Name Hermann Dessau | ||
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Died April 12, 1931, Berlin, Germany Books Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, Set, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae - Scholar's Choice Edition | ||
Hermann Dessau (April 6, 1856, Frankfurt am Main – April 12, 1931, Berlin) was a German ancient historian and epigrapher. He is noted for a key work of textual criticism published in 1889 on the Historia Augusta, which uncovered reasons to believe that this surviving text of ancient Roman imperial history had been written under circumstances very different from those previously believed.
He studied at the University of Berlin as a pupil of Theodor Mommsen, receiving his doctorate in 1877 from the University of Strasbourg. On behalf of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) he travelled to Italy and North Africa. In 1884 he was habilitated as a historian in Berlin, where he subsequently became an associate professor (1912) and full professor (1917). From 1900 to 1922 he served as a scientific officer for the Prussian Academy of Sciences.