14 Facts About Leon Kellner

Leon Kellner was an English lexicographer, grammarian, and Shakespearian scholar.

Leon Kellner was a political activist and a promoter of Zionism.

Leon Kellner was born in Tarnow, Austrian Empire, the son of Jewish grocers Rafael and Lea Kellner.

Leon Kellner began to learn the Hebrew alphabet at the age of three, and by five he entered a cheder to study the Torah and the Mishnah.

In 1876, Kellner entered the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau, and in 1880 he enrolled at the University of Vienna to study Germanic languages with emphasis on English language and literature.

Leon Kellner was awarded a PhD degree in 1883, and the title of his dissertation, published in 1885, was Zur Syntax des englischen Verbums, mit besonderer Berucksichtigung Shakespeares.

Leon Kellner travelled to London in 1887 where the Early English Text Society invited him to translate William Caxton's Blanchardyn and Eglantine.

Leon Kellner dedicated his translation of Caxton and his habilitation thesis to Frederick James Furnivall, founder of the Early English Text Society.

Leon Kellner returned to the University of Vienna in 1890 to lecture in English literature.

In 1904 he became a professor of English at the University of Czernowitz, a post he held until 1914 when he fled Czernowitz at the beginning of World War I After the war, Kellner served as a translator in the office of the President of the Austrian Republic and lectured at the Technical University of Vienna.

When philologist Jakob Schipper retired from the University of Vienna in 1913, Leon Kellner was considered to be his successor.

In 1896 Leon Kellner became a friend and assistant to Theodor Herzl, a political activist and founder of the Zionist Organization.

Leon Kellner became active in the Judischnationale Partei or Jewish National Party.

Leon Kellner contributed to Herzl's weekly publication, Die Welt, for which he first wrote under his own name and later the pseudonym Leo Rafaels.