Heinrich Brunner


Heinrich Brunner was a German historian born at Wels in Upper Austria. After studying at the universities of Vienna, Göttingen and Berlin, he became professor at the University of Lemberg in 1866, and in quick succession held similar positions at Prague, Strasbourg and Berlin.
From 1872 Brunner devoted himself especially to studying the early laws and institutions of the Franks and kindred peoples of Western Europe, and on these subjects his researches have been of supreme value. He also became a leading authority on modern German law. He became a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1884, and in 1887, after the death of Georg Waitz, undertook the supervision of the Leges section of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, which he led until his death in 1915. This was the first time that a legal scholar led a section of the MGH; Brunner oversaw an extensive overhaul of the section's program.

Works

He is also the author of the German versions of The Sources of English Law.