Professor Helmut Gneuss – an outstanding scholar, medievalist, and historical linguist specializing in manuscript studies, palaeography, language, culture, and writing of medieval England – passed away on the 26th of February 2023. In his professional and scholarly capacity, he was affiliated with many academic centres, starting with the Freie Universität in Berlin, through the universities in Heidelberg, Cambridge, UNC in Chapel Hill, and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. In the latter, he held the Chair for English Historical Linguistics and Medieval English Literature from 1965 to 1997.

Professor Gneuss is the author of many important works, including A Preliminary List of Manuscripts Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (1980), Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England (1985), Books and Libraries in Early England and Language and History in Early England (1996) and Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts (2001). The catalogue of manuscripts, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, published in 2014 (and co-authored with Michael Lapidge), has become an indispensable reference tool and a compendium for all researchers working in the field. 

One of Helmut Gneuss’ letters, dated March 16, 2021

One of the research areas that Professor Gneuss explored was concerned with fragmented manuscripts and manuscript fragments. In 1998, he published an article entitled ‘A newly-found fragment of an Anglo-Saxon psalter’ in which he presented a thorough analysis of an incomplete manuscript leaf from a lost Latin psalter found and described by H. Pilch a year before. A decade later, in 2008, in another article (“More Old English from Manuscripts”), he proposed an intriguing hypothesis that the lost manuscript, now extant in only a few dispersed fragments, may have belonged to Harold II’s youngest sister, Gunhild. Professor Gneuss’s research on the lost psalter had an impact, albeit indirect at first, on one of the projects currently carried out by several SIGLUM members: Analysis of manuscript fragments. Two psalter fragments found in 2020 in the C. Norwid Library in Elbląg, turned out to be a part of the same fragmented medieval codex. In letters exchanged between 2020 and 2022, we discussed the fragments and their hypothetical medieval provenance. Written in Professor Gneuss’ neat minuscule handwriting, these letters reveal not only his expertise but also his sincere enthusiasm for this new and – given the location – fairly unexpected discovery. He understood the importance of the finding. He shared our excitement. I can only hope that my last letter, in which I reported yet another discovery of psalter fragments in Elbląg, reached him, even if he was not able to respond to it.

Professor Helmut Gneuss’ obituary written by his colleagues and students can be found at the University of Munich website: anglistenverband.