Paul, Hermann

Born Aug. 7, 1846, in Salbke, near Magdeburg; died Dec. 29, 1921, in Munich. German linguist and specialist in the Germanic languages.

In 1874, Paul began teaching at the University of Freiburg, where he attained the rank of professor. From 1893 to 1916 he taught at the University of Munich. A leading neogrammarian, Paul set down the fundamentals of the neogrammarians’ position in Principles of the History of Language (1880; Russian translation, 1960). His many works on the history of the Germanic languages include Dictionary of the German Language (1897; 7th ed., 1960) and the five-volume German Grammar (1916–20; 5th ed., 1958). In 1874, Paul and W. Braune founded the journal Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, which the two edited jointly. Paul edited and was a contributor to a joint work entitled Fundamentals of Germanic Philology (vols. 1–3, 1891–93; a series of monographs with the same name began appearing in 1911). The work contains extensive material on Germanic philology and ethnology.