Hans Krahe

Hans Krahe (7 February 1898 – 25 June 1965) was a German philologist and linguist, specializing over many decades in the Illyrian languages.Between 1936 and 1946 he was a professor at the University of Würzburg, where he founded the Archiv für die Gewässernamen Deutschlands [Archive for German Hydronymy.] in 1942. Between 1947 and 1949 he held a chair at Heidelberg and from 1949 to the time of his death he was "Professor für vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft und Slavistik" and "Leiter des indologischen und slavischen Seminars" in the University of Tübingen.

In his 1949 essay "Ortsnamen als Geschichtsquelle" ("Placenames as sources for history") Krahe presented the analysis of hydronymy (river names) as a source of information both historical and prehistorical, with an extended analysis of the River Main as an example (Krahe 1949:17ff.) His assumption that the linguistic strata corresponded to ethnic strata came under critical reappraisal decades after his death, in the work of Walter Pohl and others.

Notes

Publications

In addition to his numerous articles, Krahe published:
*"Die alten balkanillyrischen geographischen Namen" (Heidelberg 1925). "The old Balkan-Illyrian geographical names", his first book.
*"Lexikon altillyrischen Personennamen" (1929). "Dictionary of Old Illyrian personal names.
*"Indogermanische Sprachwissenshaft" (Berlin 1948) "UIndo-German linguistics"
*"Ortsnamen als Geschichtsquelle" (Heidelberg 1949) "Places names as sources of history"
*"Die Sprache der Illyrier I. Die Quellen" (1955). ISBN 3-447-00534-3 "Languages of the Illyrians I: Sources", a summary of his previous work. Volume II. "Die messapischen Inschriften und ihre Chronologie" ("Messapian inscriptions and their chronology") is by Carlo de Simone and Volume III. "Die messapischen Personennamen" ("Messapian personal names") by Jürgen Untermann. (Wiesbaden 1964). . ISBN 3-447-00535-1
*"Die Strukture der alteuropäischen Hydronomie" (Wiesbaden 1963). "The structure of Old-European river names".
*"Unsere ältesten Flussnamen" (1964). "Our oldest river names".
*"Germanische Sprachwissenschaft. Wortbildungslehre." (Berlin 1969). "German linguistics".

ee also

*Old European hydronymy