Wilhelm Braune

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Theodor Wilhelm Braune (born February 20, 1850 in Großthiemig near Elsterwerda; died November 10, 1926 in Heidelberg) was a German Germanist, historical linguist and philologist.

In 1869 Braune was employed at Leipzig University, where he concluded a Habilitation (roughly equivalent to tenure at American universities) in 1874. In 1877 he was appointed to a special chair at Gießen University and was made Professor of German Language and Literature there in 1880. He counts as an important representative of the Neogrammarians.

Among his most lasting achievements were his works on the history of the Germanic languages. Editions of his grammars and anthologies of Old High German and Gothic are still in use today. In 1873 he also founded, together with Hermann Paul, the Germanic studies journal Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur often referred to among scholars as Paul und Braunes Beiträge (or PBB) and which remains one of the leading journals in Germanic philology to this day.

He was the recipient of a Festschrift on the occasion of his 70th birthday, entitled Aufsätze zur Sprach- und Literaturgeschichte. Wilhelm Braune zum 20. Februar 1920 dargebracht von Freunden und Schülern (Dortmund: Ruhfus, 1920).

[edit] Publications

• Althochdeutsches Lesebuch, zusammengestellt und mit Wörterbuch versehen von Wilhelm Braune. First edition Halle: Niemeyer, 1875. 17th ed. by Ernst Ebbinghaus. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1994.
• Althochdeutsche Grammatik. Laut- und Formenlehre, von Wilhelm Braune. Halle: Niemeyer, 1886. 15th ed. by Ingo Reiffenstein. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2004.
• Gotische Grammatik mit Lesestücken und Wörterverzeichnis von Wilhelm Braune. Halle: Niemeyer, 1880. 18th ed. by Ernst Ebbinghaus. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1973.

The archive containing the first 100 volumes (1873-1979) of Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur (PBB) can be accessed at http://www.digizeitschriften.de.