author
August Lübben
1818–1884
Best remembered for his work on Low German and Middle Low German, this 19th-century scholar helped preserve the language history of northern Germany. He was also a teacher and librarian whose reference works remained valuable long after his lifetime.
1 Audiobook
Mittelniederdeutsches Handwörterbuch
by August Lübben
About the author
Born in Hooksiel in 1818 and dying in Oldenburg in 1884, Heinrich August Lübben was a German philologist, librarian, and secondary-school teacher. Reliable biographical sources consistently describe him as a Germanist who devoted much of his work to Low German studies, especially the history and vocabulary of Middle Low German.
He studied theology and philology in Jena, Leipzig, and Berlin, then taught first in Jever and later in Oldenburg. Alongside his teaching career, he built a lasting reputation as a scholar of northern German language and literature, and he eventually served as librarian to the grand ducal library in Oldenburg.
Lübben is especially associated with major reference works on Middle Low German, including a dictionary and a grammar, which made older texts more accessible to later readers and researchers. For listeners interested in language history, he stands out as one of the careful 19th-century scholars who helped keep regional literary traditions from fading out of view.