Kuno Meyer

Kuno Meyer (20 December 1858 – 11 October 1919) was a German scholar, distinguished in the field of Celtic philology and literature. His pro-German stance at the start of World War I while traveling in the United States was a source of controversy.

Biography

Born in Hamburg, Meyer studied there at the Gelehrtenschule of the Johanneum, and then at the University of Leipzig, where he was taught by Ernst Windisch from 1879. He received his doctorate for his thesis Eine irische Version der Alexandersage (an Irish version of the Alexander Romance) in 1884. He then took up the post of lecturer in Teutonic languages at the new University College, Liverpool, the precursor of the University of Liverpool, established three years earlier.

He continued to publish on Old Irish and more general Celtic language topics, as well as producing textbooks for the German language. In 1896 he founded, and jointly edited with Ludwig Christian Stern, the prestigious Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie.

In 1903 Meyer founded the School of Irish Learning in Dublin, and the next year created its journal Ériu, of which he was the editor. Also in 1904 he became Todd Professor in the Celtic Languages at the Royal Irish Academy. In October 1911 he followed Heinrich Zimmer as Professor of Celtic Philology at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin; the following year a volume of Miscellany was presented to him by pupils and friends in honour of his election, and he was made a freeman of both Dublin and Cork. He also catalogued the various entries by different scribes in the Book of O'Donnell's Daughter, a 17th-century manuscript written in Leuven and preserved in the Bibliothèque Royale in Brussels.