Robert Stumpfl

Robert Stumpfl was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary on 6 June 1904. His father was a senior official in the Foreign Ministry of Austria-Hungary. He studied English, German and Scandinavian at the universities of Vienna and Kiel, gaining his Ph.D. at Vienna in 1926 under the supervision of Rudolf Much. His dissertation was on Protestant theatre in Austria during the Reformation (16th century). In the 1920s the prospects for an academic career in Austria were dim, and Stumpfl subsequently lectured in German at the University of Edinburgh.

Returning to Austria Stumpfl married Johanna Nikolaia Karoline Spitzy in Vienna on 7 July 1931. He completed his habilitation at the University of Berlin in 1936 under the supervision of Julius Petersen. His dissertation, Kultspiele der Germanen als Ursprung des mittelalterlichen Dramas (1936), suggested strong Germanic influences on the emergence on medieval theatre, and was received with great interest in the scholarly community. This line of research had earlier been pursued by Jacob Grimm and Gustav Freytag. Stumpfl was subsequently appointed a professor at the University of Heidelberg.

Stumpfl died in a car accident at Guggenthal, Austria on 11 August 1937.

• Richard Wolfram
• Walter Steinhauser
• Siegfried Gutenbrunner

• Schauspielmasken des Mittelalters und der Renaissancezeit und ihr Fortbestehen im Volksschauspiel, 1931
• Das alte Schultheater in Steyr im Zeitalter der Reformation und Gegenreformation, 1933
• Unser kampf um ein deutsches nationaltheater, 1935
• Kultspiele der Germanen als Ursprung des mittelalterlichen Dramas, 1936