author
Franz Dornseiff
1888–1960
A leading German classical philologist, he is remembered both for his work on ancient literature and for a remarkable thesaurus of German vocabulary arranged by subject. His career linked the universities of Greifswald and Leipzig, and his scholarship ranged from Greek antiquity to the history of words and symbols.
1 Audiobook
Buchstabenmystik
by Franz Dornseiff
About the author
Born in Gießen in 1888, Franz Dornseiff became a German classical philologist whose work reached beyond the usual boundaries of the field. He taught at the University of Greifswald from the mid-1920s until 1944 and later held a chair in classical philology at the University of Leipzig from 1948 until his death in 1960.
Alongside his studies of Greek literature and antiquity, he also worked as a translator and wrote on language, symbolism, and intellectual history. One of his best-known books is Der deutsche Wortschatz nach Sachgruppen, an influential reference work that organizes German vocabulary by subject rather than alphabetically.
Dornseiff died in Markkleeberg near Leipzig in 1960. His reputation rests on an unusually wide scholarly range: he was at once a specialist in the classical world and a writer whose books remained useful to readers interested in German language and culture.