Franz Felix Adalbert Kuhn

Who was Franz Felix Adalbert Kuhn?

Franz Felix Adalbert Kuhn was a German philologist and folklorist.

Kuhn was born in Königsberg in Brandenburg's Neumark region. From 1841 he was connected with the Köllnisches Gymnasium at Berlin, of which he was appointed director in 1870. Kuhn was the founder of a new school of comparative mythology, based upon comparative philology. Inspired by Jakob Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie, he first devoted himself to German stories and legends, and published Märkische Sagen und Märchen, Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche, and Sagen, Gebräuche und Märchen aus Westfalen.

But it is on Kuhn's researches into the language and history of the Indo-Germanic peoples as a whole that his reputation is founded.