Frederick Klaeber - Biography

Biography

Klaeber was born in Beetzendorf, Prussia to Hermann and Luise Klaeber. He received his doctorate from the University of Berlin (Philosophy) in 1892. He was invited to join the University of Minnesota as an Assistant Professor of English Philology. He was Professor of English and Comparative Philology from 1898 to 1931. In 1902 he married Charlotte Wahn.

Klaeber retired from Minnesota in 1931 and returned to Berlin, where he continued to work on what would become the 1936 third edition of Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. During World War II, his house in Berlin was destroyed, including his books, articles, and notes; he and his wife fled to her house in Bad Kösen, where he continued work on what would be published as the second supplement to the third edition of Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg (1950). During this time, because he no longer had his library and paper was scarce (Bad Kösen was in the Soviet occupation zone), he depended greatly on colleagues and friends in the US. Toward the end of his life, Klaeber was bedridden, impoverished, and partially paralyzed but continued his scholarly work nevertheless. He died in 1954.