All Scholars
LATTE, Kurt
- Date of Birth: March 9, 1891
- Born City: Königsberg
- Born State/Country: Germany
- Parents: a physician, & Nanny Maschke L.
- Date of Death: June 18, 1964
- Death City: Tutzing
- Death State/Country: Germany
- Married: Hermione Rackebrandt, 1950
- Education:
Study at Königsberg, Bonn, & Berlin, 1908-13; Ph.D. Königsberg, 1913; phil. habil., Münster, 1920; DDL (hon.), Heidelberg, 1951.
- Dissertation:
“De saltationibus Graecorum capita V” (Ph.D., Königsberg, 1913); “Heiliges Recht: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der sakralen Rechtformen in Griechenland” (phil. habil., Münster, 1920).
- Professional Experience:
Ordinarius, Greifswald, 1923-6; Basel. 1926-31; Göttingen, 1931-5; 1945-57; Tutzing, 1957-1964; pres. & vice pres., Göttingen Academy, 1949-54; board, Mommsen Society, 1950-64; vice president, FIEC.
- Publications:
Hesychii Alexandrini Lexicon, 2 vols. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1952-1966repr. 2022); Römische Religionsgeschichte (Munich: Beck, 1960; 2nd rev. ed. 1967); Kleine Schriften zu Religion, Recht, Literatur und Sprache der Griechen und Römer, ed. O. Gigon (Munich: Beck, 1968).
- Notes:
A student of Wilamowitz and Hermann Diels at Berlin, he contracted to publish a lexicon to Hesychius of Alexandria. After serving in an artillery team in World War I, he became an assistant at the Münster’s Institute of archaeology. Latte served stints at Greifswald and Basel before being appointed to the chair at Göttingen, vacated when Richard August Reitzenstein (1861-1931) (in the same year Eduard Fraenkel left for Freiburg.) Because he was a Jew, Latte was subject to severe pressures starting in 1933 and in 1935 was obliged to resign his chair. He remained in Germany for two years living with or hiding out with friends like Bruno Snell and Konrat Ziegler. In 1937 he came to America for a year’s post at the University of Chicago, probably at the invitation of Werner Jaeger, but Latte could not stay in Chicago. He returned to Göttingen in 1945 and resumed his professorship until 1957, when he moved to Tutzing.
His Kleine Schriften contain articles on Sallust, Virgil, Horace, law, religion and lexicography. He is best known for his lifelong work on the lexicon to Hesychius and for Römische Religionsgeschichte which extended the subject of his habilitation, tracing the growing politicization of Roman religion. He led the Göttingen Academy to new prominence and helped the Mommsen Society find acceptance by the international Federation of Associations of Classical Studies (FIEC).
- Sources:
Gnomon 37 (1965) 215-19; C.J. Klassen, “Kurt Latte” in Die Klassische Altertumswissenschaft an der Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, 1989) 197-233; H Dörrie, NDB 13 (1982) 685-6; Dietmar Schmitz, Pauly, 353-4.
- Author: Ward Briggs
