1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pfeiffer, Franz

PFEIFFER, FRANZ (1815-1868), German scholar, was born at Bettlach near Soleure on the 27th of February 1815. After studying at the university of Munich he went to Stuttgart, where in 1846 he became librarian to the royal library. In 1856 Pfeiffer founded the Germania, a quarterly periodical devoted to German antiquarian research. In 1857, having established his fame as one of the foremost authorities on German medieval literature and philology, he was appointed professor of these subjects at the university of Vienna; and in 1860 was made a member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. He died at Vienna on the 29th of May 1868.