EBEL, HERMANN WILHELM (1820-1875), German philologist, was born at Berlin on the 10th of May 1820. He displayed in his early years a remarkable capacity for the study of languages, and at the same time a passionate fondness for music and poetry. At the age of sixteen he became a student at the university of Berlin, applying himself especially to philology, and attending the lectures of Böckh. Music continued to be the favourite occupation of his leisure hours, and he pursued the study of it under the direction of Marx. In the spring of 1838 he passed to the university of Halle, and there began to apply himself to comparative philology under Pott. Returning in the following year to his native city, he continued this study as a disciple of Bopp. He took his degree in 1842, and, after spending his year of probation at the French Gymnasium of Berlin, he resumed with great earnestness his language studies. About 1847 he began to study Old Persian. In 1852 he accepted a professorship at the Beheim-Schwarzbach Institution at Filehne, which post he held for six years. It was during this period that his studies in the Old Slavic and Celtic languages began. In 1858 he removed to Schneidemühl, and there he discharged the duties of first professor for ten years. He was afterwards called to the chair of comparative philology at the university of Berlin. He died at Misdroy on the 19th of August 1875. The most important work of Dr Ebel in the field of Celtic philology is his revised edition of the Grammatica Celtica of Professor Zeuss, completed in 1871. This had been preceded by his treatises—De verbi Britannici futuro ac conjunctivo (1866), and De Zeussii curis positis in Grammatica Celtica (1869). He made many learned contributions to Kühn’s Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung, and to A. Schleicher’s Beiträge zur vergleichenden Sprachforschung; and a selection of these contributions was translated into English by Sullivan, and published under the title of Celtic Studies (1863). Ebel contributed the Old Irish section to Schleicher’s Indogermanische Chrestomathie (1869). Among his other works must be named Die Lehnwörter der deutschen Sprache (1856).
EBEL, JOHANN GOTTFRIED (1764-1830), the author of the first real guide-book to Switzerland, was born at Züllichau (Prussia). He became a medical man, visited Switzerland for the first time in 1790, and became so enamoured of it that he spent three years exploring the country and collecting all kinds of information relating to it. The result was the publication (Zürich, 1793) of his Anleitung auf die nützlichste und genussvollste Art in der Schweitz zu reisen (2 vols.), in which he gave a complete account of the country, the General Information sections being followed by an alphabetically arranged list of places, with descriptions. It at once superseded all other works of the kind, and was the best Swiss guide-book till the appearance of “Murray” (1838). It was particularly strong on the geological and historical sides. The second (1804-1805) and third (1809-1810) editions filled four volumes, but the following (the 8th appeared in 1843) were in a single volume. The work was translated into French in 1795 (many later editions) and into English (by 1818). Ebel also published a work (2 vols., Leipzig, 1798-1802) entitled Schilderungen der Gebirgsvölker der Schweiz, which deals mainly with the pastoral cantons of Glarus and Appenzell. In 1801 he was naturalized a Swiss citizen, and settled down in Zürich. In 1808 he issued his chief geological work, Über den Bau der Erde im Alpengebirge (Zürich, 2 vols.). He took an active share in promoting all that could make his adopted country better known, e.g. Heinrich Keller’s map (1813), the building of a hotel on the Rigi (1816), and the preparation of a panorama from that point (1823). From 1810 onwards he lived at Zürich, with the family of his friend, Conrad Escher von der Linth (1767-1823), the celebrated engineer.
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EBER, PAUL (1511-1569), German theologian, was born at Kitzingen in Franconia, and was educated at Nuremberg and Wittenberg, where he became the close friend of Philip Melanchthon. In 1541 he was appointed professor of Latin grammar at Wittenberg, and in 1557 professor of the Old Testament. His range of learning was wide, and he published a handbook of Jewish history, a historical calendar intended to supersede the Roman Saints’ Calendar, and a revision of the Latin Old Testament. In the theological conflict of the time he played a large part, doing what he could to mediate between the extremists. From 1559 to the close of his life he was superintendent-general of the electorate of Saxony. He attained some fame as a hymn-writer, his best-known composition being “Wenn wir in höchsten Nöthen sein.” He died at Wittenberg on the 10th of December 1569.
EBERBACH, a town of Germany, in the grand-duchy of Baden, romantically situated on the Neckar, at the foot of the Katzenbuckel, 19 m. E. of Heidelberg by the railway to Würzburg. Pop. (1900) 5857. It contains an Evangelical and a Roman Catholic church, a commercial and a technical school, and, in addition to manufacturing cigars, leather and cutlery, carries on by water an active trade in timber and wine. Eberbach was founded in 1227 by the German king Henry VII., who acquired the castle (the ruins of which overhang the town) from the bishop of Worms. It became an imperial town and passed later to the Palatinate.
See Wirth, Geschichte der Stadt Eberbach (Stuttgart, 1864).