- Heinrich Zimmer (Celticist)
Heinrich Friedrich Zimmer (
December 11 ,1851 -July 29 ,1910 ) was a German Celticist and Indologist.Born to a farming family in
Kastellaun in theRhineland-Palatinate in westernGermany , he studied ancient languages at Kaiser Wilhelm University in Strassburg, going on to study Indology and Sanskrit underRudolf von Roth at theUniversity of Tübingen . In 1878 he became a lecturer at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, where the youngFerdinand de Saussure studied with him; in 1881 he became Professor ofSanskrit and Comparative Linguistics at theUniversity of Greifswald . In 1901 he became the founding Professor of Celtic at Friedrich Wilhelm University, the first position of its kind in Germany; his most celebrated student there wasRudolf Thurneysen . (He was followed in the post after his death byKuno Meyer .) In 1902 he became a member of thePrussian Academy of Sciences and in 1906 a corresponding member of theBavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities . In 1910, suffering from an incurable illness, he committed suicide by drowning himself.Writings
*"Die nominalsuffixe a and â in den germanischen Sprachen" (Strassburg: K. J. Trübner, 1876)
*"Keltische Studien" (Berlin: Weidmann, 1881)
*"Ueber die Bedeutung des irischen Elements für die mittelalterliche Kultur" (Preussische Jahrbücher, 1887; translated by Jane Loring Edmands as "The Irish Element in Mediaeval Culture", New York: Putnam, 1891)
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.