Helmut de Boor (born 24 March 1891 in Bonn, died 4 August 1976 in Berlin) was a German medievalist.
[1] He earned his doctorate from Leipzig in 1914[2] and following service in World War I,[3][4] his Habilitation from the University of Breslau in 1919,[1] in German studies, Old Norse and Philology.
[9] After leaving Switzerland he began work on a complete history of German literature, originally intended as a short handbook for student use; it became a multi-volume work of which he wrote only the first three volumes, dealing with the early Middle Ages and Middle High German poetry.
[4][12] He regarded Nazism as a natural reaction of the younger generation in Germany which had been most heavily affected by the aftermath of World War I.
[12] In 1944 he was awarded the War Merit Cross, apparently for his services racially vetting Germans invited to speak in Switzerland.