Eduard Fraenkel

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German-British academic, one of the most prominent and respected classical philologists of the 20th century, known for publishing monumental studies of both Greek and Latin poets. Most well known are his book-length study of the Roman comic poet Plautus, Plautinisches im Plautus, which was later expanded and translated into Italian as Elementi Plautini in Plauto. An English version, Plautine Elements in Plautus, was published in 2007 on the basis of the German and Italian versions. Also notable are his 1950 magisterial three volume text, commentary, and translation of the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, which remains one of the standard works of scholarship on that play, and a valuable study of the poetry of Horace. Eduard Fraenkel was born to Jewish parents. At the age of ten, he suffered from an attack of osteomyelitis in his right arm that deformed his right hand. From 1897 to 1906 he attended the Askanisches Gymnasium in Berlin, where he was educated in Greek and Latin. At University, he began to study law, but soon turned his attention to Classics at Berlin University under the great philologist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. After two years, he moved from Berlin to Göttingen where he stayed until 1912, studying under Friedrich Leo (1851–1914). After losing his post under the antisemitic laws passed in 1933, Fraenkel emigrated to Great Britain. In 1934 he was elected to a Bevan fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, but later in the year took up the Corpus Chair of Latin at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, a post he held until 1953. He was known to be an impressive and exhilarating, if formidable, teacher of both Latin and Greek literature. After 1953 he continued teaching as an honorary fellow. At Oxford he frequently arranged private tutoring sessions for female students and would sexually assault them during these sessions. Isobel Henderson, a tutor at Somerville College, warned students that they would learn much from Fraenkel but they would be "pawed about a bit." Cambridge classicist Mary Beard referred to him as a "serial groper", but noted that biographies omitted the "persistent sexual harassment" intrinsic to his teaching. Fraenkel took his own life on 5 February 1970, aged 81, a few hours after his wife died of natural causes. Link to Wikipedia biography