FALLMERAYER, JAKOB PHILIPP (I Ger man scholar, son of a peasant, was born at Tschotsch, near Brixen in Tirol, on Dec. I o, 1790. In 1809 he ran away from the cathedral choir school at Brixen, and then studied philology first at Salz burg and then at Landshut. After two years' service in the Napo leonic wars (1813-15) and two years of garrison life after the peace, he became a schoolmaster at Augsburg and later at Land shut. In 1827 he won the gold medal offered by the university of Copenhagen with his most important work Geschichte des Kaisertums von Trapezunt (Trebizond), based on patient investi gation of Greek and oriental mss. at Venice and Vienna. Prior to his discovery of the chronicle of Michael Panaretos, covering the dominion of Alexius Comnenus and his successors from 1204 to 1426, the history of this mediaeval empire was practically un known. During 1831-47, he travelled widely in the East with in tervals spent in Munich, and after the revolution of 1848 be came professor of history at Munich university and member of the national congress at Frankfort-on-Main. There he joined the left, or opposition party, and in 1849 accompanied the rump parliament to Stuttgart, and was expelled from his chair at the university. The amnesty of April 185o enabled him to return to Munich. He died on April 26, 1861.
Fallmerayer's contributions to the mediaeval history of Greece are of great value, and his theory that the modern Greeks are of Albanian and Slav descent, with hardly a drop of true Greek blood in their veins has served to modify the opinions of even his greatest opponents. A criticism of his views will be found in Hopf's Geschichte Griechenlands (from Ersch and Gruber's Encykl.) and in Finlay's History of Greece in the Middle Ages. His other works include tI ber die Entstehung der Neugriechen (Stuttgart, 1835) ; "Originalfragmente, Chroniken, u.s.w., zur Ge schichte des K. Trapezunts" (Munich, 1843), in Abhandl. der hist. Classe der K. Bayerisch. Akad. v. W iss.; Das albanesische Element in Griechenland, iii. parts, in the Abhandl. for 186o-66. See his Gesam melte Werke (3 vols., 1861) containing Studien and Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben and a sketch of his life by the editor, G. M. Thomas.