author
Wilhelm Wattenbach
1819–1897
A leading 19th-century German historian and philologist, he became especially known for his deep knowledge of medieval sources. His work helped generations of scholars navigate the chronicles, manuscripts, and documentary traditions of the Middle Ages.
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About the author
Born in Holstein in 1819, Wilhelm Wattenbach studied philology at the universities of Bonn, Göttingen, and Berlin. Early in his career, he worked with the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, the major scholarly project devoted to editing sources for medieval German history.
He later served as an archivist in Breslau and went on to teach history as a professor at Heidelberg before moving to Berlin. He was widely respected for his command of medieval chronicles and original documents, and for the careful, source-based approach he brought to historical study.
Wattenbach is best remembered for his work on the sources of medieval German history, especially Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter. Even today, he is associated with the patient scholarly craft of tracing how the Middle Ages can be reconstructed from manuscripts, records, and other surviving texts.