In 1922, Maurer obtained a doctorate under the supervision of Otto Behaghel, who was to have a lasting influence on Maurer's work. Maurer then obtained a habilitation in German philology in 1925, becoming professor extraordinarius in 1929, still at Giessen, and later professor ordinarius at Erlangen (1931).
After World War II, the allied military government of Germany called on Maurer, who then founded scientific institutes at the partially-destroyed University of Freiburg and the University of Erlangen. In 1958 and 1959, Maurer chaired the League of German Scholars and cofounded the Institute for the German Language (Institut für Deutsche Sprache, IDS) at Mannheim.
In 1979, Maurer fell gravely ill and had to cease his work.[1] He died in 1984.
Maurer's 1942 linguistic work Nordgermanen und Alemannen ("Northern Germans and Alemanni") is considered his most important one, where he put forth a theory of the development of the Germanic languages that was strongly imbued with nationalistideology by hypothesizing a strong union of the Germanic peoples in antiquity; a theory that is still controversial. He sought to construct a conception of the West Germanic languages as precursors to Modern German. Against the common division of Germanic into North, East and West Germanic languages, he posited a fivefold division into North Germanic (Scandinavia), North Sea Germanic (Saxon, Frisian etc.), Weser–Rhine Germanic (Cherusci, Chatti, later Franks), Elbe Germanic (Suebi, Marcomanni, Lombards, later Alemanni) and Oder-Weichsel Germanic (Vandals, Burgundians, Goths). The theory was supported mainly by Tacitus and Pliny the Elder and especially the latter's observation in the Natural History of there being Germanorum genera quinque: "five kinds of Germans".[4]
Seeing a connection between supratribal groupings described (though marginally) by the Roman historians Pliny the Elder and Tacitus, he estimated that during a period ranging from roughly 50 BCE to c. 300 CE, five protolanguages (or dialect groups) emerged that included the direct, unattested, predecessors of all (West, North and East) Germanic languages, which have always remained in various degrees of contact.[5]
In the third edition of 1952, Maurer added archaeological evidence to support his classification, most notably citing Rafael von Uslar's article of the same year, "Archäologische Fundgruppen und germanische Stammesgebiete vornehmlich aus der Zeit um Christi Geburt." Maurer equated the five groups of findings discussed in that article with five linguistic groups. His theory has been criticized by later linguists, but they focused mainly on the terms that Maurer used by equating tribes and peoples to language groups and use of nationalistic jargon, which was then considered acceptable. No written evidence of the Germanic languages prior to the 7th century CE exists to prove or to disprove Maurer's thesis.[6]
^ abOtto zu Stolberg-Wernigerode, ed. (1990). "Maurer, Friedrich". Neue Deutsche Biographie. Duncker & Humblot.
^ abHutton, Christopher (2002). Linguistics and the Third Reich: Mother-tongue Fascism, Race and the Science of Language. Routledge. p. 325.
^Hempel-Küter, Christa (2000). Germanistik zwischen 1925 und 1955: Studien zur Welt der Wissenschaft am Beispiel von Hans Pyritz (in German). Akademie Verlag. p. 297.
^Friedrich Maurer (1942). Nordgermanen und Alemannen: Studien zur germanische und frühdeutschen Sprachgeschichte, Stammes- und Volkskunde, Strasbourg: Hünenburg.
^Johannes Hoops, Heinrich Beck, Dieter Geuenich, Heiko Steuer (1989). Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde. Band 7. Walter de Gruyter, ISBN9783110114454 (pp. 113–114).
Further reading
Friedrich Maurer (1942). Nordgermanen und Alemannen: Studien zur germanischen und frühdeutschen Sprachgeschichte, Stammes- und Volkskunde, Strasbourg: Hünenburg.