Wilhelm Maximilian Otto Behaghel

Wilhelm Maximilian Otto Behaghel was born on May 3, 1854 in Karlsruhe. As the son of a senior church official, he did his military service 1872 in the Baden regiment before attending university from 1873 to 1876. 

In 1876, Behaghel obtained his doctorate, with his dissertation addressing a syntax-related issue in German. Behaghel qualified as a professor in 1878 with a postdoctoral dissertation which further focused on syntax.

Otto Behaghel was a three-time dean of the University of Giessen in the transition from the 19th to the 20th century. After his studies in German, Romance, and Classical Philology in Heidelberg, Paris, and Göttingen, he became a professor in Basel before teaching and researching in Giessen from 1888 to 1925.

Behaghel became widely known for the formulation of Behaghel's laws, which still to this day, are often referenced as part of the theme-rheme structuring research and quantitative linguistics.

The street on which most of the university's liberal arts institutes are situated is named after him. Otto Behaghel was a German philologist who focused on language as well as literature. His most important works deal with the history of the German language and German syntax. 

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