author
Wolfgang Stammler
1886–1965
A major scholar of medieval German literature, he helped shape the way later readers and researchers approached the field. He is especially remembered for launching an influential reference work on authors of the German Middle Ages.
1 Audiobook
Die Totentänze
by Wolfgang Stammler
About the author
Born in Halle (Saale) in 1886 and dying in Hösbach in 1965, Wolfgang Stammler was a German literary historian and Germanist whose work centered on medieval literature. Standard biographical references describe him as a professor, philologist, and literary historian, with academic posts including Greifswald and later Fribourg.
He is best known for founding the reference work Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon in 1933, a landmark project for the study of medieval German writing. His scholarship helped organize a wide and often difficult body of material into forms that students and researchers could actually use.
Stammler also wrote on subjects such as medieval dance-of-death traditions and broader German philology. Even in brief reference entries, he stands out as a scholar whose legacy is tied not just to individual books, but to building tools that shaped the field itself.