Albrecht Ernst Rudolf Goetze (January 11, 1897 – August 15, 1971) was a German- American

Hittitologist Hittitology is the study of the Hittites, an ancient Anatolian people that established an empire around Hattusa in the 2nd millennium BCE. It combines aspects of the archaeology, history, philology, and art history of the Hittite civilisation. ...

. Goetze was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1897. His father, Rudolf Goetze, was a psychiatrist. He began studies in Munich in 1915, but left to fight in

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. Returning in 1918, he received his degree from the

University of Heidelberg } Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, ...

in 1922 and taught there for five years. Goetze was Professor of

Semitic language The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant a ...

s at the

University of Marburg The Philipps University of Marburg (german: Philipps-Universität Marburg) was founded in 1527 by Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, which makes it one of Germany's oldest universities and the oldest still operating Protestant university in the wor ...

when the Nazi regime came to power in 1933. It was through the initiative of

Edgar H. Sturtevant Edgar Howard Sturtevant (March 7, 1875 – July 1, 1952) was an American linguist. Biography Sturtevant was born in Jacksonville, Illinois, the older brother of Alfred Sturtevant and grandson of educator Julian Monson Sturtevant. He studied at ...

that Goetze was invited to

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

in 1934, a move that was to prove momentous for the advancement of Assyrology and Hittitology at Yale. He was made Sterling Professor of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature in 1956 and retired to emeritus status in 1965. Goetze's combined training in Indo-European and Semitic linguistics placed him into a peculiarly advantageous position to tackle the emerging field of Hittite studies at the end of World War I. His contributions to that field are numerous and most reliably commented on in Finkelstein's 1972 bibliography. With Sturtevant, he laid the foundations to what later became the Goetze- Wittmann law (spirantization of palatal stops before ''u'' as the focal origin for the diffusion of the

Centum-Satem isogloss Languages of the Indo-European family are classified as either centum languages or satem languages according to how the dorsal consonants (sounds of "K", "G" and "Y" type) of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) developed. An ...

). The diffusion hypothesis of the Satem features has the merit to motivate the existence of marginal Satem features in Greek, Albanian and Tocharian and of marginal Centum features in Armenian. Goetze died in Garmisch, Bavaria on August 15, 1971.

Bibliography

*Finkelstein, Jacob J. (1972). "Albrecht Goetze, 1897-1971." ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'' 92:2.197-203. *Goetze, Albrecht (1954). Review of: Johannes Friedrich, ''Hethitisches Wörterbuch'' (Heidelberg: Winter). ''Language'' 30.401-40

*Goetze, Albrecht (1957). ''Kleinasien''. Munich. *Goetze, Albrecht (1974). "Bibliography of Albrecht Goetze (1897-1971)." ''Journal of cuneiform studies'' 26.2-15. *Goetze, Albrecht & Edgar H. Sturtevant (1938). ''The Hittite Ritual of Tunnawi''. New Haven: American Oriental Society.

References

External links

* Albrecht Goetze papers (MS 648). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library

1897 births 1971 deaths 20th-century American historians American male non-fiction writers German emigrants to the United States Hittitologists Linguistic Society of America presidents Yale Sterling Professors 20th-century American male writers {{US-historian-stub

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See also

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