32 Facts About Eduard Fraenkel

Eduard David Mortier Fraenkel FBA was a German classical scholar who served as the Corpus Christi Professor of Latin at the University of Oxford from 1935 until 1953.

Eduard Fraenkel wrote a monograph, entitled Horace, on the Roman poet Horace after retiring from his teaching post.

Biographers place particular emphasis on the impact of Eduard Fraenkel's teaching at Oxford, where he led a weekly seminar on classical texts.

Eduard David Mortier Fraenkel was born on 17 March 1888 in Berlin, in the Kingdom of Prussia.

Eduard Fraenkel's family were Jewish but had assimilated and prospered economically.

From 1897 to 1906 Eduard Fraenkel attended the Askanisches Gymnasium in the borough of Berlin-Tempelhof, where his teachers included the mythographer Otto Gruppe, whom Eduard Fraenkel credited in his doctoral thesis with inspiring his interest in classical antiquity.

In 1918, Eduard Fraenkel married Ruth von Velsen, a classical scholar who gave up her career to support him.

Eduard Fraenkel's appointment followed the publication of a monograph on the Roman comedian Plautus which established his reputation in the discipline.

In 1928, Eduard Fraenkel accepted an offer to return to the University of Gottingen.

Eduard Fraenkel's three-year stint there was a difficult period for him and his family; his son Albert died from an illness and Fraenkel was subject to antisemitism in the context of what the classicist Gordon Williams described as "personal quarrels" within the faculty.

Eduard Fraenkel spent part of 1934 at Christ Church College of the University of Oxford, having been invited by the faculty of Classics and the classical scholar Gilbert Murray.

When it proved difficult to sustain his family with his position at Trinity, Eduard Fraenkel began planning a lecture tour through the United States for late 1934, by which he hoped to find a permanent appointment.

Eduard Fraenkel was elected to the chair in 1935 and cancelled his commitments in the United States.

Individual students were asked to prepare on specific passages with Eduard Fraenkel commenting on their work and challenging them on points of interest including interpretation, textual criticism, and the history of classical scholarship.

From autumn term 1936 to spring term 1942, the seminars covered the Agamemnon by the Greek playwright Aeschylus, on which Eduard Fraenkel published a three-volume commentary in 1950.

In 1953, Eduard Fraenkel retired from his academic appointment, but kept giving lectures and leading seminars.

Eduard Fraenkel died on 5 February 1970; Fraenkel killed himself on the same day, four hours later.

In 1922, Eduard Fraenkel published a monograph entitled, founded upon his doctoral work conducted under Leo.

Eduard Fraenkel concluded that, contrary to the predominant academic consensus, Plautus was an "innovative creator in his own right".

Eduard Fraenkel had begun to show interest in the Agamemnon of Aeschylus as early as 1925 but focused on Latin literature in the years leading up to his application for the Corpus Professorship.

Eduard Fraenkel developed his thoughts on the play in his weekly seminars held from 1936 to 1942.

In 1943, Eduard Fraenkel submitted a manuscript for a commentary on the play to Oxford University Press.

Eduard Fraenkel showed an interest in commentary technique, coining new critical terms, such as guttatim for Aeschylus's use of cumulative apposition.

Rose, Eduard Fraenkel's commentary was "perhaps the most erudite that any Greek play has ever had".

Eduard Fraenkel began publishing articles on Horace in the early 1930s.

Eduard Fraenkel showed how Horace developed the patterns of Greek lyric into an increasingly abstract form of literature.

The book took an innovative view on Horace's Epistles, a collection of letters in dactylic metre; although most previous scholars had regarded them as either faithful reproductions of real-world letters or entirely fictitious, Eduard Fraenkel argued that they were of a "double nature", combining real and unreal elements.

Eduard Fraenkel interpreted the Carmen Saeculare, a celebratory hymn commissioned for the Secular Games of 17 BC, as a poem independent from its festival context, which marked Horace's return to lyric poetry.

In 1990, the Latinist Nicholas Horsfall stated that "[Eduard Fraenkel] did enjoy, warmly, but most decorously, female beauty".

Eduard Fraenkel's statement was criticised by the ancient historian Mary Beard, who described it as a probable "defence mechanism" against further dissemination of knowledge of Fraenkel's behaviour.

Eduard Fraenkel was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1941.

Eduard Fraenkel received the Kenyon Medal for classical studies in 1965 and held honorary doctorates from the Free University of Berlin and the universities of Urbino, St Andrews, Florence, Fribourg, and Oxford.