LANDAUER, SAMUEL

LANDAUER, SAMUEL (1846–1937), German Orientalist and bibliographer. Landauer, born in Huerben, a small village in Bavaria, taught Oriental languages at the University of Strasbourg from 1875. He became director of the state and university library in 1905. When Alsace reverted to France in 1918, Landauer, like most of the German academic staff, was expelled from Strasbourg, and he settled in Augsburg. Landauer was the first to publish the Arabic original of *Saadiah's Beliefs and Opinions, Kitâb al-Amânât… (1880). From his Targum research he wrote Die Masorah zum Onkelos… (1896), and "Studien zu Merx Chrestomathia Targumica" (in Zeitschrift fuer Assyriologie, 3 (1888), 263–92). Landauer's comprehensive knowledge of Oriental languages led him to his participation, early in his academic career, in Vuller's edition of the works of the Persian poet Firdausi, Firdusii… Schahname (3 vols., 1877–84). He also cooperated with the Prussian Academy of Sciences in the publication of Aristotle's commentaries, Themistii… De caelo (1902), on the writings of the philosopher Themistius, which had been preserved in Hebrew only. Landauer compiled the Katalog der hebraeischen… Handschriften in der Kaiserlichen Universitaets-und Landesbibliothek in Strassburg, Orientalische Handschriften (1881), and Die Handschriften der Grossherzoglich Badischen Hof-und Landesbibliothek in Karlsruhe, vol. 2: Orientalische Handschriften (1892).

[David Samuel Loewinger]