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Annelies KammenhuberGerman linguist
Date of Birth: 19.03.1922
Country:  Germany |
Content:
Early Life and Education
Anneliese Kammenhuber was born into a working-class family in Hamburg, Germany. She completed her primary and secondary education in her hometown, where she also served in a labor service during the Nazi regime.
After the war, Kammenhuber enrolled in the University of Hamburg, pursuing a degree in philology. Despite the disruptions of the war, she eventually completed her studies in 1950.
Concurrently, from 1946, she also pursued a second degree at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. There, she contributed to the revival of linguistic seminars that had been suspended during the war.
Academic Career
In 1950, Kammenhuber received her doctorate with a dissertation on the morphology of Hittite nouns. Although she continued her research on Anatolian languages, she surprised many by obtaining her habilitation degree in Iranian studies in 1958 with a dissertation on the ancient Videvdat.
In 1959, at the invitation of Émile Benveniste and Emmanuel Laroche, she joined the Linguistic Society of Paris. She became an associate professor in 1964. In 1968, she took up a teaching position at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in the Vatican.
In 1969, she returned to Munich and was appointed as a full professor at the newly established Institute of Assyriology and Hittite Studies. She remained head of the Hittite Studies division until her retirement in 1987.
Research and Publications
Anneliese Kammenhuber made significant contributions to the grammatical and lexical study of ancient Near Eastern languages, particularly Anatolian languages. She collaborated with Johannes Friedrich on a Hittite dictionary and published works on dating ancient Anatolian texts. Her research also included the Hatti, Hurrian, and other extinct languages of Asia Minor.
Legacy
Anneliese Kammenhuber's groundbreaking research and mentorship left a lasting legacy in the field of linguistics. She was highly respected for her linguistic insights and intellectual rigor. Her work continues to inspire and inform scholars in Anatolian and Indo-European studies.
