Georg Curtius

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Georg Curtius

Georg Curtius (April 16, 1820–August 12, 1885), German philologist, was born at Lübeck. He was the brother of the historian and archeologist Ernst Curtius.

After an education at Bonn and Berlin he was for three years a schoolmaster in Dresden, until (in 1845) he returned to Berlin University as privat-docent. In 1849 he was placed in charge of the Philological Seminary at Prague, and two years later was appointed professor of classical philology in Prague University In 1824 he removed from Prague to a similar appointment at Kiel, and again in 1862 from Kiel to Leipzig. He died at Hermsdorf on the 12th of August 1885.

His philological theories exercised a widespread influence. The more important of his publications are:

Die Sprachvergleichung in ihrem Verhaltniss zur classischen Philologie (1845; Eng. trans. by FH Trithen, 1851)
Sprachvergleichende Beitrage zur griechischen und lateinischen Grammatik (1846)
Grundzuge der grieckischen Etymologie (1858-1862, 5th ed. 1879)
Das Verbum der griechischen Sprache (1873).

The last two works have been translated into English by A. S. Wilkins and E. B. England.

From 1878 till his death Curtius was general editor of the Leipziger Studien zur classischen Philologie. His Griechische Schulgrammatik, first published in 1852, has passed through more than twenty editions, and has been edited in English. In his last work, Zur Kritik der neuesten Sprachforschung (1885), he attacks the views of the new school of philology.

Opuscula of Georg Curtius were edited after his death by Ernst Windisch (Kleine Schriften von E. C., 1886-1887). For further information consult articles by R. Meister in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, xlvii. (1903), and by E. Windisch in Conrad Bursian's Biographisches Jahrbuch fr Alterthumskunde (1886).