Hans-Georg Beck
German philologist, historian and theologian (1910-1999)
Hans-Georg Beck FBA (18 February 1910 – 25 May 1999) was a German scholar who specialised in Byzantine studies. He held the chair of Byzantine studies and modern Greek language and literature at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München from 1960 to 1975, and was editor-in-chief of the Byzantinische Zeitschrift from 1964 to 1977.
Biography
He was born in the village of Schneizlreuth near Bad Reichenhall in Bavaria in 1910. He was educated at the humanistic gymnasia in Scheyern (1920–25) and Ettal (1925–29). In 1929, following his graduation, he entered the Benedictine monastery of Scheyern. After studying philosophy at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München under Joseph Geyser, Dietrich von Hildebrand and Kurt Huber during the summer term in 1930, he spent the 1930/31 academic year on scholastic theology at the Anselmianum in Rome. While in Rome, he experienced Eastern Orthodox liturgy and befriended the Belgian François Masai, who turned his interest to Byzantine studies.
Beck returned to the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München to pursue Catholic theology, Byzantine studies and classics from 1931 to 1936; his professors included Eduard Eichmann, Georg Pfeilschifter, Franz Dölger, Eduard Schwartz and Rudolf Pfeiffer. He travelled to Italy for research purposes again in 1934 before embarking on his doctoral thesis in Byzantine theology under the supervision of Martin Grabmann. In November 1936, he defended his dissertation, entitled Vorhersehung und Vorherbestimmung in der theologischen Literatur der Byzantiner (Providence and Predestination in Byzantine Theological Literature) and published in Rome the following year as volume 114 of the Orientalia Christiana Analecta series, with the dedication "To friends in need".
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q91560. VIAF identifies the subject as 108233824. The Library of Congress control number is n50006967. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1910, 1999, 1960 and 1975.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hans-Georg Beck” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.