All Scholars

Emil Hübner came from a family of painters associated with the Düsseldorf School. His father, uncle, brother and two of his sons were all painters. At Berlin he became a protégé of the historian Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903), who fostered his early interest in epigraphy. At Bonn he was a favored student of the Latinist Friedrich Ritschl (1806-76) who supervised his dissertation. A doctor at age 20, he completed his habilitation at 25. He then began extended travels in Spain and Portugal where he gathered important research on inscriptions and made numerous scholarly contacts that would prove helpful in collecting inscriptions. He did the same in Britain, where his fluent English gave him access to many collections. He returned to Berlin as extraordinarius and with the help of Mommsen was made the first editor of Hermes and also editor of Archäologische Zeitung. Mommsen appointed an eminent editorial staff for his 32-year-old editor: R. Hercher (1821-78), A. Kirchhoff (1826-1908), and later Johannes Vahlen (1830-1911)

        In light of Hübner’s discoveries in Spain and Britain, Mommsen also entrusted to him the volumes of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum devoted to Spain and Portugal (vol. 2) and Britain (vol. 7) with subsequent supplements. As a result, he became a renowned figure in Roman epigraphy with friends and contributors across the classical world.  Then, in 1881 Mommsen felt that Hübner’s editing of inscriptions for the supplement to volume 2 of the CIL was inaccurate and that Hübner was growing lazy. He gave Hübner no new commissions for the CIL and summarily replaced him and the co-editors of Hermes named above with Georg Kaibel (1849-1901) and Carl Robert (1850-1922), allies of Mommsen’s son-in-law, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1848-1931). Being dismissed by Mommsen now made the once admired Hübner a virtual pariah to the German philological community. 

         He continued to teach after 1881. His American student Ernst G. Sihler gives an account of Hübner’s at-home seminars. He edited the Kleine Schriften of his father-in-law, Johann Gustav Droysen (1808-84). He continued to publish Grundrisse and his histories and bibliography of classical scholarship, which Sandys considered "his most useful works" (238). He wrote regular reviews in Deutsche Rundschau and Deutsche Literaturzeitung. For his discoveries of British inscriptions, he was awarded an honorary degree by Cambridge in 1883. He maintained a friendship “unbroken and unclouded” for more than 50 years with his fellow student at Bonn and Berlin, Basil L. Gildersleeve (1831-1924). Hübner frequently mentioned Gildersleeve and American scholarship in his writings and kept Hermes open to American scholars. When the Hopkins Latinist Minton Warren (1850-1907) fell ill in 1888-9, Hübner stepped in as examiner and adviser to doctoral candidates. 

        Though his passing was noted in several Iberian publications, it was not noticed in any of the German philological journals except Archaeologischer Anzeiger. Gildersleeve memorialized him for his many American friends, “mourning the loss of a man whose winning personality and ready sympathy, moral and intellectual, gave a human interest to his encyclopedic learning.” “No scholar ever had more friends, none deserved them better.”