author
August Lübben
1818–1884
A 19th-century German scholar of language, he is best remembered for work that helped preserve and explain Middle Low German. His dictionaries and editions made older northern German texts more accessible to later readers and researchers.
1 Audiobook
Mittelniederdeutsches Handwörterbuch
by August Lübben
About the author
Born in Hooksiel on January 21, 1818, and died in Oldenburg on March 15, 1884, August Lübben was a German philologist, librarian, and teacher. He is closely associated with the study of Low German and Middle Low German, fields in which he produced reference works that remained useful well beyond his lifetime.
Lübben worked as a Gymnasium teacher and later as a librarian, combining careful scholarship with a practical interest in making older texts easier to study. He edited literary and historical material and is especially known as the compiler of the Mittelniederdeutsches Handwörterbuch, a major dictionary of Middle Low German that was published after his death.
His writing belongs to the great 19th-century effort to document regional languages and medieval literature with precision and respect. For readers interested in German language history, his books offer a window into how scholars first mapped the vocabulary and textual world of northern Germany's past.