Carl Georg Brunius

Who was Carl Georg Brunius?

Carl Georg Brunius was a classical scholar, art historian, archaeologist and architect working in the university town of Lund in southern Sweden.

Brunius was born on 23 March 1792 in Tanum parish, son of the vicar Gomer Brunius and his wife Mariana Rodhe. He studied at Lund University, where he became professor of Greek in 1824, served as rector in 1831 and 1841 and retired as professor emeritus in 1858.

The focus in classical scholarship in the age in which Brunius worked was on the practical mastering of the languages, but beyond a few Latin poems, his contributions within his academic discipline were insignificant and had mostly ceased by the time he received his professorial chair. Instead, he spent most of his life as a student of art, architecture and antiquities and as a working architect. With J. G. Liljegren, Brunius co-authored the first part of Nordiska fornlemningar, published in 1819, and a work on petroglyphs. Brunius later produced the first systematic investigation of mediaeval art and architecture in current Sweden, writing substantial works on the history of art in Scania, on the island of Gotland and elsewhere.