Konstantin von Höfler

After finishing his studies in the gymnasia at Munich and Landshut, he studied first jurisprudence and then history at the University of Munich under Guido Görres, Ignaz von Döllinger and especially Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, and received his degree in 1831 on presenting the dissertation "Ueber die Anfänge der griechischen Geschichte" [About the Beginnings of Greek History].

Aided by a pension from the government, he studied two more years at Göttingen, where he published a "Geschichte der englischen Civilliste" [History of the English Civil List].

Returning to Munich he accepted the editorship of the official Münchener Zeitung in order to earn a subsistence, but while thus engaged he had by 1838 qualified himself as a privatdozent [private(ly sponsored) professor] in history at the university.

In 1851, when the Austrian school system was reorganized, Count Thun called Höfler as professor of history to Prague where he taught with great success until he retired on a pension in 1882.

Consequently he gradually withdrew from party politics, without losing, however, his strong interest in the struggles of the mostly anticlerical German-Bohemians against the Czechs, and devoted himself entirely to the cultivation of German sentiment and intellectual life.

By his activity, both as teacher and author, he became the founder of the modern school of German-Bohemian historical research, which received enthusiastic support from the Society founded by him, in 1862, for the study of the history of the German element in Bohemia, and in consequence ranks as one of the most deservedly respected historians of Austria.

Höfler gave special attention to the history of the Hussite movement and reached the conclusion that it was directed less against the papacy than against the German power in Bohemia and against the cities.