Dennis Howard Green
Dennis Howard Green was an English philologist. He was the Schröder Professor of German at the University of Cambridge from 1979 to 1989 and a Fellow of the British Academy. He was for decades considered one of the world's foremost authorities on German studies.Biography
Just before World War II, Green enrolled at the Trinity College, Cambridge to study German. During the war he abandoned his studies to serve in the Royal Tank Regiment, where he rose to the rank of major and participated in the Normandy landings. During this time it is probable that he was a member of British intelligence. Completing his studies at Cambridge after the war, Green received his PhD from the University of Basel in 1949. He subsequently lectured German at the University of St Andrews from 1949 to 1950. He was elected to a Research Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1949, where he served as a University Lecturer in German from 1950 to 1966.
From 1956 to 1979 he was Chair of the Department of Other Languages at Cambridge. A polyglot, Green spoke not only English and German, but also Portuguese, Romanian, Chinese and other languages. Green's study, The Carolingian Lord, established him as an international authority on German medieval studies. From 1966 to 1979 he was Professor of Modern Languages at Cambridge. In 1979 he became the Schröder Professor of German at Cambridge University, succeeding Leonard Wilson Forster. He retired from this position in 1989, becoming a Fellow of the British Academy.
Green was at one point Vice-President of the International Association for Germanic Studies. He was the author of a large number of books and articles.
Green married Dorothy Warren in 1947. They had one daughter, and divorced in 1972. In 1972 he married Margaret Parry, who died in 1997. In 2001 Green married Sarah Redpath.
