Franz Felix Adalbert Kuhn (19 November 1812 – 5 May 1881) was a German

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as ...

and

folklorist Folklore studies, less often known as folkloristics, and occasionally tradition studies or folk life studies in the United Kingdom, is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currenc ...

. Kuhn was born in

Königsberg Königsberg (, ) was the historic Prussian city that is now Kaliningrad, Russia. Königsberg was founded in 1255 on the site of the ancient Old Prussian settlement ''Twangste'' by the Teutonic Knights during the Northern Crusades, and was na ...

Brandenburg Brandenburg (; nds, Brannenborg; dsb, Bramborska ) is a state in the northeast of Germany bordering the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony, as well as the country of Poland. With an area of 29,480 square ...

Neumark The Neumark (), also known as the New March ( pl, Nowa Marchia) or as East Brandenburg (), was a region of the Margraviate of Brandenburg and its successors located east of the Oder River in territory which became part of Poland in 1945. Cal ...

region. From 1841 he was connected with the Köllnisches Gymnasium at

Berlin Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...

, of which he was appointed director in 1870. Kuhn was the founder of a new school of comparative mythology, based upon comparative philology. Inspired by

Jakob Grimm Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm (4 January 1785 – 20 September 1863), also known as Ludwig Karl, was a German author, linguist, philologist, jurist, and folklorist. He is known as the discoverer of Grimm's law of linguistics, the co-author of the ...

's ''

Deutsche Mythologie ''Deutsche Mythologie'' (, ''Teutonic Mythology'') is a treatise on Germanic mythology by Jacob Grimm. First published in Germany in 1835, the work is an exhaustive treatment of the subject, tracing the mythology and beliefs of the ancient German ...

'', he first devoted himself to German stories and legends, and published ''Märkische Sagen und Märchen'' (1842), ''Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche'' (1848), and ''Sagen, Gebräuche und Märchen aus Westfalen'' (1859). But it is on Kuhn's researches into the language and history of the

Indo-Germanic The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch ...

peoples as a whole that his reputation is founded. His chief works in this connection are ''Zur ältesten Geschichte der Indogermanischen Völker'' (1845), in which he endeavoured to give an account of the earliest civilization of the Indo-Germanic peoples before their separation into different families, by comparing and analysing the original meaning of the words and stems common to the different languages; ''Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Göttertranks'' (1859; new edition by

Ernst Kuhn Ernst Wilhelm Adalbert Kuhn (7 February 1846, in Berlin – 21 August 1920, in Munich) was a German Indologist and Indo-Europeanist. He was the son of philologist Adalbert Kuhn. He studied at the universities of Berlin and Tübingen, receivi ...

, under title of ''Mythologische Studien'', 1886); and ''Über Entwicklungsstufen der Mythenbildung'' (1873), in which he maintained that the origin of myths was to be looked for in the domain of language, and that their most essential factors were

polysemy Polysemy ( or ; ) is the capacity for a sign (e.g. a symbol, a morpheme, a word, or a phrase) to have multiple related meanings. For example, a word can have several word senses. Polysemy is distinct from ''monosemy'', where a word has a sin ...

and

homonymy In linguistics, homonyms are words which are homographs (words that share the same spelling, regardless of pronunciation), or homophones ( equivocal words, that share the same pronunciation, regardless of spelling), or both. Using this definition ...

. Kuhn was also the editor of the '' Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der Indogermanischen Sprachen'', which was at his time the standard periodical on the subject. Kuhn died in Berlin. See obituary notice by C. F. H. Bruchmann in Bursian's ''Biographisches Jahrbuch'' (1881) and J. Schmidt in the above ''Zeitschrift'', xxvi. n.s. 6.

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References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kuhn, Franz Felix Adalbert 1812 births 1881 deaths People from Chojna German philologists People from the Province of Brandenburg German folklorists German male non-fiction writers Indo-Europeanists Linguists of Indo-European languages