Friedrich Karl Theodor Zarncke (7 July 1825 – 15 October 1891), German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 philologist, was born at Zahrensdorf

Zahrensdorf

Zahrensdorf is a municipality in the Ludwigslust-Parchim district, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany....

, Mecklenburg-Schwerin

Mecklenburg-Schwerin

Mecklenburg-Schwerin was a duchy in northern Germany created in 1348, when Albert II of Mecklenburg and his younger brother John were raised to Dukes of Mecklenburg by King Charles IV...

, the son of a country pastor.

He was educated at the Rostock

Rostock

Rostock -Early history:In the 11th century Polabian Slavs founded a settlement at the Warnow river called Roztoc ; the name Rostock is derived from that designation. The Danish king Valdemar I set the town aflame in 1161.Afterwards the place was settled by German traders...

 gymnasium, and studied (1844–1847) at the universities of Rostock

University of Rostock

The University of Rostock is the university of the city Rostock, in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.Founded in 1419, it is the oldest and largest university in continental northern Europe and the Baltic Sea area...

, Leipzig

University of Leipzig

The University of Leipzig , located in Leipzig in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, is one of the oldest universities in the world and the second-oldest university in Germany...

 and Berlin. In 1848 he was employed in arranging the valuable library of Old German literature of Freiherr Karl Hartwig von Meusebach

Karl Hartwig Gregor von Meusebach

Karl Hartwig Gregor von Meusebach was a German lawyer and literary scholar born in Voigtstedt, Thuringia. He used the pseudonyms "Alban" and "Markus Hüpfinsholz" in his writings. He was father to politician John O. Meusebach .He studied in Göttingen and Leipzig, and in 1803 was appointed...

 (1781–1847), and superintending its removal from Baumgartenbrück, near Potsdam

Potsdam

Potsdam is the capital city of the German federal state of Brandenburg and part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. It is situated on the River Havel, southwest of Berlin city centre....

, to the Royal Library at Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

.

In 1850 he founded at Leipzig the Literarisches Centralblatt für Deutschland. In 1852 he established himself as Privatdozent at the university of Leipzig, and published an excellent edition of Sebastian Brant

Sebastian Brant

Sebastian Brant was an Alsatian humanist and satirist. He is best known for his satire Das Narrenschiff .-Biography:...

's Narrenschiff (1854), a treatise Zur Nibelungenfrage (1854), followed by an edition of the Nibelungenlied

Nibelungenlied

The Nibelungenlied, translated as The Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic poem in Middle High German. The story tells of dragon-slayer Siegfried at the court of the Burgundians, how he was murdered, and of his wife Kriemhild's revenge....

 (1856, 12th ed. 1887), and Beiträge zur Erläuterung und Geschichte des Nibelungenliedes (1857).

In 1858 he was appointed full professor.

Works

He wrote a series of noteworthy studies on medieval literature, most of which were published in the reports (Berichte) of the Saxon Society of Sciences. Among them were those on

• the Old High German
  Old High German
  The term Old High German refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of...
  
   poem Muspilli
  Muspilli
  Muspilli is one of but two surviving pieces of Old High German epic poetry , dating to around 870. One large fragment of the text has survived in the margins and empty pages of a codex marked as the possession of Louis the German and now in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek . The beginning and end of...
  
  (1866)
• Gesang vom heiligen Georg (1874)
• the legend of the Priester Johannes
  Prester John
  The legends of Prester John were popular in Europe from the 12th through the 17th centuries, and told of a Christian patriarch and king said to rule over a Christian nation lost amidst the Muslims and pagans in the Orient. Written accounts of this kingdom are variegated collections of medieval...
  
   (1874)
• Der Graltempel (1876)
• the Annolied (1887).

He also wrote

• a treatise on Christian Reuter (1884)
• on the portraits of Goethe
  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
  
   (1884)
• on the history of Leipzig University, Die urkundlichen Quellen zur Geschichte der Universität Leipzig (1857)
• Die deutschen Universitäten im Mittelalter (1857).
• Kleine Schriften
  Kleine Schriften
  is a German phrase often used as a title for a collection of articles and essays written by a single scholar over the course of a career. "Collected Papers" is an English equivalent. These shorter works were usually published previously in various periodicals or in collections of papers written...
  
  (1897).