Cohn, Georg

Georg Cohn (15.1.1866 Berlin – ca. 1942)

Verf.

Frank-Rutger Hausmann

Romanische Philologie, bes. franz. Wortbildung, franz. Etymologie, franz. u. ital. Textkritik

Andreas-Realgymn. u. Leibniz-Gymn. Berlin; Herbst 1883 Abitur; 1883-85 Stud. Rom., klass., deutsche, engl. Philol., indogerm. Sprachwiss. Berlin, Bonn, Halle a. S.; 25.4.1890 Prom. (Adolf Tobler) Berlin; Privatgelehrter Berlin; ca. 1942 verschleppt.

Mitgl. Berliner Ges. f. das Stud. d. neueren Sprachen.

Die aus dem Neufranzösischen erkennbaren, im Vulgärlatein und im vorlitterarischen Französisch eingetretenen Wandlungen auf dem Gebiete der lateinischen Nominalsuffixe, Halle 1890 (Diss.); Die Suffixwandlungen im Vulgärlatein u. im vorlitterarischen Französisch nach ihren Spuren im Neufranzösischen, Halle a. S. 1891.

„This book [=Die Suffixwandlungen], running to fully 322 pages, is in no way comparable to the average German dissertation; written by a man barely twenty-five years old, it is one of the all-time masterpieces in Romance linguistics and would have deserved to rank ever since as a classic were it not for the fact the Cohn happened to be an incurable Pechvogel. Thus Cohn’s indisputable magnum opus fell short of producing a splash, as his thesis director Tobler undoubtedly had hoped; but it was widely consulted and eulogistically cited by the small coterie of real connoisseurs, including W. Meyer-Lübke. Publishing, first, a fragment of one’s dissertation and later a generously expanded edition was, I repeat, not unheard in those years; the prototype, for scholars of Cohn’s generation was, obivously, Hugo Schuchardt’s Der Vokalismus des Vultärlateins, in three solid volumes, but preceded by a slender exploratory tract – composed in Latin (De sermonis Roman plebei vocalibus, 1864). This later complication [=compilation ? (FRH)] became supererogatory in Cohn’s days, especially because his Promotion, the ambiguity of the dissertation’s title notwithstanding, was in Romance, while Schuchardt’s, at Bonn, had been in Latin, under the guidance of the textual critic Friedrich Ritschl rather than of the comparatist Friedrich Diez“ (Malkiel, 1978, 243).

CV; Yakov Malkiel, „Beween Heymann Steinthal and Adolf Tobler. Georg Cohn in turn-of-the-century Berlin“, Historiographica Linguistica 5, 1978, 237-251; Christmann, in: Christmann / Hausmann, Deutsche u. österreichische Romanisten, 1989, 274-275; Maas, Verfolgung u. Auswanderung, 2010, 153-154.