Gerhard Rohlfs

Gerhard Rohlfs (1892 - 1986) taught Romance languages and literature at the universities of Tübingen and Munich in Germany. He was described as an "archeologist of words".

His main interest was the languages and dialects spoken in South Italy and he travelled extensively in this region. He studied the Griko language (a Greek dialect still spoken in a few places in Salento and in south Calabria) and found several indications suggesting that Griko is a direct descendant of the language originally spoken by the Greek colonists of Magna Grecia. He first advanced this theory in his book "Griechen und Romanen in Unteritalien" (Geneva, 1924). He also published two complete vocabularies of the dialects spoken in Calabria (published in Milan 1938-1939) and in Salento (Munich 1956-1961). His main work is considered to be his "Historical Grammar of the Italian Language and its Dialects" ("Historische Grammatik der italienischen Sprache und ihrer Mundarten", Berna, 1949-1954). He received honorary degrees from the University of Calabria in Cosenza and the University of Salento in Lecce.