Jean-Dominique Fuss
A brilliant Latinist, the German Jean-Dominique Fuss was called in by WilliamI when the University of Liège was founded. In the Dutch system, antiquities were honored through literature and philology, with particular reference to Greco-Latin culture. Fuss was rector for the academic year 1844-1845, at the age of 62.
Jean-Dominique Fuss (1782-1860) is considered today asone of the most famous poets of the early 19th century to have chosen Latin as his preferred language of expression. Educated in Würzburg, then in Halle, this distinguished Latinist became a disciple of Auguste Schlegel, one of the leading theorists of German Romanticism, and then benefited from the protection of Germaine de Staël, thanks to whom he obtained the position of tutor to the children of Senator Louis Maximilien Rigal in Paris.
His great erudition and friendship with the philologist and archaeologist Charles Benoît Hase earned him a position as Aubin-Louis Millin's secretary in the Cabinet des Antiques at the Bibliothèque Impériale. He returned to his homeland in 1815, when he was appointed professor of ancient literature at the Gymnasium in Cologne.
Two years later, appointed by King William I of Holland, he joined the University of Liège as Professor of Ancient Literature and Roman Antiquities. Between 1830 and 1835, he had to fight to ensure its survival - his faculty was abolished at the time - before only recovering part of his teaching - Roman antiquities - following the reorganization of university education in Belgium.
While he was an ardent defender of the use of Latin in literature, he was unfortunately no longer able to teach it at a university, where he became rector in 1844-1845. In handing over the rectorship to his successor, the philologist who coined the term "neolatin" in its current sense, made a point of returning to the importance of the Latin language and the question of whether it was still necessary to write in Latin (Tienen, 1846).
Admitted to emeritus in 1848, he died in Liège in 1860, never having let his guard down in the midst of this ancient quarrel between Ancients and Moderns.
Que faisons-nous aujourd’hui des poètes latins [du XVIIe siècle], dont le succès a fait rire Boileau et puis Voltaire ? Je réponds à ces faiseurs de phrases […] que […] les facéties de Boileau et le raisonnement de Voltaire à leur égard sont […] des arguments d’écolier pour lesquels il n’est pas raisonnable de [les…] mépriser.
It is said of him
« Mr. Fuss, whom we love as a friend as much as we revered him as a teacher, is one of those few men whom we praise effortlessly, whether in appreciation of his science and talent or his noble character » (Revue de Liège, t. IV, Liège 1845, p. 465).
Gustave Julin, J.O. Fuss,
Professor à université de Liège, oil on canvas, s.d., Musée Wittert-ULiège, inv.12053
