Helmut Birkhan

Helmut Birkhan (born 1 February 1938) is an Austrian philologist who is Professor Emeritus of Ancient German Language and Literature and the former Managing Director of the Institute for Germanic Studies at the University of Vienna. Having studied at Vienna under Otto Höfler, Birkhan specializes in Celtic, Germanic, and Indo-European studies, particularly the study of Celtic-Germanic contacts, Germanic linguistics and Medieval German literature from an interdisciplinary perspective, on which he has published numerous influential works. He has taught generations of students at Vienna, as is well known as a popularizer of scholarship for the broader Austrian public, particularly young people. Birkhan has tutored many influential scholars, including Hermann Reichert, Rudolf Simek, Florian Kragl, Melitta Adamson, Fritz Peter Knapp and Alfred Ebenbauer, and continues to teach, write and research. Helmut Birkhan was born in Vienna, Austria on 1 February 1938, the son of Josef Birkhan, a civil engineer, and Maria Müller. After graduating from gymnasium in Vienna, Birkhan studied philosophy, psychology, classical philology and Germanistics at the University of Vienna, and eventually specialized in Germanicstics, particularly Ancient Germanistics. Birkhan received his PhD in 1962 under the supervision of Otto Höfler, with the dissertation Die Verwandlung in der Volkserzählung. Along with Otto Gschwantler, Peter Wiesinger and Erika Kartschoke and other future prominent scholars, Birkhan belonged to a circle of Höfler's favourite students who called themselves the Drachenrunde. Birkhan lectured at the University of Wales from 1961 to 1962. At Wales, his teacher was the prominent Celtologist Proinsias Mac Cana. Since 1963 he lectured at the Institute for Germanic Studies at the University of Vienna as an assistant of Höfler. In Birkhan, Höfler saw the same capabilities for interdiciplinary learning which was characteristic of his own teacher, the famed Rudolf Much.