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| Born | (1812-11-19)19 November 1812 |
| Died | 5 May 1881(1881-05-05) (aged 68) |
Franz Felix Adalbert Kuhn (19 November 1812 – 5 May 1881) was a Germanphilologist andfolklorist.
Kuhn was born inKönigsberg inBrandenburg'sNeumark region. From 1841, he was connected with theKöllnisches Gymnasium atBerlin, of which he was appointed director in 1870. Kuhn was the founder of a new school of comparative mythology, based upon comparative philology. Inspired byJakob Grimm'sDeutsche Mythologie, he first devoted himself to German stories and legends, and publishedMärkische Sagen und Märchen (1842),Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche (1848), andSagen, Gebräuche und Märchen aus Westfalen (1859).[1]
But it is on Kuhn's researches into the language and history of theIndo-Germanic peoples as a whole that his reputation is founded. His chief works in this connection areZur ältesten Geschichte der Indogermanischen Völker (1845), in which he endeavoured to give an account of the earliest civilization of theIndo-Germanic peoples before their separation into different families, by comparing and analysing the original meaning of the words and stems common to the different languages;Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Göttertranks (1859; new edition byErnst Kuhn, under title ofMythologische Studien, 1886); andÜber Entwicklungsstufen der Mythenbildung (1873), in which he maintained that the origin of myths was to be looked for in the domain of language, and that their most essential factors werepolysemy andhomonymy. Kuhn was also the editor of theZeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der Indogermanischen Sprachen, which was at his time the standard periodical on the subject.[1]
Kuhn died in Berlin. See obituary notice byC. F. H. Bruchmann inBursian'sBiographisches Jahrbuch (1881) andJ. Schmidt in the aboveZeitschrift, xxvi. n.s. 6.[1]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Kuhn, Franz Felix Adalbert".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 941.
