All Scholars

Otto Immisch began his career modeling the ideals of secondary-school teaching as embodied by his schoolteacher father. At Leipzig he was introduced to the rewards of research by the Latinist Otto Ribbeck (1827-98). After teaching at a Leipzig Gymnasium, he completed his habilitation and began his university teaching career at Leipzig. Immisch published and lectured on a wide variety of subjects, spanning the breadth of Classical literature from Homer to Late Latin lexicography. He examined the rise of the Greek epic in Die innere Entwicklung des griechischen Epos, produced valuable editions of Theophrastus’s Characteres (1923), and Gorgias’s Encomium of Helen. (1927). Perhaps in keeping with the philosophical emphasis at Leipzig, he turned his attention to Plato. In the first volume of his Philologische Studien zu Plato (1896), he considered the authenticity of the analyzed Axiochus. Stylistic analysis and subject-matter comparison (contemplation of death) with dialogues of the same period convinced Immisch that the dialogue was genuine. The second volume, De recensionis Platonicae praesidiis atque rationibus (1903) was a philological analysis of Plato’s works. He revised Franz Susemihl’s (1826-1901) 1894 of Aristotle’s Politics in 1909 became the standard edition. Immisch documented textual variants and made corrections where he thought there were difficulties in the complicated transmission of the text and where variants may have been inserted by Aristotle himself. In carefully distinguishing notions of democracy, monarchy, and oligarchy, Immisch clarified numerous terms of citizenship and justice. In 1913 he offered readings on the authenticity of Plato’s first letter and readings in Aristotle’s Poetics. Along with notes of the textual problems in Aristotle, he contributed (often to Rheinisches Museum and Philologus) a number of articles on Latin authors, including Plautus, Catullus, Virgil, and Tibullus. His edition of Horace’s Ars Poetica stressed Hellenistic influence in Augustan Rome and was widely praised. 

        Immisch maintained an interest in making the classical world available beyond the world of philologists. He co-edited with Otto Crusius (1857-1918) the series Das erbe der Alten, which introduced non-technical accounts of classical texts for a popular audience. Following Crusius’s death, he assumed the sole editorship and continued to edit the series after his retirement. Following his years as a teacher in Dresden, he also addressed the difficulties of learning ancient languages in Wie studiert man klassische Philologie? (1909), offering practical methods of studying philology. Throughout his years of regular scholarly contributions, he maintained a balance of teaching and scholarship along with an interest in reforms of the German humanistic curriculum in gymnasiums. He chaired the German Gymnasium Association  and organized summer courses in Meersburg from 1922.