The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Jahn, Otto

JAHN, Otto, German philologist: b. Kiel, 16 June 1813; d. Göttingen, 9 Sept. 1869. He was educated at Kiel, Leipzig, and Berlin and subsequently traveled for three years in France and Italy. In 1839 he was appointed privatdocent at Kiel, and in 1842 removed to Griefswald as professor extraordinary of archæology and philology, becoming ordinary professor in 1845. He was called to Leipzig in 1847 to the chair of archæology but four years later he was deprived of his chair for having participated in the revolutionary movement of 1848-49. In 1855 he was called to the chair of the science of antiquity and to the directorship of the academical art museum of Bonn. He was called to succeed Gerhard at Berlin, but died before his installation there. His services to classical philology were immense as also in the field of classical archæology. His principal works are ‘Palamides’ (1836); ‘Telephos and Troilos’ (1841); ‘Die Gemälde des Polygnot’ (1841); ‘Pentheus und die Mänaden’ (1841); ‘Paris und Oinone’ (1844); ‘Die hellenische Kunst’ (1846); ‘Peitho, die Göttin der Überredung’ (1847); ‘Ueber einige Darstellungen des Paris-Urteils’ (1849); ‘Die Ficoronische Cista’ (1852); ‘Pausaniæ descriptio arcis Athenarum’ (3d ed, 1901); ‘Darstellungen griechischer Dichter auf Vasenbildern’ (1861). His critical editions of the classics include Juvenal, Persius and Sulpicia’ (3d ed., 1893); ‘Censorinus’ (1845); ‘Florus’ (1852); Cicero's ‘Brutus’ (4th ed. 1877); Livy's ‘Periochærlsquo; (1853); Spuleius' ‘Psyche et Cupids’ (5th ed., 1905). Other works are ‘Biographie Mozarts’ (3d ed. by H. Disters, 1891; English trans., by P. D. Townsend, 1891); ‘Ludwig Uhland’ (1863); ‘Gesammelte Aufsätze über Musik’ (1866); ‘Biographische Aufsätze’ (1866); ‘Griechische Bilderchroniken’ (1871). Consult biography by his nephew A. Michaelis (in ‘Allgemeine deutsche Biographie,’ Vol. XIII, Leipzig 1881) and Sandys ‘History of Classical Scholarship’ (Cambridge 1908).