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ABOUT

Carl Faulmann

Johann Christoph Carl Faulmann or Karl Faulmann, b. Halle an der Saale, Germany, 1835, d. Vienna, Austria, 1894. In his Geschichte der Schrift: Von den Hieroglyphen bis heute (2002), Harald Haarmann describes Faulmann as a pioneer in the study of writing in the 19th century. He writes that when Carl Faulmann published his Illustrierte Geschichte der Schrift in 1880, his work was the first universal history on the subject and stood alone on the academic landscape of the day.

Carl Faulmann initially trained to be a typesetter. His travels led him to Munich, where in 1854 he saw shorthand types from the Royal Court and State Printers in Vienna. Faulmann was inspired by the experience to develop similar versions for Franz Xaver Gabelsberger's stenography system which was popular in the southern part of Germany. In 1855 he became typesetter for foreign languages at the court in Vienna. After four years he resigned from state service and worked as a stenography teacher and typesetter. On the side he continued to augment his language skills auto-didactically, learning Hebrew, Persian and Sanskrit, among others. He wrote various works on linguistic fundamentals that were re-issued for decades. In 1884, Carl Faulmann was named professor of stenography at the University of Vienna. A complete compendium of his work can be found in this German wikipedia page. His books include

• Das Buch der Schrift (1878: The Book of Script). In this text, he attempts to systematically collect and representat all known writing systems from around the world. Local download.
• Illustrierte Geschichte der Schrift (1880, The Illustrated History of Script), published by Hartleben in Vienna. DNB writes that though pioneering at the time, this book is today considered outdated: steeped in the Eurocentric zeitgeist of his age, Faulmann attributed to Germanic runes the status of an ancient script on a par with the much older Egyptian hieroglyphs. Download site. Local download.
• Das Buch der Schrift enthaltend die Schriftzeichen und Alphabete aller Zeiten und Völker des Erdkreises (1878, Vienna). This text contains a goldmine of symbols. Local download. Discussion (in Russian).
• Illustrierte Geschichte der Buchdruckerkunst (The Illustrated History of the Art of Printing, 1882). Local download.
• Etymologische Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache (The Etymological Dictionary of the German Language, 1881-1883).

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