Bohuslav Havránek (January 30, 1893 – March 2, 1978) was a
Czech
Czech may refer to:
* Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe
** Czech language
** Czechs, the people of the area
** Czech culture
** Czech cuisine
* One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus
*Czech (surnam ...
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 strong ties to etymology. Philology is also defined as the study of ...
,
Bohemist,
Slavist
Slavic (American English) or Slavonic (British English) studies, also known as Slavistics, is the academic field of area studies concerned with Slavic peoples, languages, literature, history, and culture. Originally, a Slavist or Slavicist was ...
,
literary historian
The history of literature is the historical development of writings in prose or poetry that attempt to provide entertainment or education to the reader, as well as the development of the literary techniques used in the communication of these pie ...
and professor who was a prominent member of the
Prague Linguistic Circle
The Prague school or Prague linguistic circle is a language and literature society. It started in 1926 as a group of linguists, philologists and literary critics in Prague. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis and ...
.
Life and career
He was born in to the family of a teacher. After his graduation, he worked as a secondary school teacher, before completing his studies in 1928, with his work 'The Genera Verbi in the Slavic languages' ('Genera verbi v slovanských jazycích' in Czech).
From 1917 to 1929 he worked as a high school professor at grammar schools in Prague (Truhlářská and Dušní ul.). He also worked in at the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts. In 1926, Havránek helped found the Prague Linguistic Circle and was soon, alongside
Vilém Mathesius, one of Czech linguistics' most important representatives and in the following years he was a co-creator of its linguistic theory and methodology. In 1935, he founded the linguistic journal 'Slovo a slovesnost'.
In 1930 he became a professor at
Masaryk University
Masaryk University (MU) (; ) is the second largest university in the Czech Republic, a member of the Compostela Group and the Utrecht Network. Founded in 1919 in Brno, it now consists of ten faculties and 35,115 students. It is named after To ...
in
Brno
Brno ( , ; ) is a Statutory city (Czech Republic), city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava (river), Svitava and Svratka (river), Svratka rivers, Brno has about 403,000 inhabitants, making ...
, and taught there until the closing of Czech universities by the German occupation of 1939. During his time in Brno, he became close to the representatives of the
Left Front. In the 1930s, he became chairman of the Society for Relations with the Soviet Union in Brno and remained so until its dissolution in 1939. Together with other left-leaning intellectuals, he signed the ''We Will Remain,'' Manifesto in 1938 to mobilize Czech society against Nazi aggression. In 1945, at the suggestion of the
Communist Party, he became a member of the Revolutionary Central National Committee in Brno as a non-partisan. He later joined the Communist Party, where he held a number of positions, including as a member of the
National Front's action committees. In 1948 he signed a manifesto supporting the
February coup and the Communist seizure of power.
Beginning in 1945, he was professor at the
Charles University in Prague
Charles University (CUNI; , UK; ; ), or historically as the University of Prague (), is the largest university in the Czech Republic. It is one of the oldest universities in the world in continuous operation, the oldest university north of the ...
, later becoming head of the Department for the Czech Language, then Phonetics, then General Linguistics, and finally Dean of the Faculty of Arts. From 1953 to 1961 he was also rector of the Academy of Russian Language and Literature.
In 1952, he became academician and first director of the Institute for Czech Language, and of the
Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, remaining so until 1965.
Havránek was a leading proponent of European structuralism, but also worked in sociolinguistics and linguistic history. His contribution to the theory of the
standard language
A standard language (or standard variety, standard dialect, standardized dialect or simply standard) is any language variety that has undergone substantial codification in its grammar, lexicon, writing system, or other features and that stands ...
s is today recognized as especially important.
External links
—Bohuslav Havránek on the German National Library Website (in German)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Havranek, Bohuslav
Linguists from Czechoslovakia
1978 deaths
1893 births
Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin