Max Kaluza

Maximilian Kaluza (22 September 1856 in Ratibor, Upper Silesia – 1 December 1921 in Königsberg, East Prussia) was a German scholar of English philology.

Life

Maximilian "Max" Kaluza studied from 1873 to 1877 at the Matthias Gymnasium in Wroclaw and was awarded his Ph.D. with a dissertation on the relationship of the Middle English alliterative poem William of Palerne to its French models on 12 January 1881. After passing the Staatsexamen in December 1881, he was a probationary candidate and assistant teacher at the Gymnasium in Racibórz from 1882 to 1884, and from 1884 to 1887 a high school teacher in Opole.

On 17 May 1887 Kaluza completed his Habilitation at the Albertus-Universität Königsberg with a text about the manuscript transmission of the Middle English poem Libeaus Desconus, becoming a professor of English language and literature. From July 1894 he was at the university as an adjunct professor and director of the English Seminar and after June 1902 a full professor. He retired during the summer of 1921.

Among Kaluza's research was an observation concerning the metrical characteristics of unstressed vowels in the Old English poem Beowulf,[1] on which the name 'Kaluza's law' was later bestowed, apparently by R. D. Fulk.[2][3] The significance of Kaluza's observations for the dating of Beowulf has been debated extensively.

His son Theodor Kaluza (1885-1954) was a German physicist, and his grandson Theodor Kaluza (1910-1994) a mathematician.

Selected publications
  • Chaucer und der Rosenroman. Eine literargeschichtliche Studie. E. Felber Verlag, Berlin 1893.
  • Derœ altenglische Vers. Eine metrische Untersuchung. E. Felber, Berlin 1894.
  • with Gustav Thurau, Eduard Koschwitz. Ein Lebensbild, in Zeitschrift für französischen und englischen Unterricht, 3 (1904), ZDB-ID 200279-6, 385–432 (also as separate printing by Weidmann, Berlin 1904).
  • Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache, 2 vols. E. Felber, Berlin 1906.
  • Englische Metrik in historischer Entwicklung. E. Felber, Berlin 1909.
  • Geoffrey-Chaucer-Handbuch für Studierende. Ausgewählte Texte mit Einleitung, einem Abriss von Chaucers Versbau und Sprache und einem Wörterverzeichnis. Tauchnitz, Leipzig 1919.
  • Chaucer-Handbuch für Studierende. Ausgewählte Texte mit Einleitugen und einem Wörterverzeichnis, 4th edn. B. Tauchnitz, Leipzig 1944.
  • with Arthur C. Dunstan, Englische Phonetik mit Lesestücken. Vereinigung wissenschaftlichen Verleger, Leipzig 1921.
  • Geschichte der englischen Sprache. Literatur-Agentur Danowski, Zürich 2007. (Reprint)

Sources
  • Christian Tilitzki, Die Albertus-Universität Königsberg – ihre Geschichte von der Reichsgründung bis zum Untergang der Provinz Ostpreußen (1871–1945), vol. 1 (1871–1918), Akademie Verlag 2012, ISBN 978-3-05-004312-8, p. 559.

References
  1. Max Kaluza, 'Zur Betonungs- und Verslehre des Altenglischen', in Festschrift zum. Siebzigsten Geburtstage Oskar Schade (Königsberg: Hartung, 1896), pp. 101-33.
  2. R. D. Fulk, A History of Old English Meter (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), §§170–83 and §§376–8.
  3. Eric Weiskott, 'A Semantic Replacement for Kaluza's Law in Beowulf', English Studies, 93.8 (2012), 891-96 (fn. 1) doi:10.1080/0013838X.2012.721237.
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