Corssen, Wilhelm Paul
, a great classical philologist, was born at Bremen January 20th, 1820. From 1839 to 1843 he
studied philology at Berlin, where he published
(1844)
Origines Poesis Romanae. He then taught for two years in Stettin, and in 1846
became an adjunct, and, later, full professor at Pforta. In 1866, he resigned the post and
lived at Lichterfelde, near Berlin, devoting himself exclusively to his studies until his
death in 1875. His chief works are:
Ueber Aussprache, Vokalismus, und Betonung der
lateinischen Sprache, 2 vols.
(Leipzig, 1858-59; 2d ed. 1868-70);
Kritische Beiträge zur lateinischen Formenlehre (Leipzig,
1863);
Kritische Nachträge zur lateinischen Formenlehre
(Leipzig, 1866);
Beiträge zur italischen Sprachkunde
(Leipzig, 1876); besides a number of treatises on old Italian dialects in Kuhn's
Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung; the treatise
De Volscorum Lingua (Leipzig, 1858); and
Ueber die
Sprache der Etrusker (2 vols. Leipzig, 1874-75). Among the results of his
stay at Pforta was
Alterthümer und Kunstdenkmäler des
Cistercienser Klosters St. Marien und der Landesschule Pforta (Halle, 1868).
Dr. Corssen's great work is his
Aussprache, than which no more memorable
publication in the field of Latin scholarship has ever appeared. Its massing of facts is a monument of scholarly research; while the acuteness of criticism, and
the mastery of detail shown in the use to which the facts are put, rank Corssen with the
greatest scholars of all time. Not equally successful was his attempt to solve the problems of
Etruscan ethnology and language. So great was Dr. Corssen's authority on the dialects of Italy
that when the first volume of his
Sprache der Etrusker appeared, it was
enthusiastically accepted as definitely clearing up the mystery that even Müller had
failed to illuminate; and the author was hailed as “the Oedipus of the Etruscan
Sphinx.” But the sober second judgment of scholars did not confirm this verdict, and
the second volume (which appeared soon after Corssen's death) was read in a far different
spirit. In fact, though the work is laboriously learned, and bears everywhere the marks of
immense research, its theories fail to commend themselves, and the volumes are now only
historically interesting. See
Etruria.
