Friedrich Solmsen - Life and Career

Life and Career

Friedrich Solmsen, sometimes called "Fritz" by friends and intimates, was born and educated in Germany. He was among the "Graeca" of Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, the Graeca being a group of "young scholars" who met in his home during his last decade of life to read a Greek author with a view toward emending the text. In an essay fifty years later, Solmsen recalled those years and the legendary philologist in a biographical sketch that combines politico-historical perspective, sociology of academia, and personal, sometimes wry observations. "I do not recall Wilamowitz ever laughing aloud," he mused in a footnoted aside. "Nor did he ever grin." Solmsen was also a student of Eduard Norden, Otto Regenbogen, and Werner Jaeger, to the three of whom along with Wilamowitz he dedicated the first volume of his collected papers. He was one of the last people to whom the terminally ill Wilamowitz addressed correspondence.

Solmsen's dissertation on Aristotelian logic and rhetoric was published in 1928. He left Germany to escape Nazism in the mid-1930s, and after a time in England came to the United States, where he taught at Olivet College (1937–1940) in Michigan. He then moved to Cornell University, where he served a term as chair of the classics department. He taught at Cornell for twenty-two years. Among his courses was "Foundations of Western Thought," which explored the history of philosophical, scientific and religious ideas from early Greece through the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

In 1962, he was named Moses Slaughter Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 1972 he won the Goodwin Award of Merit, presented by the American Philological Association for an outstanding contribution to classical scholarship, for his Oxford Classical Text edition of Hesiod's works, the Theogony, Works and Days, and Shield of Heracles.

Solmsen retired in 1974. In retirement, he lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and continued to publish. He gave occasional lectures at the University of North Carolina, conducted a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar, and led readings in Pindar and Plotinus. The bulk of his library was donated to the university upon his death at the age of 84. He was survived by his wife, Lieselotte. Colleagues mourned him as "one of the last giants of the German tradition of classical humanism."

The Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin offers four one-year fellowships in his name for postdoctoral work on literary and historical studies of the Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance periods to 1700. The fellowship fund was established by a bequest from Friedrich and Lieselotte Solmsen.