August Immanuel Bekker (21 May 17857 June 1871) 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 strong ties to etymology. Philology is also defined as the study of ...

and

critic A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as Art criticism, art, Literary criticism, literature, Music journalism, music, Film criticism, cinema, Theater criticism, theater, Fas ...

Biography

Born in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

, Bekker completed his classical education at the

University of Halle Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (), also referred to as MLU, is a public research university in the cities of Halle and Wittenberg. It is the largest and oldest university in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. MLU offers German and i ...

under Friedrich August Wolf, who considered him as his most promising pupil. In 1810 he was appointed professor of

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

in the

University of Berlin The Humboldt University of Berlin (, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. The university was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humbol ...

. For several years, between 1810 and 1821, he travelled in France,

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

, England and parts of Germany, examining classical manuscripts and gathering materials for his great editorial labours. Some of the fruits of his researches were published in the '' Anecdota Graeca'' (3 vols, 1814–1821), but the major results are to be found in the enormous array of classical authors edited by him. His industry extended to nearly the whole of

Greek literature Greek literature () dates back from the ancient Greek literature, beginning in 800 BC, to the modern Greek literature of today. Ancient Greek literature was written in an Ancient Greek dialect, literature ranges from the oldest surviving wri ...

with the exception of the tragedians and lyric poets. His best known editions are those of

Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...

(1816–1823), ''Oratores Attici'' (1823–1824),

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

(1831–1836),

Aristophanes Aristophanes (; ; ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek Ancient Greek comedy, comic playwright from Classical Athens, Athens. He wrote in total forty plays, of which eleven survive virtually complete today. The majority of his surviving play ...

(1829), and twenty-five volumes of the ''

Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae The (CSHB; ), also referred to as the Bonn Corpus, is a monumental fifty-volume series of primary sources for the study of Byzantine history (–1453), published in the German city of Bonn between 1828 and 1897. Each volume contains a critica ...

''.Bekker oversaw the series from 1831, following Barthold G. Niebuhr's death. However, he never enjoyed the job. Dieter R. Reinsch noted that he wrote prefaces only to those authors he thought "worth", and in any case never exceeding a single page which he used to utter all his displeasure. The ''CFHB'' volumes edited by Bekker became infamous for the misprints and errors and August Heisenberg, according to Franz Dölger, once said that he must have revised those texts 'lying on the sofa with the cigar in his mouth'. See The only Latin authors edited by him were

Livy Titus Livius (; 59 BC – AD 17), known in English as Livy ( ), was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled , covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding i ...

(1829–1830) and

Tacitus Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars. Tacitus’ two major historical works, ''Annals'' ( ...

(1831). Bekker confined himself entirely to manuscript investigations and textual criticism; he contributed little to the extension of other types of scholarship. Bekker numbers have become the standard way of referring to the works of Aristotle and the Corpus Aristotelicum. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

in 1861. He died in Berlin aged 86.

Works

* Ducas, Michael, ''Ducae : Michaelis Ducae Nepotis Historia Byzantina'', ed. by Bekker, August Immanuel (Bonn: Weber, 1834). * Khoniátis, Nikítas, ''Narrattive of Events after the Capture of the City y the Franks', ed. by Bekker, August Immanuel (Bonn: Weber, 1835). * Phrantzis, G., ''Chronicon'', ed. by Bekker, August Immanuel (Bonn: Weber, 1838). * Khalkokondhýlis, ''‘Laónikos' (i.e. Nikólaos), De Origine et Rebus Gestis Turcarum'', ed. by Bekker, August Immanuel (Bonn: Weber, 1843). * Attaleiátis, Michael, ''Historia'', ed. by Bekker, August Immanuel (Bonn: Weber, 1853).

Notes

References

* Endnotes: ** H. Sauppe, Zur Erinnerung an Meineke und Bekker (1872); ** M. Haupt, “Gedächtnisrede auf Meineke und Bekker”, in his Opuscula, iii.; ** Ernst Immanuel Bekker, “Zur Erinnerung an meinen Vater”, in the ''Preußische Jahrbücher'', vol. 29 (Berlin 1872).

External links

*
Guide to the Immanuel Bekker Papers 1806–1853
at th
University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bekker, August Immanuel 1785 births 1871 deaths Writers from Berlin German philologists German scholars of ancient Greek philosophy Aristotle scholars Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) People from the Margraviate of Brandenburg Scholars from the Kingdom of Prussia University of Halle alumni Academic staff of the Humboldt University of Berlin Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences German male non-fiction writers German classical philologists German Byzantinists Scholars of Byzantine literature German literary scholars Members of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities

Biography

Works

Notes

References

Further reading

External links