Passow, Franz Ludwig Carl Friedrich
PASSOW, FRANZ LUDWIG CARL FRIEDRICH (1786-1833), German classical scholar and lexicographer, was born at Ludwigslust in Mecklenburg-Schwerin on the 20th of September 1786. In 1807 he was appointed to the professorship of Greek literature at the Weimar gymnasium by Goethe, whose acquaintance he had made during a holiday tour. In 181 5 he became professor of ancient literature in the university of Breslau, where he continued to reside until his death on the nth of March 1833. His advocacy of gymnastic exercises, in which he himself took part, met with violent opposition and caused a quarrel known as the " Breslauer Turnfehde." Passow's great work was his Handwiirterbuch dcr griecliischen Sprache (1819-1824), originally a revision of J. G. Schneider's lexicon, which appeared in the fourth edition (1831) as an independent work, without Schneider's name (new ed. by Cronert, 1901). It formed the basis of Liddell and Scott's lexicon. Other works by him are Grundziige der griech. und rom. Literatur- und Kunstgeschichte (2nd. ed., 1829) and editions of Persius, Longus, Tacitus Germania, Dionysius Periegetes, and Musaeus. His miscellaneous writings have been collected in his Opuscula academica (1835) and Vermischte Schriften (1843).
See Franz Passow's Lehen und Briefe (1839), by L. and A. Wachler, which contains a full bibliography.
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
