WEISGERBER, Johann Leo. Metz 25.2.1899 — Bonn 8.8.1985. German (of Lorraine) Linguist and Celtologist. Son of a village teacher, Nikolaus Ludwig Weisgerber, and Maria Müller. The mother died when he was 5 and father when 14. Educated in Metz, Reifeprüfung 1917. Then participated in WW I in German army in Flanders, after war studies from 1918 at Bonn (also briefly at Munich and Leipzig). Ph.D. 1923 Bonn (in Celtology, under Thurneysen). PD 1925 Bonn, also language teacher at Oberrealschule. Professor of General Linguistics at Rostock (ao. 1927, ord. 1930), Marburg (1938) and Bonn (1942), emeritus 1967. As a catholic he had conflict with Nazis in the 1930s, but during the war collaborated working in propaganda in France (with his Pan-Celtic ideas he directed Radio Rennes Bretagne). Also his writings in 1933-45 reveal racist ideas. He was not a member of NSDAP. Married, children.
As a linguist Weisgerber left traditional diachronic viewpoint and presented synchronic approach. In the after-war times his “energetische Sprachwissenschaft” was very influential in Germany, but he was critical towards the modern linguistics of the 1960s. Hon.dr. Leuven 1965. For Indology his work is hardly important at all.
Publications: Diss. 1923 on Cymric literature; hab.diss. Sprache als gesellschaftliche Erkenntnisform. Manuscript 1925, publ. 224 p. Schriften der Brüder-Grimm-Gesellschaft N.F. 34. Kassel 2008.
– “Die Stellung der Sprache im Aufbau der Gesamtkultur”, W & S 15, 1933, 134-224 & 16, 1934, 97-236.
Sources: *H. Gipper (ed.), Sprache – Schlüsselzur Welt. Fs. L.W. Düsseldorf 1959 (with bibliography to 1957); *H. Gipper, Lex. Gramm. 1996, 1004f.; Catalogus Professorum Rostochiensium (cpr.uni-rostock.de); Wikipedia with photo (also German version, with further references).
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