Alfred Holder


Alfred Theophil Holder, was chief librarian of the Baden State Library in Karlsruhe. He was an Austrian-German writer and student of several ancient languages including Celtic, Germanic, and Latin. He is best known for his translations of Horace, Caesar and Tacitus as well as for his three volume Celtic vocabulary entitled: Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz.
He studied classical and German philology at the universities of Bonn and Heidelberg, then continued his education in Paris. From 1863 he worked as a schoolteacher in Rastatt, the Netherlands and in Ladenburg. In 1867 he joined the Grand Ducal Baden Court and State Library in Karlsruhe, where he remained for the rest of his life — in 1904, he became head of the manuscript department and in 1911 was appointed director.

Selected works

From 1895 to 1918, he authored volumes 3, 5-7 of the Die Handschriften der Grossherzoglich Badischen Hof- und Landesbibliothek in Karlsruhe.