Hans Ferdinand Massmann

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Hans Ferdinand Massmann (German: Maßmann; 15 August 1797 – 3 August 1874) was a German philologist, well known for his studies in Old German language and literature.

Massmann was born in Berlin, Margraviate of Brandenburg, where he also studied. After serving in the War of Liberation, his radical ideas and "demagogue" sympathies brought him into difficulties with the authorities. In 1826 he became a teacher at the Royal Gymnastic Institute of Munich and afterward was chosen professor of Old German Literature at the university. In Berlin, whither he had gone in 1842 to introduce gymnastics into the Prussian service, he accepted the chair of Germanic philology at the city university. He died in Muskau in Lusatia.

Massmann's writings include editions of Deutsche Gedichte des 12 Jahrhunderts (1837-42); Gottfried's Tristan (1843); Kaiserchronik (1849-53); of the biblical translations of the Gothic Bishop Ulfilas (1855-56) and of Tacitus's Germania (1847); Geschichte des mittelalterlichen Schachspiels (1839); Litteratur der Totentänze (1840).

Consult article in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, volume xx (Leipzig, 1884), and Euler and Hartstein, H. F. Massmann: sein Leben, seine Turn- und Vaterlandslieder (Berlin, 1897).

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