Antonio Tovar

Antonio Tovar Llorente (Valladolid, May 17, 1911-Madrid, December 13, 1985) was a Spanish philologist, linguist, and historian.

Biography

The son of a notary, due to his father's destinies he grew up in Elorrio (Vizcaya), in Morella (Castellón) and in Villena (Alicante), where he learned to speak Basque and Valencian from a young age. He studied Law at the María Cristina de El Escorial Royal University College, History at the University of Valladolid and Classical Philology at those of Madrid, Paris and Berlin. In 1933 he participated in the university cruise through the Mediterranean.

He obtained his doctorate in 1941 at the University of Madrid with the thesis Description of Greece (translated by the geographer Pausanias). He had as teachers, among others, Cayetano de Mergelina, Manuel Gómez-Moreno, Ramón Menéndez Pidal and Eduard Schwyzer.

During his student years, he was president of the Valladolid University School Federation (FUE), a republican organization. But in September 1936, after the start of the Civil War, he joined the Falangist current influenced by his close friend Dionisio Ridruejo and became one of the main people responsible for the propaganda of the Government of Burgos, but his disappointment with the regime of Francisco Franco was rapidly on the rise.

Civil War

The military uprising surprised him in Berlin visiting a camp of the Hitler Youth. He returned to the rebel zone. During the Civil War, when Ridruejo was National Head of Propaganda, he entrusted the Radio Department to Tovar and was appointed head of Radio Nacional de España, when it broadcast from Salamanca at the time of its foundation (1938). He also collaborated with the Falangist newspaper Arriba España from Pamplona, directed by Fermín Yzurdiaga.

Postwar

Continuing his relationship with Ridruejo and in the orbit of Ramón Serrano Suñer, between December 1940 and May 1941 he held the Undersecretary of Press and Propaganda. He accompanied Serrano Suñer on several trips to Germany and Italy, and during some of these he was present at a meeting with Mussolini and Hitler. Thus, on September 13, 1940, Ramón Serrano Suñer, as Franco's special envoy, left to Germany accompanied by a number of people inclined in favor of National Socialism. In this entourage is Demetrio Carceller Segura along with Miguel Primo de Rivera, Dionisio Ridruejo, Manuel Halcón and Manuel de Mora-Figueroa.

Professor and Chancellor

Away from political life, he took competitive exams (1942) and obtained the Chair of Latin at the University of Salamanca; Since then, he has dedicated himself to teaching and research. That same year, he married Consuelo Larrucea.

During the ministry of Ruiz-Giménez (1951-1956) he was appointed rector and, as such, he organized the celebrations of the VII Centenary of the University of Salamanca, which were attended by the rectors of the main universities in the world and made a memorable parade through the streets of Salamanca, with their traditional gala costumes.

Following the celebration of the Centenary, in 1954 he succeeded in getting Salamanca to offer doctoral degrees again (the first university in Spain to recover this possibility since the Moyano law of 1857 had reserved it exclusively for the University Central de Madrid) and that a large number of the bibliographic collections that were looted by the French troops when they withdrew from Spain in 1813, recovered after the battle of Vitoria, and were kept in the library of the Palace, were returned to the University library. Real. He created the first chair of Basque language and literature in Spain, for which he called Koldo Mitxelena, among many other achievements.

He remained there officially, on leave of absence, until 1963; although he left Spain before he went into exile due to the ideological differences that he had as rector.

After Activity

He was a professor of Greek at the University of Buenos Aires (1948-49) and of linguistics at the University of Tucumán (1958-59), the latter institution where he studied the indigenous languages of northern Argentina and tried to create a school that continue his work in this field.

At the University of Illinois, he was named first the Miller Visiting Professor of Classics (1960-1961), and then Professor of Classics (1963-1967). In 1965 he won the chair of Latin at the University of Madrid, which allowed him to return to Spain. Shortly after arriving, he encountered the student revolt that culminated in the demonstration led by Tierno Galván, Aranguren, García Calvo and Montero Díaz. When they were expelled from the University (the first three permanently and Montero Díaz temporarily), he resigned in solidarity and returned to the United States, until 1967, when he was called to occupy the chair of comparative linguistics at the University of Tübingen (Germany), where he taught until his retirement in 1979.

He dedicated his studies to classical philology and a large number of languages, including Euskera (he is currently publishing his Dictionary Etymology of the Basque Language, in collaboration with Manuel Agud and Koldo Mitxelena), Proto-Indo-European (and the languages of this family), other primitive languages of the peninsula (such as Iberian) and Amerindian languages (at the University of Salamanca there is a chair of Amerindian languages that bears his name). He spoke a dozen languages and knew a hundred and fifty others.

He was editor of the magazine Emerita (1939-1944), Minos (1951-1968, together with E. Peruzzi and M. S. Ruipérez) and Acta Salmanticensia (1944-1951). He was a literary critic at the Illustrated Gazette , where Pedro Laín Entralgo (theatrical critic) and Julián Marías (film critic) also wrote.

His fondness for comparative linguistics and irrepressible curiosity about languages, together with having lived in the Basque Country and Valencia, provided him with a solid foundation that made him a benchmark within Hispanic philology.

Awards

• He occupied the "J" chair of the Royal Academy (1968) and was a member of the Royal Academy of Basque Language (since 1947).
• He was appointed Doctor Honoris Causa by the Universities of Munich (1953), Buenos Aires (1954), Dublin (1979) and Seville (1980).
• In 1981, he was awarded the Goethe Award for his work for freedom of investigation and chairmanship.
• In 1982 he was awarded the Cross of San Jorge granted by the Generality of Catalonia, and in 1984 he received the Castilla y León Prize for Social Sciences and Communication in his first edition.
• A central street in Salamanca is named Rector Tovar.
• An Institute of Valladolid has the name of Antonio Tovar.

Some of his most relevant publications

• In the first spin (study on Antiquity), Madrid, Espasa Calpe, 1941.
• Life of Socrates, Madrid, Revista de Occidente, 1947 (1953²1966³).
• Studies on the primitive Spanish languages, Buenos Aires, Instituto de Filología, 1949 (English translation, New York, 1961)
• The Basque language, San Sebastian, Basque Library of the Friends of the Country, 1950.
• Political facts in Plato and AristotleBuenos Aires, Perrot, 1954.
• A book about PlatoMadrid, Espasa Calpe, 1956 (English translation, Chicago, 1969).
• Forest of a typological map of the languages of South AmericaBogota, Instituto Caro and Cuervo, 1961.
• History of Greece (with Martín Sánchez Ruipérez), Barcelona, Montaner and Simon, 1963 (varias reeds).
• History of the Old East, Barcelona, Montaner and Simon, 1963 (varias reeds.).
• University and mass education (experiment on the future of Spain), Barcelona, Ariel, 1968.
• Studies on Ancient Spain (with Julio Caro Baroja, Madrid: CSIC-Fundación Pastor, 1971.
• Sprachen und Inschriften. Studien zum Mykenischen, Lateinischen und HispanokeltischenAmsterdam, B.R.Grüner, 1973.
• History of Roman Hispania: The Iberian Peninsula from 218 B.C. to the 5th Century (with J. M. Blázquez), Madrid, Alianza, 1975.
• Iberische Landeskunde. Zweiter Teil. Die Völker und die Städte des antiken Hispanien (continued) Iberische Landeskunde of Adolf Schulten), 3 vols.: Bética (1974), Lusitania (1976), Tarracon (1989, posthumous)[1].
• Einführung in die Sprachgeschichte der Iberischen Halbinsel: Das heutige Spanisch und seine historischen Grundlagen, Tübingen, TBL-Verlag Narr, 1977 (varias reeds).
• Mythology and ideology on the Basque language: History of studies on it, Madrid, Alianza, 1980 (reed. 2007).
• Relatos y diálogos de Los Matacos (chaco Argentinian Occidental). Followed by a grammar of his tongue, Madrid, Inst. Hispanic Culture, 1981.
• Catalogue of the languages of South America: with classifications, typological indications, bibliography and maps (with his wife, Consuelo Larrucea de Tovar), Madrid, Gredos, 1984.
• Basque etymological dictionary (with Manuel Agud), San Sebastian, Gipuzkoako Foru Aldundia, 1991 and 1992.

• Detailed lists of his works can be seen in the catalogues of the National Library of Spain and the UCM Library, and here.

Tributes

• Tribute to Antonio Tovar. Offered by his disciples, colleagues and friends, Madrid, Gredos, 1972.
• Navicula Tubingensis. Studia in honorem Antonii TovarTubinga, G. Narr, 1984.
• I Antonio Tovar Symposium on Amerindian Languages (Tordesillas, 2000), Valladolid, Instituto de Estudios de Iberoamérica and Portugal, 2003.