Leonhard Schmitz

Who was Leonhard Schmitz?

Leonhard Schmitz was a German-born classical scholar and educator active mainly in the United Kingdom.

Schmitz was born in Eupen and attended gymnasium in Aachen. He lost his right arm in an accident at the age of 10, but nonetheless excelled academically. He studied at the University of Bonn, where he earned a PhD, and was in particular influenced by Barthold Georg Niebuhr; Schmitz later published in England a collection of notes taken from Niebuhr's lectures as Lectures on Roman History.

He married an English woman, and moved to England in 1837; around 1840 they had a daughter, Leonora Schmitz, who would become a noted music critic. He became associated with a number of scholars there, writing many of the mythological entries for classicist William Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, and serving as "a key figure in the transmission of German classical scholarship to Victorian Britain".

Schmitz moved to Scotland in 1846 to serve as rector of the Royal High School in Edinburgh from that year until 1866.