History of the Department
compiled by Paul Videsott on the occasion of the 100th anniversary celebrations of the department
With the entry into force of the UOG 2002, all existing organisational units of the University of Innsbruck, i.e. also the Institute of Romance Studies, will continue to be run only provisionally until the new organisational plan comes into force. The Institute itself is assigned to the newly established "Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies". In the SS 2004, over 1000 students took Romance Studies. Several graduates of Innsbruck Romance Studies have achieved a considerable degree of recognition in the fields of science, politics and the media.
2002: Appointment of Heidi Siller-Runggaldier (linguistics) and Ursula Moser (literature) to two newly created professorships. The institute had then a total of five professorships. Heidi Siller-Runggaldier's research focuses on semantics and syntax (especially from a valency theory perspective), grammar writing, word formation, language comparison and Romansh (in particular its Ladin varieties). Ursula Moser's research focuses on modern French literature, the Francophonie of North America and the Caribbean, migration literature, text and music; in Spanish, she specializes in early narrative literature, folk tales and realism.
The "Centre d'étude de la chanson québécoise" is headed by Prof. Ursula Mathis-Moser.
"Department of Text and Music in Romance Studies" was headed by Prof. Ursula Mathis-Moser
In the same year the "Department of Romansh Studies” was founded, headed by Prof. Guntram A. Plangg until the summer term of 2003, then by Prof. Heidi Siller-Runggaldier. In recognition of their services to Romansh, Univ. Prof. Heinrich Kuen (Erlangen) and Dr. Andrea Schorta (Chur) were awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Innsbruck respectively in 1985 and 1990.
This course was held for the first time in 1967 by Prof. Helga Zangerle.
by Herbert Frenzel. His book Ariost und die romantische Dichtung (Ariost and Romantic Poetry), published in 1962, is recognised as his doctoral thesis.
In 1952/53 the first classes on Portuguese were given by Mag. Luis von Villa-Secca.
Through the annexation of Austria to Hitler's Germany and the law "on the restoration of the professional civil service" once in force there, 54 university teachers were dismissed from service in Innsbruck, including Mag. Nikolaus Martin, lecturer in didactics at the Institute of Romance Studies. Due to the turmoil following the annexation, Kurt Wais' appointment was also suspended; the new university management asked instead Mulertt to return to Innsbruck.
The first Spanish language classes were offered by Dr. Heinrich Kuen, later professor in Erlangen.
Rosa Weichert, Preliminary Studies on the Récits d'un Menestrel de Reims.
The institute was once housed in an apartment at Universitätsstraße 7 in Innsbruck. It had three habilitated lecturers (as well as a lecturer who held classes on French language and culture): in addition to Gartner and Farinelli, there was also Wolfram von Zingerle (son of the famous Germanist and Tyrolean legend researcher Ignaz von Zingerle), who mainly taught Old French literature. He had qualified in Vienna in 1884 with a thesis on the Old French prose novel Floris and Liriope and, from autumn 1886, gave lectures at the University of Innsbruck with some breaks as he was also amanuensis (later scriptor, and finally chief librarian) at the university library. The following courses were listed in the course catalogue for the winter term 1904/05: Gartner: Reading Old French Texts (VO 3h), Introduction to Old Provençal (VO 3h), Seminar Exercise (2h); Farinelli: Petrarca e l'Umanesimo in Italia (lecture, 3 hours), Il "Cortegiano" e le questioni sulla lingua dibattutesi nel corso de secoli (lecture, 2 hours), Alarcon’s „Verdad Sospechosa“ mit textkritischen Übungen (1 hour); Bestaux (lecturer): Lectures et conversation françaises (2 hours), Traduction écrite et orale (based on the reading of Der Schwiegersohn des Herrn Poirier) (2 hours), Victor Hugo (2 hours).
The “Chair of Romance Philology” was created through the "Chair of Italian Language and Literature" which had existed since 1816 and whose last holder, Prof. Fortunato Demattio, had already held an extended teaching position for "Italian language and literature and Romance philology" since 1879. The reasons given for converting the Italian chair into a Romance chair included the steadily growing number of students and the fact that "in Innsbruck, the teacher training examination in French could not be taken because there was no examiner for modern French language and literature." The ministry accepted Demattio's and the faculty's proposal, assuming that this would mean the end of the Italian studies chair. However, the faculty insisted that the Romance studies chair was a new establishment and that Innsbruck was therefore entitled to two chairs (one for Romance studies and one for Italian studies). The issue surrounding this second chair, which focused on literary studies, would shape the history and activities of Romance studies in Innsbruck for decades (until 1965). The first full professor of Romance studies was Theodor Gartner (previously professor in Czernowitz), whose research focused on Romansh and Romanian. Gartner, a self-taught scholar, can be regarded as the Austrian precursor of structuralist, synchronic linguistics. He became famous above all for his work on Romansh: (together with G. I. Ascoli) he was one of the first to recognize and describe scientifically its fundamental typological profile. Based on expert opinions by W. Meyer-Lübke and Gustav Gröber, Jules Cornu (Prague, primo loco ex aequo with Gartner), Heinrich Schneegans (Erlangen) and Matthias Friedwanger (Vienna) were also considered for this professorship. Gartner's valuable library was purchased for the institute from his estate in 1926. It contained approximately 940 titles, including around 570 works published before 1900 and a large number of unique and extremely rare Romansh volumes, which are now kept in the university library.
Compiled by Paul Videsott on the occasion of the institute's 100th anniversary celebrations.