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9 DECEMBER 1914 * 9 JULY 2000
HERBERT HUNGER, destined to be the founder of the Institute of Byzantine Studies at the University of Vienna, received his academic training in Vienna, the city of his birth. He majored in classical philology and German studies and, upon completing his first degree in 1936, he taught school for two years. Austria requires a term of military service for all young men, and Herbert Hunger's year was scheduled for 1938-39. The next nine years of his life were seldom his own, as all Austrian soldiers were incorporated into the German army. From a purely personal point of view this was not a misfortune, for while on furlough in Germany he met his wife, Ruth Friedrich, and they were married on 18 October 1941. When he entered military service he trained with the cavalry unit, and there discovered a talent for handling horses so exceptional that for a while he was spared service with the combat troops. With the beginning of the campaign in Russia, however, he was sent to the front. There he was wounded and taken prisoner, not to be released until 1947.
By then he had decided he wanted to engage in research, so he joined the staff of the Austrian National Library. Here his knowledge of classical languages stood him in good stead, and as he worked with the Greek manuscripts he developed his paleographical skills. In this field he was virtually self-taught. While cataloguing the manuscripts his curiosity about the Byzantine world was awakened, and later he edited and translated several papyri; indeed, from 1956 to 1962 he served as director of the Papyrus Collection of...