Karl Lachmann

The same summer he became one of the principal masters in the Friedrichs-Gymnasium of Königsberg, where he assisted his colleague, the Germanist Friedrich Karl Köpke, with his edition of Rudolf von Ems' Barlaam und Josaphat (1818), and also assisted his friend in a contemplated edition[clarification needed] of the works of Walther von der Vogelweide.

He devoted himself during the following seven years to an extraordinarily detailed study of those subjects, and in 1824, obtained a leave of absence in order to search the libraries of middle and south Germany for further materials.

In his "Habilitationsschrift" über die ursprungliche Gestalt des Gedichts von der Nibelungen Noth (1816), and in his review of Hagen's Nibelungen and Benecke's Bonerius, contributed in 1817 to the Jenaische Literaturzeitung, he had already laid down the rules[clarification needed] of textual criticism and elucidated the phonetic and metrical principles of Middle High German in a manner which marked a distinct advance in that branch of investigation.

Lachmann was the first major editor to break from the Textus Receptus, seeking to restore the most ancient reading current in manuscripts of the Alexandrian text-type, using the agreement of the Western authorities (Old Latin and Greek Western Uncials)[clarification needed] as the main proof of antiquity of a reading where the oldest Alexandrian authorities differ.

[citation needed] To say his recreation of the text was "accepted" is an understatement; HAJ Munro characterized this accomplishment as "a work which will be a landmark for scholars as long as the Latin language continues to be studied."