Hilmar Walter, Dietmar Endler

Prof. Hilmar Walter was born on 13 February 1933 in Leipzig, Germany. After a year of Slavic studies at the University of Leipzig, he was sent to a full course at the University of Sofia (1952) because of his linguistic talents. In 1957 he graduated in Bulgarian Philology and returned to Leipzig, where he immediately began a postgraduate study in Bulgarian. Acquires the academic degree of a "doctorate in philology" (= doctor of philological sciences).

Hilmar Walter's research and teaching career are entirely related to the University of Leipzig, where Slavicism has had outstanding achievements. He worked as a university lecturer from 1958 to 1992, going through assistant positions, then becoming associate professor (1964) and regular professor of Bulgarian studies (1975).

Prof. Hilmar Walter established himself as one of the best German specialists in Bulgarian and Slavic studies in general, a specialist in comparative linguistics, theory and practice of translation, theoretical linguistics. He has made outstanding contributions in the field of linguistic Bulgarian studies (especially verbal problems), comparative German-Bulgarian linguistics, history of linguistics, etc. He has authored numerous publications in the fields - books, studies and articles, dictionaries, textbooks, etc.

Dietmar Endler is among the best connoisseurs of Bulgarian literature both in the German Democratic Republic and in united Germany. By 1990 he was a regular associate professor of Bulgarian literature at Leipzig University.