All Scholars

Karl Hude’s family tree originated in Bremen as "von der Hude" and successively spread to various locations in Germany and eventually formed a branch in Denmark. Hude’s family dropped the “von der.” Attracted to Greek history during his school years, Hude worked intensively on Thucydides at Copenhagen. Following graduation, he was awarded money by the Danish government for travel throughout Europe to investigate all the chief manuscripts of Thucydides. Upon his return he carefully and precisely collated his corrections and conjectures for the texts of Thucydides, Aristotle, and Xenophon over the next six years and reported them in a series of articles in Nordisk Tidsskrift for Filologi. He did not pursue a doctorate or a habilitation as he had the family resources to pursue his research until he had built a name for himself through publication. In the meantime he published school editions of Demosthenes (1886) and others. In 1892, at the age of 32, he burst upon the scene with his acclaimed edition of the historical sections of the recently discovered (1891) papyrus of Aristotle’s Athenian constitution in both German and Danish with a school edition of the same. More professional success came that year when he was named editor-in-chief of NTF, a position he would maintain for nearly twenty years. Also in 1892 his remarkable record of publication gained him employment at the prestigious Metropolitan School in Copenhagen, beginning a long career in secondary education. Eventually he became the rector of the Frederiksborg Gymnasium where he spent the last twenty years of his career and where a bust of Hude today memorializes his years of service. 

             His focus remained on the historians. His Oxford Classical Texts of Herodotus and Lysias were considered standard throughout the twentieth century. His Teubner text of Thucydides was the first edition of that author to contain a full and accurate critical apparatus. He was also concerned to making the ancient historians accessible to his native audience. He completed the translation of Herodotus begun by Frederik Ferdinand Falkenstjerne (1854-96) with M.C. Gertz (1844-1929). He translated the lives of Greeks (Solon, Aristeidis, Perikles Alkibidades, Lysander) from Plutarch and Arrian’s Roman history into Danish. For his students he produced Schoolbooks on Demosthenes’ Olynthian Speeches. Of his textual work E.C. Marchant (1864-1960) praised “the learning, the accuracy, the remarkable linguistic skill which he has brought to bear on the text of Aristotle, Thucydides, and other authors” (Marchant, 409).