HOENIGSWALD, Henry Max (born Heinrich Max Franz Hönigswald). Breslau 17.4.1915 — Haverford, PA 16.6.2003. U.S. (German-born) Linguist (IE and Hindi). Professor in Philadelphia. Son of Professor Richard Hönigswald (1875–1947), a philosopher of Austro-Bohemian Jewish origin, and Gertrud Frunwald (d. 1921). Gymnasium in Breslau and Munich, matriculated 1932. Studied comparative linguistics at Munich (just one year), Zürich (soon [1934] expelled from Switzerland), Padua, and Florence. He was forced to leave German because of his Jewish grandparents. Ph.D. 1936 Florence (unpublished. diss. on the history of Greek word formation, under G. Devoto). In 1936-38 at Institute of Etruscan Research in Florence, then to the U.S.A., citizen 1945. Also his father moved 1939 to the U.S.A. In 1939-42 Lecturer in Linguistics at Yale, 1942-43 Lecturer in Phonetics and Linguistics at Hartford Semin. Foundation, 1945-46 again Instructor there. In 1943-44 taught Hindi for the army at University of Pennsylvania. In 1945-46 Research Assistant in Linguistics at Yale (under Sturtevant), in 1946-47 staff member at Foreign Service Instit., U.S. Department of State. In 1947-48 Associate Professor of Classical Languages. In 1948-59 Associate Professor of Linguistics at University of Pennsylvania, in 1959-85 full Professor and 1963-70 Chairman of Department of Linguistics there. Emeritus in 1985. Visiting Professor in several American and European universities, in 1955 at Deccan College in Poona. Hon. dr. Swarthmore College 1981, University of Pennsylvania 1988. Married 1944 Gabriele (Gabi) Schoepflich (1912–2001, a classical scholar of German origin), two daughters.
Hoenigswald was both an Indo-European and general linguist, with additional interest in Hindi. Also a phonetician.
Publications: Spoken Hindustani. 169+70 p. N.Y. 1945/1946-47.
– Language Change and Linguistic Reconstruction. 1-2. 8+168+??? p. Chicago 1960-64; Studies in Formal historical Linguistics. 12+63 p. Boston 1973.
– “Declension and Nasalisation in Hindustani”, JAOS 68, 1948, 139-144; “A Property of ‘Grassmann’s Law’ in Indic”, JAOS 85, 1965, 59f.; “A note on Ṛgvedic bahuvrīhis”, IL 39, 1978, 29f.; “Intitial Semivowel Clusters”, StII 5-6, 1980, 83-86.
– Many further articles on linguistics, in JAOS, IL, Language, etc.
Sources: Dir. Am. Sch. 8th ed. 3; D.G.K. 1983, 1992; *G. Cardona & N.H. Zide (ed.): Festschrift for Henry Hoenigswald on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday. Tübingen 1987; A. Morpurgo Davies, Language 84, 2008, 856-873; Wikipedia; photo in Fs. 1987, another in Linguisten-Handbuch. Tübingen 1994, both also in TITUS Galeria
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