HERMANN WILHELM

See also:

• HERMANN WILHELM EBEL (1820–1875)
• EBEL, JOHANN GOTTFRIED (1764–1830)

EBEL (1820–1875)  , German philologist, was born at Berlin on the roth of May 182o . He displayed in his early years a remarkable capacity for the study of languages, and at the same time a passionate fondness for music and poetry . At the age of sixteen he became a student at the university of Berlin, applying himself especially to philology, and attending the lectures of Bockh . Music continued to be the favourite occupation of his leisure hours, and he pursued the study of it under the direction of Marx . In the spring of 1838 he passed to the university of Halle, and there began to apply himself to comparative philology under Pott . Returning in the following year to his native city, he continued this study as a disciple of Bopp . He took his degree in 1842, and, after spending his year of probation at the French Gymnasium of Berlin, he resumed with great earnestness his language studies . About 1847 he began to study Old Persian . In 1852 he accepted a professorship at the Beheim-Schwarzbach Institution at Filehne, which post he held for six years . It was during this period that his studies in the Old Slavic and Celtic languages began . In 1858 he removed to Schneidemuhl, and there he discharged the duties of first professor for ten years . He was afterwards called to the chair of comparative philology at the university of Berlin .

He died at Misdroy on the 19th of

August 1875 . The most important work of Dr Ebel in the field of Celtic philology is his revised edition of the Grammatica Celtica of Professor Zeuss, completed in 1871 . This had been preceded by his treatises—De verbi Britannici futuro ac conjunctivo (1866), and De Zeussii curis positis in Grammatica Celtica (1869) . He made many learned contributions to Kiihn's Zeitschrift fur vergleichende Sprachforschung, and to A, Schleicher's Beitrage zur vergleichenden Sprachforschung; and a selection of these contributions was translated into English by Sullivan, and published under the title of Celtic Studies (1863) . Ebel contributed the Old Irish section to Schleicher's Indogermanische Chrestomathie (1869) . Among his other works must be named Die Lehnworter der deutschen Sprache (1856) .