Otto Holzapfel

Otto Holzapfel (born February 5, 1941) is a German folklorist and researcher of traditional German folk song (folk music, Lied). He is a retired professor at the University of Freiburg. His mother tongue is Danish. He studied in Frankfurt am Main; among his subjects were Scandinavian languages and literature with Klaus von See. In 1970 he was appointed curator (archivist) at the German Folk Song Archives in Freiburg, now Center for Popular Culture and Music, University of Freiburg. He led this institute until 1996. He was co-editor of the journal "Jahrbuch für Volksliedforschung" from 1984 to 1998 and editor of the "Studien zur Volksliedforschung" (volumes 1 – 17, 1991–1996). Special topics of Holzapfel are the traditional German folk ballad and the tradition of the German folk song, European mythology and German-Danish genealogy. He has edited several volumes of the standard edition of the traditional German folk ballads "Deutsche Volkslieder mit ihren Melodien: Balladen" (10 volumes, 1935–1996), and he created a system for analyzing German quatrains (Schnaderhüpfel, four line lyric stanzas, Gstanzl). Since 2006 he supervises the German song index ("Liedverzeichnis')', now online.