author
Wolfgang Stammler
1886–1965
A major scholar of medieval German literature, he helped build some of the key reference works that later readers and researchers still rely on. His career moved between teaching, literary history, and large-scale editorial projects centered on the German Middle Ages.
1 Audiobook
Die Totentänze
by Wolfgang Stammler
About the author
Born in Halle an der Saale in 1886 and dying in Hösbach in 1965, Wolfgang Stammler was a German literary historian and philologist best known for his work on medieval German literature. Reference sources consistently describe him as a Germanist and literature historian, and note his long academic career in Hannover, Greifswald, and later Fribourg.
He is especially remembered for launching major scholarly tools, including the Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturgeschichte and the medieval-literature reference work Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon. Those projects helped organize a vast body of material and made him an important behind-the-scenes figure in twentieth-century German literary scholarship.
Stammler also worked on the Pommersches Wörterbuch and wrote literary history of his own, showing a wide interest in language, texts, and the traditions of the German Middle Ages. For listeners coming to his books today, he stands out as a careful, system-minded scholar whose work was meant to preserve and explain older literature for new generations.