
*1904 Honorary member of the Accademia Properziana del Subasio in Assisi
*1908 Rewarded a prize (Vallauripreis) by the Academy in Turin
*1910 Corresponding member of the
Accademia Virgiliana in Mantua
See the biography at Teuchos – Zentrum für Handschriften- und Textforschung
/ref>
References
External links
First volume of Schanz's history of Roman literature at the Internet Archive
First volume of Schanz's Plato edition at the Internet Archive
Schanz's investigation of the history of Plato manuscripts with stemmata
Schanz's valuable commentary and critical edition of Plato's ''Apology''
Schanz's article on partial stichometry at JSTOR
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schanz, Martin
1842 births
1914 deaths
People from Schweinfurt (district)
University of Würzburg faculty
University of Würzburg alumni
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni