Herbert Hunger

File:Herberthunger.jpg

Herbert Hunger

Herbert Hunger (9 December 1914 – 9 July 2000) was an Austrian Byzantinist, palaeographer and university professor. He specialised in secular Byzantine literature.

Biography

Hunger was born and died in Vienna. He studied classical philology and German studies at the University of Vienna and graduated in 1936 with a dissertation on Euripides, supervised by Template:Ill. After graduating, he embarked on an officer's career in the Austrian Armed Forces. He was incorporated into the Wehrmacht after the Anschluss of 1938 and fought on the Eastern Front of the World War II. He was captured by the Red Army towards the end of the war and held as a prisoner of war until 1947, when he returned to Vienna.Template:Sfn

He entered the manuscripts department of the Austrian National Library and was made head of the papyrus collection in 1956.Template:Sfn Based on his track record of publications, he achieved habilitation in the field of Byzantine Studies in 1954 and joined the University of Vienna as a private lecturer. In 1962 he was made professor and director of the Institute for Byzantine Studies, which he led until his retirement in 1985.Template:Sfn

He was admitted to the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1959 as a corresponding member, becoming full member in 1962.Template:Sfn From 1959 to 1996 he served as president of the Austrian Byzantine Society.Template:Sfn He served as secretary of the Academy's Philosophical-Historical Class from 1963, as secretary general from 1964, and as vice president from 1970. In 1966 he initiated the Tabula Imperii Byzantini project through the Academy's Commission for Byzantine Studies, founded in 1948, and acted as the chairman of the project's own commission until 1995.Template:Sfn From 1966 until his death he also was the chairman of the commission for the Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae editorial project.Template:Sfn In 1970/1971 he was Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Vienna.Template:Sfn In 1971 he became chairman of the Commission for Byzantine Studies, and held the position until 1995. From 1973 to 1982, he served two consecutive terms as president of the Academy.Template:Sfn From 1976 to 1986 he presided over the Association Internationale d'Études Byzantins (AIEB).Template:Sfn As incumbent president of the AIEB, he organized the XVI International Congress of Byzantine Studies in Vienna, which was attended by more than 1,100 scholars.Template:Sfn

From 1954 to his death he directed the Jahrbuch der österreichische Byzantinische Gesellschaft, which in 1961 was renamed Jahrbuch der österreichische Byzantinistik. He also joined the Byzantinische Zeitschrift as co-editor from 1964 to 1984 and founded and directed several new series of Byzantine studies monographs: Wiener Byzantinistiche Studien (1964), Byzantina Vindobonensia (1965), Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für die Tabula Imperii Byzantini (1973), Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Byzantinistik (1976).Template:Sfn

He married Ruth Friedrich, whom he met in Dresden during wartime, in 1941, and they had three children.Template:Sfn

Academic honors

Hunger was honored with three Festschriften by his friends and colleagues:

Research activity

Hunger focused on Byzantine studies and is considered the founder of the "Wiener Schule" of Byzantine studies. His vast bibliography covers almost every aspect of Byzantine studies, but his main concerns were Byzantine society and literature, book culture in Byzantium and Greek handwriting. He became interested in Greek palaeography during his years at the Austrian National Library, while studying the Greek papyri held by the institution and working on the catalogue of the Greek manuscripts of the library. His interest in Greek handwriting led him to elaborate and publish capital contributions on the subject, being his communication to the Paris colloquium of 1974Template:Sfn and, later, the organization and the launch of the Repertorium der griechischen Kopisten 800.—1600., being the catalogue of all known Greek medieval scribes. Hunger is also responsible for having coined terms such as "Perlschrift" ("pearl script"), "Fettaugenmode" (literally "resembling fatty globules") and "Auszeichnungsschriften" ("distinctive script") to describe particular styles of medieval Greek handwriting.

Hunger was also a respected textual critic. In 1959 he published the second edition of the first volume, second issue, of the Corpus fabularum Aesopicarum, originally edited by August Hausrath for the Bibliotheca Teubneriana; the first issue, also in second edition, appeared in 1970. In 1964 he published the first volume of the Wiener byzantinistische Studien [WBS], a monograph on the proems of Byzantine documents as literary and political products of their time, which also included the critical edition of an anthology of proems he found in Vienna manuscripts. Five years later, he also published in the WBS a monograph on John Chortasmenos, with critical edition of his works,Template:Sfn and in 1981 he edited a metaphrase in vulgar Greek of books XI to XIII of Anne Komnene's "Alexias".Template:Sfn In 1990, he published a critical edition of Prochoros Kydones' Greek translation of the first book of St. Augustine's treatise "On Free Will" and ps.-Augustine's "On the Ten Plagues of Egypt".Template:Sfn

In 1981, he started the project of the complete critical edition of the register of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, directing the enterprise and signing the first two volumes as co-editor and contributing to the third, appeared in 2001, and editing two volumes of complementary studies.

His complete bibliography was published by his student Peter Soustal in 2001, and reprinted in 2019.

Decorations and awards

• Grand Commander of the Order of the Phoenix (Greece)
• Grand Cross of Merit with Star of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 1968: Wilhelm Hartel Prize
• 1979: City of Vienna Prize for Humanities
• 1980: elected to the American Philosophical Society
• 1981: Austrian Decoration for Science and Art
• Grand Gold Decoration for Services to the Republic of Austria
• Grand Gold Decoration for Services to the City of Vienna

External links

• Obituary by Johannes Koder, his student and friend (in German)
• Short biography with picture
• Obituary at Byzantium (Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies) - please scroll down to 2001 obituaries
• Austrian Academy of Sciences
• Review of 'Festschrift' outlining the history of the Byzantine Institute of the University of Vienna, founded by Herbert Hunger