studied Philosophy and German at the University of Innsbruck, where he later went on to teach. Between 1979 and 2001, he was the director of the Brenner-Archiv, a research institute of the University of Innsbruck. In that position, he stood at the head of numerous research projects (about, among others, the German poet Georg Trakl and the philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and Ferdinand Ebner). Over the past few years, Methlagl has principally occupied himself with translating and investigating the works of Danish writers and philosophers such as Søren Kierkegaard and Steen Steensen Blicher.