Jost Trier

Jost Trier (15 December 1894 – 15 September 1970) was a German linguist, specialising in Germanic linguistics and particularly in the vocabulary and etymology of the German language. He was chair of German philology at the University of Münster from 1932 to 1961, and rector from 1956 to 1957.

Early life and education Jost Trier was born in Schlitz, Hesse, on 15 December 1894, the son of physician Jost Christian Ludwig Trier (1859 – 1939) and Else (1870 – 1938). After completing volksschule, he graduated from the gymnasium in Barmen, where the family had moved. but on the outbreak of World War I, volunteered for the Army. He earned a teaching qualification in 1920 and following that taught secondary school while completing his degree. (A second, memorial festschrift was published in 1975.)

Trier specialized in Germanic linguistics, particularly in German and later in his career in etymology. He was one of a generation of German studies scholars in the 1920s and 1930s who turned away from philology and older languages to emphasise structures of meaning in the modern language. but was not engaged with Nazi ideology

Personal life and death In 1923 he married Margarete Fressel . and to the Goethe-Gesellschaft in Weimar in 1955.

Books Der Heilige Jodocus, 1924 Der deutsche Wortschatz im Sinnbezirk des Verstandes. Die Geschichte eines sprachlichen Feldes, 1931, repr. 1973 Lehm: Etymologien zum Fachwerk, 1951 Holz: Etymologien aus dem Niederwald, 1952 Venus: Etymologien um das Futterlaub, 1963 Aufsätze und Vorträge zur Wortfeldtheorie, ed. Anthony van der Lee and Oskar Reichmann, 1973 (posthumous), repr. 2019 Wege der Etymologie, ed. Hans Schwarz, 1981 (posthumous)