Jürgen Trabant

Jürgen Trabant was born in 1942 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He is Professor emeritus of Romance Linguistics at Freie Universität Berlin. He studied Romance and Germanic philology and philosophy in Frankfurt, Paris and Tübingen, where he accomplished his PhD in 1969. He taught at the Universities of Tübingen, Bari, Rome, Hamburg, and Berlin and was Visiting Professor in Stanford, Leipzig, at UCL Davis, in Paris, Limoges, Naples, Bologna, Brasília, Milan, and Shanghai. Jürgen Trabant was Professor for European Plurilingualism at Jacobs University Bremen (2008–13) and member of the research group “Bildakt und Verkörperung” (2010–2014). From 2014–2017, he worked with a research grant by Volkswagen-Stiftung on “Symbolic articulation” at Humboldt University Berlin. His books were translated into many European and Asian languages.

Publications (Selection):
Wilhelm von Humboldt. Menschen Sprachen Politik. Königshausen & Neumann, 2021.
Sprachdämmerung. Eine Verteidigung. C. H. Beck, 2020.
Wissenschaftssprache. Ein Plädoyer für Mehrsprachigkeit in den Wissenschaften (co-authored with Jürgen Mittelstrass and Peter Fröhlicher). Metzler, 2016.
Globalesisch oder was?. C. H. Beck, 2014.
Was ist Sprache? C. H. Beck, 2008.
Mithridates im Paradies. Kleine Geschichte des Sprachdenkens. C. H. Beck, 2003.
Der Gallische Herkules. Über Sprache und Politik in Frankreich und Deutschland. Francke, 2002.

Awards (Selection):
2017: Member of the Accademia delle Scienze di Torino
2012: Member of the Società Nazionale di Scienze, Lettere e Arti, Naples
2011: Commendatore nell’ordine al merito della Repubblica Italiana
2004: Chevalier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres
1998: Officier de l’ordre national du mérite
1992: Member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities