Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld
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Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld is the main character in a series of short, humorous novels by Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith.
In the books, Von Igelfeld is:
- a "Professor Dr";
- proud, stoic, and unable or unwilling to admit or face failure or imminent disaster in his professional or personal life - which is the basis for the humour in these novels;
- a philologist;
- the author of a fictional book Portuguese Irregular Verbs - "the seminal work on Romance philology" and "a lengthy book of some twelve hundred pages";
- proud of his aristocratic German heritage;
- an academic at the fictional Institute of Romance Philology in Regensburg, Germany;
- a colleague of the other major characters of the book series, Professor Dr Dr (honoris causa) Florianus Prinzel and Professor Dr Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer ;
- a compound word name in the German language meaning "hedgehog field" - igel=hedgehog, feld=field;
- said to be quite tall;
- born on May Day, 1 May;
- initially a student in Heidelberg, Germany;
- second for a duel by his friend Prinzel, which he had arranged, mistakenly, in a drunken discussion;
- a doctoral student of Professor Dr Dr Dr Dieter Vogelsang, in Munich, Germany, studying Celtic philology and in particular Early Irish, and completed a field trip to Cork to gather data on its profanity;
- a doctoral student (second assistant) of Professor Walter Schöffler-Henschell at the University of Wiesbaden.
Book series
The books in the series are:
- 2003 Portuguese Irregular Verbs
- 2003 The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs
- 2003 At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances
- 2011 Unusual Uses for Olive Oil
The books' illustrations are by Iain McIntosh.