Franz Bopp
| Franz Bopp | |
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Franz Bopp
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| Born |
14 September 1791 Mainz |
| Died | 23 October 1867 (aged 76) Berlin |
| School | Romantic linguistics |
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Main interests
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Linguistics |
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Influences
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Influenced
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Franz Bopp (14 September 1791 – 23 October 1867), formerly sometimes anglicized as Francis Bopp, was a German linguist known for extensive and pioneering comparative work on Indo-European languages.
He was born in Mainz, but owing to the political disarray of the time, his parents moved to Aschaffenburg, the second seat of the Archbishop of Mainz. There, he received a liberal education at the Lyceum, and Karl J. Windischmann drew his attention to the languages and literature of the East (Windischmann, along with Georg Friedrich Creuzer, Johann Joseph von Görres, and the brothers Schlegel, expressed great enthusiasm for Indian wisdom and philosophy). Moreover, Friedrich Schlegel's book, Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (On the Speech and Wisdom of the Indians, Heidelberg, 1808), which had just begun to exert a powerful influence on the minds of German philosophers and historians, did not fail to stimulate Bopp's interest in the sacred language of the Hindus.
In 1812, he went to Paris at the expense of the Bavarian government, with a view to devoting himself vigorously to the study of Sanskrit. There he enjoyed the society of such eminent men as Antoine-Léonard de Chézy (his primary instructor), Silvestre de Sacy, Louis Mathieu Langlès, and, above all, of Alexander Hamilton (1762–1824), cousin of the U.S. statesman, who had acquired, when in India, an acquaintance with Sanskrit, and had brought out, along with Langlès, a descriptive catalogue of the Sanskrit manuscripts of the Imperial library.
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