6533b835fe1ef96bd129e927

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Schmeller, Johann Andreas (1785–1852)

subject

description

The Bavarian J. A. Schmeller hoped that the Swiss educational reformer Pestalozzi would appoint him as a teacher. When this failed, he joined the Swiss military in Spanish services carrying out Pestalozzi's principles at military schools by teaching languages in Tarragona and Madrid, and, finally, at a private teaching institute in Basle. He was inspired by the Swiss dialect dictionary when he decided to make a Bavarian dialect dictionary and, based on this, a Bavarian dialect grammar. This was the beginning of German scientific dialectology. He was appointed member of the Bavarian Academy of Science and professor at Munich university. As curator of the Royal Court and State Library (1829) he was to systematize about 25 000 handwritten documents confiscated when 150 monasteries were secularized in 1803. Along with the Grimm brothers and Karl Lachmann, Schmeller was a famous editor of medieval texts.