Franz Pfeiffer

Franz Pfeiffer.

Franz Pfeiffer (February 27, 1815 - May 29, 1868), was a Swiss literary scholar.

He was born in Solothurn as a Bürger (citizen) of Bettlach. After studying at the University of Munich he went to Stuttgart, where in 1846 he became librarian to the royal library. In 1856, Pfeiffer founded the Germanic, a quarterly periodical devoted to German antiquarian research. In 1857, having established himself as one of the foremost authorities on German medieval literature and philology, he was appointed professor of these subjects at the University of Vienna; and in 1860 was made a member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. He died at Vienna.

Pfeiffer's most significant work is arguably the second volume of his Die deutschen Mystiker (German Mysticism). In this volume Pfeiffer collected the surviving German texts of the 14th Century mystic Meister Eckhart, who was at that time largely forgotten. This publication of the German Eckhartian corpus led to the modern revival of interest in Eckhart. Though there was subsequent dispute as to how many of the texts in Pfeiffer's edition are genuinely by Eckhart, his edition remains the standard and classic reference. The early translators of Eckhart into English, Evans and Blakney, depended largely on Pfeiffer for their source material.

In his later years, he traveled regularly to Überlingen am Bodensee to enjoy the waters at the city's spa.

Works

Of his independent writings the most important are

• Zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte
• Freie Forschung: kleine Schriften zur Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur und Sprache
• Über Wesen und Bildung der hofischen Sprache in mittelhochdeutscher Zeit
• Der Dichter des Nibelungenliedes
• Forschung und Kritik auf dem Gebiete des deutschen Altertums
• Altdeutsches Übungsbuch.

As editor

Among the many writings he edited were

• Barlaam und Josaphat, Rudolf von Ems (1843)
• Edelstein, Ulrich Boner (1844)
• Die deutschen Mystiker des 14. Jahrhunderts (1845-1857)
• Buch der Natur of Konrad von Megenberg, a 14th century writer (1861)
• Die Predigten des Berthold von Regensburg, vol. 1, vol. 2 (1862,1880)
• Poems of Walther von der Vogelweide (1864)

References

• Biographical sketch by Karl Bartsch, in Uhlands Briefwechsel mit Freiherrn von Lassberg, edited by Franz Pfeiffer (1870)
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.