Rudolf (Ernst Rudolf Anastasius) Köpke

Born in Königsberg on August 23, 1813, Rudolf Köpke moved to Berlin as a child when his father, the educator Friedrich Karl Köpke, took up a post there. He entered the University of Berlin in 1832 intending to study theology, but soon turned to history, joining the early circle shaped by the great historian Leopold von Ranke.

Köpke taught at the Joachimsthalsches Gymnasium in Berlin from 1838 to 1842 and later qualified as a university lecturer. He also worked with the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, the landmark source edition for medieval studies, and from 1856 served as an associate professor at the University of Berlin while teaching history at the War Academy.

His writing ranged across both history and literary biography. Among his best-known works are studies of medieval German history and his substantial two-volume life of Ludwig Tieck, which helped preserve memories of one of German Romanticism’s central figures. He died near Berlin on June 10, 1870.