LACHMANN, Karl Konrad Friedrich Wilhelm (1793-1851), a highly distinguished philologist and critic, was born March 4, 1793, at Brunswick, where his father held an appointment as preacher in the Andreas Kirche. In his eighth year he entered the Katharineum of his native town, where the strong bent of his vigorous mind towards philology and literature soon made itself unmistakably evident. In 1809 he passed to the university of Leipsic as a student of philology and theology; in the same year he transferred himself to Göttingen, where, under the influence of Heyne, his enthusiasm for philological pursuits almost completely extinguished his interest in theology; the pagan classics and particularly the Roman poets became his absorbing study. Stronger even than that of Heyne was the influence of Dissen over the young and rising scholar, who found additional intellectual stimulus in the companionship of such fellow students as C. K. J. Bunsen, Ernst Schulze, and C. A. Brandis. Under G. F. Benecke he also devoted himself to Italian and English, and ultimately to Old German. In 1815 he was led by the stirring political events of the day to interrupt his studious life and join the Prussian army as a volunteer chasseur; in this capacity he accompanied his detachment to Paris, but to his great regret never encountered the enemy. The regiment being disbanded he went to Berlin, where he became an assistant master in the Friedrich Werder gymnasium, and in the spring of 1816 he “habilitated” at the university. His thesis was published immediately afterwards, the subject being “The original form of the Nibelung ennothfi Almost simultaneously appeared his edition of Propertius. The same summer he became one of the principal masters in the Fridericianum of Königsberg, where he ...assisted his colleague Karl Köpke with his edition of Rudolf von Monfort’s Barlaam und Josaphat (1818), and also took part in the researches of his friend towards an edition of the works of Walther von der Vogelweide. In January 1818 he became professor extraordinarius of classical philology in the university of Königsberg, where Lobeck also was; he at the same time began to lecture on Old German grammar and the Middle High German poets. In connexion with this task he devoted himself during the following seven years to an extraordinarily minute study of all that could be found, whether in print or in manuscript, relating to these subjects, and in the summer of 1824 he obtained leave of absence in order that he might search the libraries of Middle and South Germany for further materials. In February 1825 Lachmann was nominated extraordinary professor of classical and German philology in the university of Berlin; in June 1827 he was promoted to the ordinary professorship in the same department; and in 1830 he was admitted a member of the Academy of Sciences. The remainder of his laborious and fruitful life as an author and a teacher presents no episode requiring special record. In January 1851 he was seized with an inflammatory affection of the left foot, to which he ultimately succumbed on March 13, 1851. See Hertz, Karl Lachmann, eine Biographie (Berlin, 1851).
Laclιmann, who was the translator of the first volume of P. E. Muller’s Sagaeηbibliothek des Skandinavischen Alterthums, published at Berlin in 1816, is a figure of considerable importance in the history of German philology (see Rudolf von Raumer, Gesch. d. germanischen Philologie, 1870). In his “habilitationsschrift” on the Nibelungennoth, and still more in his review of Hagen’s Nibelungen and Benecke’s Bonerius, contributed in 1817 to the Jenaische Literaturzeitung, he had already laid down the rules of text criticism and elucidated the phonetic and metrical principles of Middle High German in a manner which marked a very distinct advance in that branch of learned investigation. The rigidly scientific character of his method becomes increasingly apparent in the Auswahl aus den Hochdeutschen Dichtern des dreizehnten Jahrhunderts (dedicated to Benecke, 1820), in the edition of Hartmann’s Iwein (the text being Lachmann’s special care, while the explanatory notes are by Benecke, 1827), in those of Walther von der Vogelweide (1827) and Wolfram von Eschenbach (1833), in the papers “Ueber das Hildebrandslied,” “Ueber althochdeutsche Betonung und Verskunst,” “Ueber den Eingang des Parzivals,” and “Ueber drei Bruchstücke niederrheinischeι ’ Gedichte” pul >lished in the Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy, and in Der Nibelungen Not mit der Klage in der ältesten Gestalt mit den Abweichungen der gemeinen Lesart (1826), which was followed by a critical commentary in 1836. Lachmann’s “Betrachtungen über die Ilias,” first published in the Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy in 1837 and 1841, in which he sought to show that the Iliad consists of sixteen independent “lays” variously enlarged and interpolated, have had considerable influence on modern Homeric criticism. See Homer. His smaller edition of the New Testament appeared in 1831, 3d ed. 1846; the larger, in two volumes, in 1842-50 (Novum Testamentum Greece et Latine: Carolus Lachmannus recensuit, Philippus Buttmannus Graecae lectionis auctoritates apposuit). The plan of Lachmann’s edition, which has been explained by himself in the Stud. «. Krit. of 1830, is a modification of the unaccomplished project of Bentley. It seeks to restore the most ancient reading current in Eastern MSS., using the consent of the Latin authorities (Old Latin and Greek Western Uncials) as the main proof of antiquity of a reading where the oldest Eastern authorities differ. Besides Propertius, Lachmann edited Catullus, 1829; Tibullus, 1829; Genesius, 1834; Terentianus Maurus, 1836; Babrius, 1845; Avianus, 1845; Gaius, 1841-42; the Agrimensores Romani, 1848-52; and Lucretius, 1850. The last, which was the main occupation of the closing years of his life, from 1845, was perhaps his greatest achievement, and has been characterized by Monro as “a work which will be a landmark for scholars as long as the Latin language continues to be studied.”
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