Philippide, Alexandru I., 1859-1933

Alexandru I. Philippide (Romanian pronunciation: [alekˈsandru filiˈpide]; May 1, 1859 – August 12, 1933) was a Romanian linguist and philologist. Educated in Iași and Halle, he taught high school for several years until 1893, when he secured a professorship at the University of Iași that he would hold until his death forty years later. He began publishing books on the Romanian language around the time he graduated from university, but it was not until he became a professor that he drew wider attention, thanks to a study of the language's history. Although not particularly ideological, he penned sharp, witty polemics directed at various intellectual figures, both at home and, in one noted case, in the German Empire. As a conservative who rallied with the Junimea club, Philippide rejected didactic art and mocked its socialist patrons—though his own work had hints of socialist humanitarianism. In 1898, Philippide began work on a Romanian dictionary; by 1906, he and his team had completed the first four letters of the alphabet before others took over the task. His advocacy of phonetic spelling was cherished by a group of writers and activists which put out Viața Românească magazine; they also shared Philippide's Germanophilia, which manifested itself in particular during the political debates that preceded Romania's entry into World War I. Unlike the other Germanophiles, Philippide spent the second half of the war at Iași, which, following a series of major defeats, endured as the capital of a rump Romanian state. His major work, which appeared in two hefty volumes in 1925 and 1928, brings together a wide range of ancient sources and linguistic evidence to analyze the ethnogenesis of the Romanians and the development of their language. Although attacked for parochialism by one set of academics, the students he trained carried forth his ideas by forming the core of an Iași-based linguistic school.