Karl Krumbacher

Born Sept. 23, 1856, in Kempten, Bavaria; died Dec. 12, 1909, in Munich. German Byzantinist.

In 1892, Krumbacher became a professor of Byzantine and modern Greek philology at the University of Munich. He founded the first journal of Byzantine studies, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, in 1892. Krumbacher’s History of Byzantine Literature was the first systematic survey of Byzantine literature (including legal, scientific and other works) and remains even now the basic reference in the field. Krumbacher also published texts and wrote monographs on individual Byzantine writers (Michael Glykas). He spoke out against the traditional 19th-century concept that Byzantine literature was essentially imitative and showed it to be a literature in its own right. A bibliography of Krumbacher’s works appeared in Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 1910, vol. 19, pp. 700–08.