Bartsch, Karl, 1832-1888

Karl Friedrich Adolf Konrad Bartsch (25 February 1832, in Sprottau – 19 February 1888, in Heidelberg) was a German philologist and medievalist. He studied philology at the universities of Breslau (from 1848) and Berlin (1851/52), where he was a pupil of Wilhelm Grimm. In 1853 he received his doctorate from the University of Halle, and in 1855 began work as caretaker at the German National Museum in Nuremberg. In 1858, he was appointed professor of German and Romance philology at the University of Rostock, where he founded the first seminar for German philology. In 1871 he succeeded Adolf Holtzmann at the University of Heidelberg, where he taught till his death, shortly before what would have been his fifty-sixth birthday.