1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nitzsch, Gregor Wilhelm

NITZSCH, GREGOR WILHELM (1790–1861), German classical scholar, brother of Karl Immanuel Nitzsch, was born at Wittenberg on the 22nd of November 1790. In 1827 he was appointed professor of ancient literature at Kiel, but in 1852 was dismissed by the Danish government for his German sympathies. In the same year he accepted a similar post at Leipzig, which he held till his death on the 22nd of July 1861. Nitzsch is chiefly known for his writings on the Homeric epic. In opposition to Wolf and Lachmann, he maintained that the Iliad and Odyssey were not an aggregate of single short poems, but long complete poems, composed by one and the same author according to a uniform plan with a central dramatic idea.

His son, Karl Wilhelm Nitzsch (1818–1880), became professor of history at Königsberg in 1862, and at Berlin in 1872.

The most important of his works were: Erklärende Anmerkungen zu Homer's Odyssee, i.-xii. (1826–1840); Die Sagenpoesie der Griechen (1852); Beiträge zur Geschichte der epischen Poesie der Griechen (pub. 1862, ed. C. W. Nitzsch). See memoir by F. Lübker (1864); Bursian, Geschichte der klassischen Philologie in Deutschland (1883) and J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Class. Schol. iii. (1908), p. 105.