Jakob Baechtold

Jakob Baechtold, surname sometimes spelled as Bächtold (27 January 1848, in Schleitheim – 7 August 1897, in Zürich) was a Swiss literary scholar.

He studied German philology under Adolf Holtzmann at the University of Heidelberg, then continued his education at the University of Munich and in 1870 received his doctorate from the University of Tübingen with a thesis on the Lanzelet of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven.

From 1872 he worked as a schoolteacher in Solothurn and Zürich, and from 1879 to 1884 he headed the feuilleton of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ).

[1][2] In 1880 he obtained his habilitation at the University of Zürich, where in 1888 he was named a full professor of German literature.

In Zürich, he also gave lectures at the Polytechnic School (from 1896).