Otto Friedrich August Meinardus

He studied theology and sociology in Hamburg, London, St Louis, Chicago, and at Harvard University, Boston, where he obtained his PhD.

[3] Meinardus, together with other non-Egyptian faculty at the American University in Cairo, was expelled from Egypt shortly before the Six-Day War of 1967.

His last book “Christians in Egypt: Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Communities Past and Present,” was published posthumously in 2006.

[7] Many articles appeared in Kemet (Germany), Coptologica (Canada), Coptic Church Review (USA) and other mainly theological academic publications.

He not only looked into relevant manuscripts in Western libraries, but also met with desert fathers, grasped their spirituality, and documented mostly oral traditions in an academic style.