Curtius, Georg

Georg Curtius, (born April 16, 1820, Free City of Lübeck, German Confederation—died August 12, 1885, Hermsdorf, Silesia [now Poland]), German classicist and Indo-European language scholar, whose writings were fundamental to the study of the Greek language. He was the brother of the archaeologist Ernst Curtius.

In 1845 Georg Curtius became a Privatdozent (student-paid lecturer) at Berlin and in that year published one of his first important works, Die Sprachvergleichung in ihrem Verhältnis zur classischen Philologie (“Comparative Philology in Its Relationship to Classical Philology”). It was followed by a work on the comparative grammar of Latin and Greek (1846). During his academic appointment at Prague (1849–54), he first published his Griechische Schulgrammatik (1852; A Grammar of the Greek Language; “Textbook of Greek Grammar”), which went into its 23rd edition in 1902. Comparing the Greek use of the verb tenses with the Slavic system, he introduced the term Zeitart—as distinct from Zeitstufe—which eventually led to the modern notion of verbal aspect (indicating whether or not an action has been successfully completed). While a professor at Kiel (1854–61/62), he prepared his most influential work, Grundzüge der griechischen Etymologie (1858–62; “Fundamentals of Greek Etymology”). In the later years of his professorship at the University of Leipzig (1861/62–1885), he spent much time attacking the newly ascendant Neogrammarian school of linguistics, which one of his most noted students, Karl Brugmann, helped to establish.