George J. Adler

George J. Adler (1821, Leipzig, Germany – August 24, 1868, New York, New York) was a noted philologist and linguist.

Adler arrived in the United States in 1833 and graduated valedictorian from New York University in 1844. In 1846, he became a professor of modern languages at New York University.

In 1849, he compiled the Dictionary of German and English Languages, whose publication marked Adler as one of the great linguists of his era. In 1858, Adler completed his last important work, A Practical Grammar of the Latin Language. Both of these textbooks are in effect editions of the language textbooks of Heinrich Gottfried Ollendorff.

Regarding his important work on the Latin, Adler writes in the preface to the textbook: "The preparation of a text-book for the study of the Latin, similar to that edited by me, some twelve years ago, on the German, has since that time been repeatedly suggested to me … Years however elapsed before I could even think of entering on such a task, … partly because I felt, in common with many others, some hesitation to undertake the somewhat delicate part of treating a so-called dead language like a living organism … It was not until after I had completed what I considered myself bound to render, as professor of a modern language in the city of New York, that I could give the question a serious consideration."

Adler had been diagnosed as insane, reportedly due to the strain of publishing the dictionary. He became a resident of the Bloomingdale Asylum in upper Manhattan in 1853, remaining a semi-permanent resident of the facility until his death there in 1868. Adler is buried at Trinity Cemetery. He wrote a short tract about his insanity, called Letters of a Lunatic.

Adler was known to Herman Melville, whom he met on a sea journey to Europe in October 1849. This was shortly before Melville wrote Moby Dick. Melville wrote of that encounter: "He is author of a formidable lexicon (German and English); in compiling which he almost ruined his health. He was almost crazy, he tells me, for a time. He is full of the German metaphysics, and discourses of Kant, Swedenborg, etc."

...
Wikipedia