Jürgen Schäfer: 1933-1985

Abstract

JÜRGEN SCHAFER 1933-1985 Shortly after his return home from the meeting of the Dictionary Society, Professor Jürgen Schäfer died of kidney failure in Augsburg on September 25, 1985. Known personally to many scholars in North America, he was even more widely known through his contributions to Dictionaries (on whose editorial board he had agreed to serve) and through his other scholarly work. He is survived by his wife Loretta (whom he met while a teacher at the University of Pittsburgh and who was his constant helper in his research and writing) and by their daughter Sarah. At the Ann Arbor meeting, he presented a paper characteristic of his grasp of large principles and minute details—"Early Modern English: OED, New OED, EMED"; it is now scheduled for publication in the papers of the Symposium on English Lexicography held in connection with the DSNA meeting. Born August 1, 1933, Jürgen Schäfer studied English, history , and romance languages at the Universities of Tübingen, Santander, Leicester, Pittsburgh, and Münster and at Münster completed his doctoral dissertation in 1964 with a study of humour in Elizabethan comedy. He then joined Marvin Spevak's research project to work on the Shakespeare Concordance, taking time in 1968 to visit Ann Arbor to examine the materials of the Early Modern English Dictionary and .to reflect oh the special challenges and opportunities involved in bringing that dictionary to completion. His Habilitationsschrift on Shakespeare's style and his other publications and research work led to his appointment in 1974 to the Chair of English and American Literature at the University of Augsburg. At the time of his death he was Dean of his Faculty at Augsburg. Readers of Dictionaries will be aware of his Documentation in the O.E.D.: Shakespeare and Nashe as Test Cases (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), and his breadth is expressed in other publications appropriate to the chair he held: books on Commonwealth literature and twentieth-century American drama as well as articles ranging from Shakespeare to Anthony 284 Jürgen Schäfer285 Powell to contemporary Canadian novelists. The work that will be the capstone of his too brief scholarly career will appear from Oxford University Press (probably in 1986): Elizabethan Lexicography: A Survey of Monolingual Printed Glossaries and Dictionaries, 1475-1640. Several of us gathered in Ann Arbor for the DSNA meeting had the pleasure of hearing him explain the scope and format of this work. Like his Documentation, it provides essential background for the enormous task of completing a dictionary of Renaissance English. No better assessment of his contributions can be written than these following words (sent to me in a letter from his widow, who supplied some of the biographical information recited here): "Please emphasize that he was a philologist in the time-honored sense: a man unable or unwilling to separate language from literature, impervious to -isms of all kinds, yet Jürgen Schäfer, 1933-1985 286Jürgen Schäfer forward-looking in his methods and his means—above all, catholic and progressive in his perceptions of literature in English. His feet were firmly planted in the twentieth century, but his heart belonged to Shakespeare and the English Renaissance. At the very center of his scholarly universe was the word in all its shimmering vitality, and everything evolved from that center." Yet one more trait should, however, be mentioned: his generosity and eagerness to share his scholarship with others. It is to be found, among many other places, in the last sentence of the last scholarly paper he presented: "Only by distributing the enormous task onto various shoulders will it be possible to create dictionaries which will have a life expectancy comparable to that of the OED." His vision, intelligence, and companionship will be greatly missed. Richard W. Bailey The University of Michigan ...