Julius Pokorny

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Julius Pokorny (12 June 1887 – 8 April 1970) was a scholar of the Celtic languages, particularly Irish, and a supporter of Irish nationalism. He was born in Prague and studied at the University of Vienna, where he also taught from 1913 to 1920. From 1920 to 1935, he held the chair of Celtic philology at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, before the Nazis discovered that, in spite of being a German nationalist, he was of Jewish descent.

He was the editor of the important journal Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie before World War II, and was responsible for reviving it afterwards.

He emigrated to Switzerland in 1943, where he taught for a few years at the University of Berne and at the University of Zürich until his retirement in 1959. In 1954, he received an honorary professorship at Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, where he taught part-time in 1956 and again from 1960 to 1965. He is the author of the Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (Indo-European Etymological Dictionary; 1959) which is still widely used today. He died in Zürich in 1970 almost three weeks after being hit by a tram not far from his home.

External links

Ó Dochartaigh, Pól (2004). Julius Pokorny, 1887–1970: Germans, Celts and Nationalism. Dublin: Four Courts Press. ISBN 1-85182-769-2.