Schmeler, Johann Andreas

Childhood and Youth

The ancestors of Schmeler were ordinary peasants from the Upper Palatinate . His parents - mother Maria Barbara and father Josef Anton Schmeler - moved from the Grizzbach farm to Tierschenreuth in search of work. Johann was born in 1785 and became the fifth child in the Schmeeller family. When he was one and a half years old, the family decided to move to the richer Upper Bavaria , which they faced with a need. According to the memoirs of Johann Schmeler himself, on the ship his family sailed to Regensburg , from where they could go to Hungary , however, at the request of the mother, the whole family continued to move south, stopped in Rinnberg ( Rohrbach on Ilm ). Here, young Johann Schmeler spent his childhood.

Johann attended a village school in Pörnbach , which was located four kilometers from his house. His school teacher, seeing the boy's talent, made every effort to send him to the school at the Benedictine monastery of Schejern . Schmeler later studied in Ingolstadt , then moved to the Munich Gymnasium named after William V , which he graduated in 1801, while continuing to study at the Munich Lyceum.

Inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution , in 1804 Schmeler went to Switzerland to Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi to study pedagogy , but Pestalocci was never able to find a suitable business for him. Then Schmeler joined the Spanish army and worked as an assistant at the military school of Madrid until 1809 . In 1809 he founded his own school in Basel , which was closed in 1813 . Johann Schmeler returned to Bavaria and served as senior lieutenant in the Jäger battalion of the Bavarian army .

Dialectological Studies

In 1815, Schmeler made the first attempt to describe the grammar of the Bavarian dialect , and already in 1821 the first volume of his phonetic alphabet and grammar reference appeared. This was the beginning of his active work as a researcher, and the first works subsequently laid the foundation for German dialectological science. In 1824, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences declared him an extraordinary member of the academy, and in 1829 - a decent one. In 1827 - 1836, with the support of Crown Prince Ludwig Schmeler, he created a four-volume Bavarian dictionary , the first and one of the most fundamental works in the history of German dialectology, on which subsequent scholars and compilers of German dialectological dictionaries relied.

In 1826, Schmeler lectures at the University of Munich , becomes an honorary doctor and subsequently professor . In 1929, he was appointed overseer of the court and state library, in which he managed to collect and inventory 27 thousand manuscripts found in monasteries and at court. In favor of working at the State Bavarian Library, he refused a professorship at the Slavic department of the University of Munich, but in 1846 he accepted an invitation to the department of the Old German language and literature.

Death

Johann Andreas Schmeler died on August 27, 1852 from cholera . His grave is located in the old southern cemetery of Isarforstadt in Munich. On the tombstone the words “Dr. Johannes Andreas SCHMELLER - Sprachforscher. " Under the stove lies an open book. It is symbolic that the tombstone of his father, who worked for some time as a basketeer in Tirschenroit, is crowned with a wicker basket - a reminder of his simple profession.

It is difficult to exaggerate the memory of the scientific activities of Schmeler. His biggest work, the Bavarian Dictionary , which was created on the basis of long and painstaking research, was the basis for later editions of the modern Bavarian dictionary of Munich and the Vienna edition of the Bavarian Dictionary of Austria , which are constantly expanding and supplemented by new words. In addition to research conducted in Bavaria since the beginning of the 20th century , Schmeler's dictionary has become a model for compilers of other dialectological dictionaries in many lands of Germany . Schmeler’s work entitled “Bavarian Dialects” was one of the first to systematically describe the grammar of the dialect. In addition to these major works, Schmeler published many books, translations, and editions of the Munich manuscripts, mainly related to Old High German literature .

Schmeler showed interest not only in the Bavarian dialect and German language , but also studied other living and dead languages : Old English , Old Frisian , Old Norse , Gothic , Ancient Greek , Latin , Old Slavic , Persian , Jewish , Swedish , Danish , English , Italian , French , Portuguese , Spanish , Modern Greek , Polish , Russian , Czech , Hungarian and Sanskrit . At the end of his life, he also attended lectures on the Chinese language .

A bust of Schmeler can be found in the Munich Hall of Fame and in his native Tierschenroit. In honor of the scientist, the natural science and linguistic school in Nabburg , the real Ismaning school and the main schools of Tierschenreuth and Schejern are named.

• Schmeler, Johann-Andrei // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• Franz Georg Kaltwasser. Schmeller, Johann Andreas // Große Bayerische Biographische Enzyklopädie. - München. - T. 3. - S. 1736f.
• Franz Xaver Scheuerer. Zum philologischen Werk JA Schmellers und seiner wissenschaftlichen Rezeption. Eine Studie zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Germanistik. - Berlin: De Gruyter, 1995 .-- ISBN 3-11-014650-9 .
• Richard J. Brunner. Johann Andreas Schmeller. Sprachwissenschaftler und Philologe. - Innsbruck: Institut für Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck, 1971. - ISBN 3-85124-503-2 .

• Katalog der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek: Schmeller, Johann Andreas (German) . DNB Date of treatment July 15, 2012.
• Schmeller, Johann Andreas: Bayerisches Wörterbuch (German) (link unavailable) . Bayerische Landesbibliothek Online. Date of treatment July 15, 2012. Archived July 16, 2012.