ZEUSS, JOHANN KASPAR. - Historian and philologist, b. at Vogtendorf (Franconia) on 22 July 1806, d. there on 10 Nov. 1856.
After completing his secondary studies at Bamberg and graduating from the University of Munich, he was successively professor of history at a gymnasium in Munich and at the lyceums of Speyer and Bamberg. A scholar of prodigious erudition, he occupied himself with history and ethnology, but especially with philology, achieving worldwide renown for his research on the language of the Celts. Having won the admiration of scholars with his early work Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme (Munich 1837), a complete compilation of all passages from Greek and Latin literature relating to the Germanic populations of central Europe (a valuable working tool also for its very abundant critical notes, it was reprinted several times up to 1925), two years later Z. published another powerful work, Die Herkunft der Baiern von den Markomannen gegen die bisherigen Muthmassungen beweisen (ibid. 1839; 2nd ed. 1857), which was followed by the Traditiones possessionesque Wissenburgenses (Speyer 1842) and Die Freie Reichstadt Speier vor ihrer Zerstörung nach urkundlichen Quellen geschildert (ibid. 1843). But the capital work was the Grammatica Celtica e monumentis vetustis tam Hibernicae linguae quam Britannicarum dialectorum Cambricae, Cornicae, Aremoricae comparatis Gallicae priscae reliquis (Berlin 1853; 2nd ed. 1871), in which, as the title indicates, he examined, through very lengthy research in the principal European libraries, all the surviving fragments of the most ancient and almost forgotten Celtic languages, so that it was rightly said that Z. recalled the language of the Celts to life and created its philological study, never before attempted.
Although he remained in the world, against the wish of his family who would have wanted him a priest, Z. was a man of genuine and practiced piety in an era and an environment dominated by positivism.
Bibliography3 works
Renzo U. Montini