Ernst Robert Curtius

Ernst Robert Curtius (/ˈkʊərtsiˌʊs/; April 14, 1886 – April 19, 1956) was a German literary scholar, philologist, and Romance language literary critic, best known for his 1948 study Europäische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter, translated in English as European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages.

Curtius was Alsatian, born in Thann, into a north German family; Ernst Curtius, his grandfather, and Georg Curtius, his great-uncle, were both notable scholars. His family moved to Strasbourg after his father Friedrich Curtius was appointed president of the Lutheran Protestant Church of Augsburg Confession of Alsace and Lorraine, and Curtius received his Abitur from the Strasbourg Protestant gymnasium. He traveled in Europe afterward, and was fluent in French and English. Albert Schweitzer, who boarded with the family between 1906 and 1912, is credited with introducing Curtius to modern French literature; of great influence also was the Romance philologist Gustav Gröber. He studied philology and philosophy in Strasbourg (doctorate, 1910), Berlin, and Heidelberg; he wrote his Habilitationsschrift for Gröber in Bonn, 1913, and began teaching there in 1914. World War I interrupted his scholarly work: Curtius served in France and Poland and was wounded in 1915; his injuries were severe enough for him to be discharged in 1916; he returned to Bonn to resume teaching.

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