Rudolf Thurneysen

Thurneysen, Rudolf 

Born Mar. 14, 1857, in Basel; died Aug. 9, 1940, in Bonn. German philologist; specialist in Celtic and other Indo-European languages.

Thurneysen studied at the universities of Basel and Jena. He was a professor of comparative grammar at the universities of Jena and Freiburg beginning in 1887 and at the University of Bonn from 1913 to 1925. In 1925 he received an honorary doctorate from the National University of Ireland in Dublin.

Thurneysen began his study of Celtic philology in 1883. His grammar of Old Irish is the most valuable work on the language. He was the first to subject Old Irish legal texts to scholarly analysis, thus founding the field of Irish studies. Thurneysen wrote works on Latin and Gothic as well as on Italic and other Indo-European languages. He was editor in chief of the journal Zeitschrift für keltische Philologie from 1899 to 1940.

WORKS

Die irische Heldenund Königsage. Halle, 1921.
Studies in Early Irish Law. Dublin, 1936.
A Grammar of Old Irish, vols. 1–2. Dublin, 1946–49.

REFERENCES

Vendryes, J. “R. Thurneysen.” Etudes celtiques, 1950–51, vol. 5, fase. 2, pp. 401–03.
Heiermeier, A. Bibliographie der wissenschaftlichen Veröffentlichungen R. Thurneysens. Halle, 1942.

A. A. KOROLEV