BONITZ, HERMANN (1814–1888), German scholar, was born at Langensalza in Saxony on the 29th of July 1814. Having studied at Leipzig under G. Hermann and at Berlin under Böckh and Lachmann, he became successively teacher at the Blochmann institute in Dresden (1836), Oberlehrer at the Friedrich-Wilhelms gymnasium (1838) and the Graues Kloster (1840) in Berlin, professor at the gymnasium at Stettin (1842), professor at the university of Vienna (1849), member of the imperial academy (1854), member of the council of education (1864), and director of the Graues Kloster gymnasium (1867). He retired in 1888, and died on the 25th of July in that year at Berlin. He took great interest in higher education, and was chiefly responsible for the system of teaching and examination in use in the high schools of Prussia after 1882. But it is as a commentator on Plato and Aristotle that he is best known outside Germany. His most important works in this connexion are: Disputationes Platonicae Duae (1837); Platonische Studien (3rd ed., 1886); Observations Criticae in Aristotelis Libros Metaphysicos (1842); Observationes Criticae in Aristotelis quae feruntur Magna Moralia et Ethica Eudemia (1844); Alexandri Aphrodisiensis Commentarius in Libras Metaphysicos Aristotelis (1847); Aristotelis Metaphysica (1848–1849); Über die Kategorien des A. (1853); Aristotelische Studien (1862–1867); Index Aristotelicus (1870). Other works: Über den Ursprung der homerischen Gedichte (5th ed., 1881); Beiträge zur Erklärung des Thukydides (1854), des Sophokles (1856–1857). He also wrote largely on classical and educational subjects, mainly for the Zeitschrift für die österreichischen Gymnasien.
A full list of his writings is given in the obituary notice by T. Gompertz in the Biographisches Jahrbuch für Altertumskunde (1890).