Johan Peter Weisse

Johan Peter Weisse (13 August 1832 – 7 March 1886) was a Norwegian philologist.

Personal life He was born in Fluberg as a son of physician Joachim Frederik Weisse and his wife Grethe Fleischer. His grandfather had migrated to Norway from Brandenburg. The family moved to Trondhjem in 1833.

He married his own cousin Maja Stang (1843–1916) in July 1863 in Fredrikshald. In May 1893 one of their daughters married politician Gabriel Gabrielsen Holtsmark. Through them, Weisse was the maternal grandfather of professor Johan Peter Holtsmark, professor Anne Holtsmark and painter Karen Holtsmark.

Career He took his examen artium at Trondhjem Cathedral School in 1850. He read languages such as Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Gothic, Old Danish, Old Swedish, Greek, Latin, Russian and Cuneiform script already at that time, as witnessed by his diary Litterær Dagbog. He started studying philology in 1851. From 1853 to 1855 he had to stay in Rome because of health issues, but he studied the city vividly. He was a part of a Nordic intellectual group here, which included Julius Middelthun, Christoffer Borch, Georg Forchhammer and Niels Ravnkilde. He finally graduated from the Royal Frederick University with the cand.philol. degree in 1858. In 1871, Weisse released his own Latin grammar, Latinsk Grammatik til Skolebrug, but it was considered too difficult for school students, and was out-competed by Emil Schreiner's Latinsk Sproglære. The dominating Latin-Norwegian dictionary was later released by Schreiner, Nygaard and Johanssen. Schreiner sat on the committee that hired Weisse as professor in 1875.

Weisse died from a stroke in March 1886. He was buried at Vår Frelsers gravlund.