JAKOB

See also:

• JAKOB BERNAYS (1824-1881)

BERNAYS (1824-1881)  , German philologist and philosophical writer, was born at Hamburg of Jewish parents on the 11th of September 1824 . His father, Isaac Bernays (1792-1849), a man of wide culture, was the first orthodox German rabbi to preach in the vernacular . Jakob studied from 1844 to 1848 at the university of Bonn, the philological school of which, under Welcker and Ritschl (whose favourite pupil Bernays became), was the best in Germany . In 1853 he accepted the chair of classical philology at the newly founded Jewish theological college (the Frankel seminary) at Breslau, where he formed a close friendship with Mommsen . In 1866, when Ritschl left Bonn for Leipzig, Bernays returned to his old university as extraordinary professor and chief librarian . He remained at Bonn until his death on the 26th of May 1881 . His chief works, which deal mainly with the Greek philosophers, are:—Die Lebensbeschreibung des J . J . Scaliger (18J5); Uber das Phokylidische Gedicht (1856); Die Chronik des Sulpicius Severus (1861); Die Dialoge des Aristoteles im Verhdltniss zu seinen ubrigen Werken (1863); Theophrastos' Schrift fiber Frommigkeit (1866); Die Heraklitischen Briefe (1869); Lucian and die Cyniker (1879); Zwei Abhandlungen uber die Aristotelische Theorie des Dramas (188o) . The last of these was a republication of his Grundziige der verlorenen Abhandlungen des Aristoteles fiber die Wirkung der Tragodie (1857), which aroused considerable controversy . See notices in Biographisches Jahrbuch fur Alterthumskunde (1881), and Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, xlvi.• (1902) ; art. in Jewish Encyclopaedia; also Sandys, Hist. of Class . Schol. iii .

176 (1908) . His

brother, MICHAEL BERNAYS (1834-1897), was born in Hamburg on the 27th of November 1834 . He studied first law and then literature at Bonn and Heidelberg, and obtained a considerable reputation by his lectures on Shakespeare at Leipzig and an explanatory text to Beethoven's music to Egmont . Having refused an invitation to take part in the editor-ship of the Preussiche Jahrbucher, in the same year (1866) he published his celebrated Zur Kritik and Geschichte des Goetheschen-Textes . FIe confirmed his reputation by his lectures at the university of Leipzig, and in 1873 accepted the post of extra-ordinary professor of German literature atMunich specially created for him by Louis II. of Bavaria . In 1874 he became an ordinary professor, a position which he only resigned in 1889 when he settled at Carlsruhe . He died at Carlsruhe on the 25th of February 1897 . At an early age he had embraced Christianity, whereas his brother Jakob remained a Jew . Among his other publications were: Briefe Goethes an F . A . Wolf 0868); Zur Enstehungsgeschichte des Schlegelschen Shakespeare (1872) ; an introduction to Hirzel's collection entitled Der junge Goethe (1875); and he edited a revised edition of Voss's translation of the Odyssey . From his literary remains were published Schriften zur Kritik and Litteraturgeschichte (1895-1899) .