August Lübben

Born in Hooksiel on January 21, 1818, and later dying in Oldenburg on March 15, 1884, August Lübben was a Germanist, librarian, and Gymnasium teacher. He came from a teacher’s family, studied in Jever, and built a career that combined scholarship with education.

Lübben is especially associated with the study of Low German and Middle Low German. He worked on dictionaries and language reference works, including the Mittelniederdeutsches Wörterbuch project with Karl Schiller, and he also began a Mittelniederdeutsches Handwörterbuch, which was completed after his death. His writing helped make older northern German texts and dialect traditions more accessible to later readers and researchers.

What makes him notable for modern readers is the quiet usefulness of his work: he was one of those scholars who helped keep a language tradition from fading out of view. For anyone interested in philology, regional literature, or the history of German, his work remains part of the foundation.