All Scholars

Johannes Ilberg spent his career in gymnasia, as had his father, stressing the value of philology and as an administrator working for reform. His uncle, Friedrich von Ilberg (1858-1916), a personal physician to Kaiser Wilhelm II, likely influenced his interest in medicine. At Bonn he absorbed palaeographical and philological methodology from Hermann Usener (1834-1905), who likely encouraged his study of the ancient physicians. He completed his doctorate under Otto Ribbeck (1827-98) after researching the manuscripts of the Hippocratic corpus. Ilberg’s combination of philological analysis, palaeographic accuracy, and an understanding of the history of ancient science helped establish medical history as an interdisciplinary field. His work on the chronology of Galen’s writings created a new understanding of the transmission of Greek medicine through Roman times. 

      Ilberg’s notable accomplishments are his work on Erotianus’s glossary of Hippocrates which identified authentic elements and deleted later amendments. His “Prolegomena” to Hugo Kühlewein’s (1847-post 1920) 1894 edition of Hippocrates, built on his dissertation and containing a history of the manuscripts of the Hippocratic corpus, “De codicibus manu scriptis.” He was an early collaborator on the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum, to which he contributed an edition of the early gynecologist Soranus (1927) again employing manuscript study and textual criticism to established a text and concluded that Soranus relied more on empiricism than his contemporaries. This work led to his 1930 edition of Rufus of Ephesus. As editor he disseminated the latest in research.

      Ilberg also had an interest in mythology and contributed several articles to W.H. Roscher’s Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie (Leipzig: Teubner, 1884-6), most notably his article on “Sphinx.”

         For the bulk of his career he edited the Neue Jahrbücher für das klssische Altertum, Geschichte und deutsche Literatur, first as co-editor with Richard Richter until 1901; Bernhard Gerth (1902-11), and Paul Cauer 1911-14). Even before he became sole editor in 1914, the journal was known as Ilberg’s Jahrbücher. In 1925 the journal was re-named Neue Jahrbücher für Wissenschaft und Jugendbildung to reflect emphasis on secondary education topics. Throughout he published the latest in research, including his own.