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 in the United States was a source of controversy. His brother was the distinguished classical scholar, Eduard Meyer.

Meyer was considered first and foremost a lexicographer among Celtic scholars but is known by the general public in Ireland rather as the man who introduced them to Selections from Ancient Irish Poetry (1911).

He founded and edited four journals devoted to Celtic Studies, published numerous texts and translations of Old and Middle Irish romances and sagas, and wrote prolifically, his topics ranging to name origins and ancient law.

Born in Hamburg, he studied there at the Gelehrtenschule of the Johanneum. He spent two years in Edinburgh, Scotland, as a teenager (1874–1876) learning English.

From 1879, he attended the University of Leipzig, where he was taught Celtic scholarship by Ernst Windisch. He received his doctorate for his thesis Eine irische Version der Alexandersage, on 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, which was established three years earlier. While at Liverpool, he was appointed to the post of MacCallum Lecturer at the University of Glasgow. He held this post for three years, delivering his first lectures in 1904. He was among those who called for the establishment of a permanent lectureship in Celtic Studies at Glasgow. On 26 October 1904, Kuno Meyer delivered a lecture titled An Appeal for a Gaelic Academy to the Liverpool branch of the Gaelic League. Throughout the lecture, Meyer draws parallels between the Irish and Hungarian language revival movements, ultimately calling upon Irish intellectuals to use the Hungarian Academy as a model from which to build an Irish academic institution.

He continued to publish on Old Irish and more general topics on the Celtic languages, as well as producing textbooks for German. In 1896, he founded and edited jointly with Ludwig Christian Stern, the prestigious Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie. He also co-founded Archiv für celtische Lexicographie in 1898 with Whitley Stokes, producing 3 volumes from 1900 to 1907.

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.