Hermann Collitz

Hermann Collitz (February 4, 1855 – May 13, 1935) was a German and American historical linguist and Indo-Europeanist. He emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1886, taking a position at the newly founded Bryn Mawr College, where he stayed for 20 years. In 1907 he left for the Johns Hopkins University, where he taught until his retirement in 1927. His career interests covered the historical phonology and morphology of Indo-European languages. An advocate for American linguistics to his European colleagues, Collitz was among the 27 signers of the call to form the Linguistic Society of America, and was elected its first president. That same year he was elected president of the Modern Language Association, serving in both roles simultaneously.

Early life and education Collitz was born February 4, 1855, in the Hanoverian hamlet of Bleckede, in modern-day Lower Saxony. Growing up, he showed a notable interest in language. At home, he was exposed to both Low German—a dialect spoken locally in Hanover and neighboring regions—and High German—then a prestige variety which formed the basis for modern Standard High German. From the age of 7 to 14, he attended a recently opened one-room schoolhouse which taught writing, Latin, and French. During Collitz's time at the school, the curriculum expanded to include English, and at 13 Collitz joined a select class on Greek. At 14, he left to attended the lyceum of the Johanneum Lüneburg whose humanities section focused on Latin, Greek, and Mathematics. He graduated from the Johanneum Lüneburg in 1875.

Following his graduation from the Johanneum Lüneburg, Collitz attended the University of Göttingen where he studied classical philology with particular attention to Iranian, Slavic, and Germanic. His background in Latin and Greek was deepened by the lectures of Hermann Sauppe on Latin Grammar and the epigraphy of Latin and Greek. His understanding of the Indo-European language family was broadened by Adalbert Bezzenberger's courses on Avestan and Lithuanian, as well as an introduction to Sanskrit through Theodor Benfey's course on the hymns of the Rig Veda. In 1876 he joined the Grammatical Society of the newly appointed professor of Comparative Philology, August Fick, who inspired Collitz's lifelong interest in comparative linguistics. Through the Grammatical Society and under the supervision of Fick, Collitz received practice in independent research and supplemental instruction in comparative Indo-European philology. In 1878 Collitz spent the summer semester at the University of Berlin focusing on Sanskrit, Slavic philology, and German philology with fellow student and future colleague Maurice Bloomfield. That fall, Collitz returned to Göttingen to complete his doctoral research on the palatal consonants in Proto-Indo-Iranian. In his review of Brugman and Osthoff's Morphological Investigations (German: ), he rejected their proposal that sound changes are regular, but by 1886 he had come to agree with the conclusion that sound change is regular. In 1883 he left Berlin for the University Library of Halle where he was tasked with completing the catalogues on General Linguistics, Comparative Linguistics, and Philosophy started by his predecessor Karl Verner. He habilitated at Halle and received the venia docendi in 1885 for his work on Sanskrit Philology. He was appointed an associate professor of German, and was promoted to Professor of German and Comparative Philology following the departure of E. Washburn Hopkins in 1895. At Bryn Mawr, he focused more closely on Germanic philology and especially his native Low German. With Karl Bauer, Collitz published the 1902 Waldeckian Dictionary with Dialect Samples which synthesized a number of prior papers he had published on the topic. In 1904 he married Klara Hechtenberg, a fellow German-born philologist. That same year he was selected alongside Eduard Sievers to represent the field of Germanic Philology at the International Congress of Arts and Sciences held during the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. The vision Collitz had for the Linguistic Society was at the time archaic and in tension with the goals of other founding members such as Leonard Bloomfield. In his address to the first meeting of the Linguistic Society, Collitz focused on a conception of linguistics tied to written literature and emphasized the need for the society to advance curricula that included teaching of classical languages and literature. He remained editor of the Journal of English and Germanic Philology and the American Journal of Philology until 1929.

Hermann Collitz died suddenly on May 13, 1935. In life Collitz had amassed one of the best private collections on comparative and Germanic linguistics, and this library was included in the bequest. The proceeds of the sale of the Collitz' residence in Baltimore were used to establish the Herman and Klara H. Collitz Professorship for Comparative Philology. In 1963 Mary Haas convened a committee of former holders to determine policy around the appointment of the Collitz Professorship, particularly regarding whether scholars using structuralist approaches to historical linguistics were eligible for the chair. The following year the committee reported that structuralist approaches, while not specifically mentioned in the bequest, should be considered within the spirit of the bequest.

Selected works

Pages 177 – 201 comprise his Göttingen dissertation.

Publication of an address to the Linguistic Society of America given December 28, 1924

Also published in the Proceedings of the Modern Language Association 41