Julius Platzmann


Karl Julius Platzmann was a German botanist, draftsman and philologist. His official Author citation was “Platzm.

Life

Between 1858 and 1864, Platzmann lived in Paranagua, in order to study the local flora and fauna. His place in the history of linguistics is owed to his passion for collecting words in Latin American languages. He collected books about Native American languages written by missionaries. Later he published facsimiles of these books, beginning in 1874 with a facsimile of the Tupi grammar of 1595 by the Jesuit José de Anchieta. Facsimile editions of historical South American language books followed and eventually included the Carib, Arawak, Tupi-Guaraní, Araucano, Quechua-Aymará and the Mexican Nahuatl languages.

Selected bibliography