SCHERER, WILHELM (1841-1886)

This article appears in Volume V24, Page 321 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: SAR-SCY

SCHERER, WILHELM (1841-1886) , German philologist and historian of literature, was born at Schonborn in Lower Austria on the 26th of April 1841. He was educated at the academic gymnasium at Vienna and afterwards at the university, where he was the favourite pupil of the distinguished Germanist, Karl Viktor Mi.illenhoff (18181884). Having taken the degree of

doctor

DOCTOR (Lat. for " teacher ")

philosophiae, he became Privatdozent for German language and literature in 1864. In 1868 he was appointed

ordinary

ORDINARY (med. Lat. ordinarius, Fr. ordinaire)

professor, and in 1872 received a

call

CALL (from Anglo-Saxon ceallian, a common Teutonic word, cf. Dutch kallen, to talk or chatter)

in a like capacity to Strassburg, and in 1877 to Berlin, where in 1884 he was made member of the

Academy

ACADEMY, GREEK
ACADEMY, ROYAL

of Sciences. He died at Berlin on the 6th of August 1886.
Scherer's literary activity falls into three categories: in Vienna he was the philologist, at Strassburg the professor of literature and in Berlin the author. His earliest

work

WORK

was a biography of the

great

GREAT

philologist Jakob Grimm (1865, and ed. 1885) ; he next, in con-junction with his former teacher Mullenhoff, published Denkmaler deutscher Poesie and

Prose

PROSE

aus dem 8. bis 12. Jahrhundert (1864, 3rd ed. 1892). His first

great

GREAT

work

WORK

was, however, Zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (Berlin, 1868; 3rd ed., 189o), being a history of the German language with especial reference to phonetic

laws

LAWS

. He contributed the section on Alsatian literature to O. Lorenz's Geschichte des Elsasses (1871, 3rd ed. 1886). Other important works are Geistliche Poeten der deutschen Kaiserzeit (Strassburg, 18741875) ; Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung im zz. and 12. Jahrhundert (1875); and Vortrage and Aufsatze zur Geschichte des geistigen Lebens in Deutschland and Osterreich (1874). Scherer's best-known work is his history of German literature, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur (Berlin, 1883; Ioth ed., 1905; English translation by Mrs F. C. Conybeare, 1883; new ed., 1906). This work is distinguished by the clearness with which details are co-ordinated with a general and comprehensive survey of German literature from the beginning to the death of Goethe. Besides many other philological treatises, Scherer wrote largely on Goethe (Aus Goethes Fruhzeit
1879; Aufsatze fiber Goethe, 1886), and took an active part in the foundation of the Goethe archives at

Weimar

WEIMAR

. A small treatise on Poetik, a biography of Karl Miillenhoff, and two volumes of Kleine Schriften were published after his death.
See V. Basch, Wilhelm Scherer et la philologie

allemande

ALLEMANDE (Fr. for danse allemande, or German dance)

(Paris, 1889), and the article by Eduard Schroder in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie.

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