MÜHLBACHER, ENGELBERT. - Austrian historian, b. 4 Oct. 1843 at Gresten (Austria), d. 17 July 1903 at Vienna. In 1862 he entered the abbey of S. Floriano, to which he belonged until his death, although he did not take vows. He pursued his university studies at Innsbruck and Vienna and was a pupil of Ficker and Sickel. Appointed associate professor of history at the University of Innsbruck in 1878 and at that of Vienna in 1881, he became full professor there in 1886.
A member of the Academies of Sciences of Vienna and Munich, from 1879 onward he edited the Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung and, from 1896, presided over the Institute for the Study of Austrian History. A distinguished medievalist, particularly active in the study and publication of the sources of the period to whose history he devoted all his work, he was a member of the commission of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, edited the second edition of the first volume of Böhm’s Regesta Imperii (Die Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter den Karolingern, 751-918, 2 voll., 2° ed., Innsbruck 1899-1908), and the Diplomata Karolinorum. Among his numerous works may be mentioned a German history in the age of the Carolingians (Deutsche Geschichte unter den Karolingern, Stoccarda 1896), as well as a monograph on the cultural importance of the abbey of S. Floriano (Die literarischen Leistungen des Stiftes St. Florian, 1874; new ed. by O. Redlich in 1905).