Friedrich von der Leyen
Friedrich Gustav von der Leyen was a German philologist who specialized in Germanic studies.
Biography
Friedrich Gustav von der Leyen was born in Bremen, Germany on 19 August 1873, and belonged to the House of Leyen. He was the son of the railroad lawyer andhonorary professor Dr. jur. Alfred Friedrich von der Leyen and his wife Luise Isabella Kapp. Luise was the daughter of Friedrich Kapp and sister of Wolfgang Kapp. Friedrich had four siblings, among them Generalleutnant of the Wehrmacht Ludwig Friedrich von der Leyen.
Von der Leyen studied at the universities of Marburg, Leipzig and Berlin, receiving his Ph.D. at Berlin in 1894 under the supervision of Karl Weinhold with a thesis on Medieval German literature. He habilitated at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 1899 with a thesis on Norse mythology. From 1920 to his retirement in 1937, von der Leyen was Chair of German Philology at the University of Cologne. Upon his retirement, von der Leyen published his Die Götter der Germanen, which examined gods in Germanic mythology. von der Leyen was a known specialist on German folklore. Together with Eugen Diederichs and, he founded and edited the .
Following World War II, von der Leyen returned to the University of Cologne, where he served as an honorary professor from 1947 to 1953. He died in Kirchseeon, Germany on 6 June 1966.