Joachim Wollasch

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Joachim Wollasch (born February 1, 1931 in Freiburg im Breisgau ; † August 8, 2015 in Illingen (Württemberg) ) was a German historian who researched the history of the early and high Middle Ages . He taught as a professor of medieval history at the University of Münster (1974–1996). In his research, Wollasch devoted himself to the previously largely neglected memorial sources .

Live and act

Joachim Wollasch was born in 1931 as the first of six children to the director of the Freiburg seminar for welfare workers of the German Caritas Association Hans Wollasch and his wife Käthe, née. Winkler was born in Freiburg im Breisgau. After graduating from the humanistic Bertholdgymnasium in Freiburg in 1950, Wollasch studied history, Germanic and Romance philology at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg from 1951 to 1955 . He belonged to a group of young historians who came together around Gerd Tellenbach to form the so-called “Freiburg Working Group ” on medieval personal research. An intensive collaboration arose in view of similar research interests with Karl Schmid . In 1955 he received his doctorate from Tellenbach with a thesis on Ebbo I, the founder of the Déols monastery in the early 10th century. Also in Freiburg in 1963 he completed his habilitation on monasticism in the Middle Ages between church and world . He used the necrology for the first time in order to use it as a source of knowledge and to obtain information about the inner and outer life of convents in the Middle Ages. Wollasch was a lecturer at the St. Blasier "University Sanatorium " in the 1950s and 60s . This was followed by substitute professorships in Freiburg and Münster and, in 1969/70, a guest lecturer at the German Historical Institute in Rome .

On April 1, 1974, Wollasch was appointed to the professorship for Medieval History at the Westphalian Wilhelms University of Münster as the successor to Karl Schmid . Wollasch played a major role in the fact that the Institute for Early Medieval Research developed into a center of international Medieval Studies. In Münster he was the managing director of the historical seminar and dean of the history department, spokesman for the professors in the university's senate and chairman of the senate's commission for the rector and chancellor. From 1974 to 1996 he was director of the Institute for Early Medieval Research. Until 1981, Wollasch was a member of the Collaborative Research Center 7 “Medieval Research” (“Image, meaning, things, words and people”) and head of the “People and Communities” project. Then he was a member of the Collaborative Research Center 231 “Carriers, Fields, Forms of Pragmatic Writing in the Middle Ages” and head of the sub-project “How monastic life habits became written in the Middle Ages”. He retired on March 1, 1996. Important academic students of Wollasch were Hermann Kamp and Andreas Sohn . Wollasch spent his retirement in his hometown of Freiburg. Wollasch passed away in August 2015 after a serious illness. He was buried in the main cemetery in Freiburg im Breisgau .

His main research interests were the history of the reformed monastery Cluny in Burgundy and the history of medieval monasticism as well as its effect on the environment of the monasteries . Wollasch continued his academic teacher Tellenbach's research on personal name research. For the purpose of prayer aid, the monasteries kept records containing the names of many people in various arrangements. Schmid and Wollasch were able to use these records to draw conclusions about the relationships and bonds of these people, as the people were often recorded with their social environment. The Memorial tradition was by then very neglected in medieval studies. There was a lack of critical editions and the methodology to evaluate these sources was lacking. With Karl Schmid, Wollasch made the memorial tradition available through new editions and opened up the variety of names with the help of electronic data processing. Wollasch was able to prove in an essay published in 1967 that the necrology previously attributed to the Priory of Münchenwiler is “a Cluniacensic book of the dead from the time of Abbot Hugo von Cluny ”. It was laid out around 1100 in the Cluniacensian convent of Marcigny and continued there until the middle of the 12th century. Wollasch devoted himself to research into remembrance of the dead in the high medieval reform monastery of Cluny. In 1982 he and his group of employees presented the two-volume work Synopsis of the Cluniacensic Necrologies . As a result, the previously unmanageable memorial tradition of the reform monastery was processed. The edition contains around 96,000 name records from the memorial records of a total of nine Cluniacent monasteries and what was then Burgundy between 1050 and 1200. Necrologies from Limoges , Moissac , Marcigny, St-Martin-des-Champs , Longpont and Montierneuf were processed in one edition. The 96,000 name records from the necrology are distributed among 48,000 deceased. Of these, more than 90 percent of these dead entries relate to Cluniacensic monks. With Gerd Althoff he edited the edition of the books of the dead of Merseburg , Magdeburg and Lüneburg . Together with Eckhard Freise and Dieter Geuenich , he published the Martyrolog-Necrolog of St. Emmeram in Regensburg in 1986 . The informative value of the memorial tradition was carefully questioned by Johannes Fried and completely rejected by Hartmut Hoffmann , whereupon Althoff and Wollasch responded to Hoffmann with a reply. With Schmid he founded in 1975 an "annotated source work for researching the people and groups of people of the Middle Ages", the "Societas et Fraternitas". They took the view that the "memorial tradition could serve as a basis for a representation of medieval societies". Wollasch and Schmid criticized the fact that "the social history research has hardly considered the specific statements of the commemorative tradition". The series of publications resulting from this approach now comprises more than 30 volumes. Both historians published the Liber vitae of Corvey Abbey , which appeared in 1983 and 1989. In 1984, the much-acclaimed anthology Memoria followed. The historical testimony of liturgical remembrance in the Middle Ages , which goes back to an international and above all interdisciplinary conference in Münster in 1980. In 1996 he published the monograph Cluny as a result of his many years of research . Light of the world. The rise and fall of a monastic community . Through his research, he gained a high reputation, especially in France. Wollasch was especially valued by Georges Duby , André Vauchez and Pierre Riché .

Wollasch was long-standing editor (1988–1996) and co-editor (1975–1987, 1997–2010) of the renowned Early Medieval Studies . In 1975 Wollasch was elected a full member of the Historical Commission for Westphalia , and in 1998 membership was converted into a corresponding one. Since 1998 he has also been a member of the French Société nationale des Antiquaires . He was an extraordinary member of the Bavarian Benedictine Academy and a member of the commission for historical regional studies in Baden-Württemberg . In 2009 he was awarded the 10th Prince Abbot Martin Gerbert Prize of the city of St. Blasien for his research on the history of the monastery.

Fonts

Monographs

  • Cluny - "Light of the World". The rise and fall of the monastic community. Artemis & Winkler, Zurich 1996, ISBN 3-7608-1129-9 .
  • Medieval monasticism between church and world (= Münstersche Mittelalter-Schriften. Vol. 7). Fink, Munich 1973 (at the same time: Freiburg (Breisgau), university, habilitation paper, 1963).

Editorships

  • together with Karl Schmid: Memoria. The historical testimony of liturgical remembrance in the Middle Ages (= Münstersche Mittelalter-Schriften. Vol. 48). Fink, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-7705-2231-1 .
  • together with Gerd Althoff : The books of the dead from Merseburg, Magdeburg and Lüneburg (= Monumenta Germaniae historica. Libri Memoriales et Necrologia. Nova Series. Vol. 2). Hahn, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-7752-5142-1 .
  • Synopsis of the Cluniacensic necrologies (= Münster medieval writings. Vol. 39). Vol. 1-2. Fink, Munich 1982.

Collected Essays

  • Mechthild Sandmann (ed.): Joachim Wollasch: Ways to research the culture of remembrance. Selected essays. With an introduction by Rudolf Schieffer . (= Contributions to the history of old monasticism and Benedictineism. Vol. 47). Aschendorff, Münster 2011, ISBN 978-3-402-10385-2 . (there p. 663–673 a complete list of Joachim Wollasch's writings)

literature

  • Gerd Althoff: Cluny database manager. For the seventieth of the medievalist Joachim Wollasch. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 2, 2001, No. 28, p. 44.
  • Gerd Althoff: Obituary. Joachim Wollasch (born February 1, 1931 † August 8, 2015). In: Frühmittelalterliche Studien , Vol. 50, 2016, pp. 15-19.
  • Thomas mother: PEOPLE: He let the Benedictine light shine. On the death of Joachim Wollasch - 10th recipient of the Fürstabt-Gerbert-Preis of the city of St. Blasien. In: Badische Zeitung , August 18, 2015 ( online )
  • Franz Neiske, Dietrich Poeck and Mechthild Sandmann (eds.): Vinculum societatis. Joachim Wollasch on his 60th birthday. Regio-Verlag Glock and Lutz, Sigmaringendorf 1991, ISBN 3-8235-6090-5 .
  • Franz Neiske: Joachim Wollasch (1931–2015). In: Francia Vol. 43, 2016, pp. 457-459 ( online ).
  • Andreas son (ed.): Ways of remembrance in and on the Middle Ages. Festschrift for Joachim Wollasch on his 80th birthday (= new beginnings. Intercultural perspectives on history, politics and religion. Vol. 3). Winkler, Bochum 2011, ISBN 978-3-89911-153-8 .
  • Andreas son: His Cluny. On the death of the historian Joachim Wollasch. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , August 18, 2015, No. 190, p. 12.
  • Wollasch, Joachim. In: Kürschner's German Scholars Calendar. Bio-bibliographical directory of contemporary German-speaking scientists. Volume 4: SE - Z. 26th edition. de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-030256-1 , p. 4128.
  • Joachim Wollasch. In: Fred Ludwig Sepaintner (Hrsg.): Baden-Württembergische Biographien. Vol. 4. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-17-019951-4 , p. XXI. (Employee entry)

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Karl Schmid: The Freiburg working group. Gerd Tellenbach on his 70th birthday. In: Journal for the history of the Upper Rhine , Vol. 122 (1974), pp. 331–347.
  2. ↑ Joachim Wollasch: Ebbo I. Lord of Déols. Freiburg i. Br., Univ., Diss., 1955 (unpublished MS, UB Freiburg UMA 4644). Published in print under the title: Joachim Wollasch: Mönchtum, Königum, Arel und Klöster im Berry during the 10th century. In: Gerd Tellenbach (ed.): New research on Cluny and the Cluniacensians. Freiburg i. Br. 1959, pp. 17-165.
  3. ^ Obituary notice in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , August 14, 2015.
  4. ↑ On Wollasch's research projects, cf. Michael Borgolte: Social History of the Middle Ages. A research balance sheet after German reunification. Munich 1996, p. 324 ff.
  5. ^ Gerd Althoff: Obituary. Joachim Wollasch (born February 1, 1931 † August 8, 2015). In: Frühmittelalterliche Studien , Vol. 50, 2016, pp. 15–19, here: p. 16.
  6. ^ Joachim Wollasch: A Cluniacensisches death book from the time of Abbot Hugos von Cluny. In: Frühmittelalterliche Studien , Vol. 1 (1967), pp. 406-443.
  7. ^ Synopsis of the Cluniacensic Necrologies. With the participation of Wolf-Dieter Heim, Joachim Mehne, Franz Neiske and Dietrich Poeck. Edited by Joachim Wollasch. Munich 1982.
  8. ↑ Joachim Wollasch: Who were the monks of Cluny from the 10th to the 12th century? In: Rita Lejeune, Joseph Deckers (eds.): Clio et son regard. Mélanges d'histoire, d'histoire de l'art et d'archéologie offerts à Jacques Stiennon à l'occasion de ses 25 ans d'enseignement à l'Univ. de Liège. Liège 1982, pp. 663-678, here: p. 665 ( online ); Joachim Wollasch: Convent strength and poor relief in medieval monasteries. Testimonials and questions. In: Saeculum , Vol. 39 (1988), pp. 184-199, here: p. 187 ( online )
  9. ^ Gerd Althoff, Joachim Wollasch: The books of the dead of Merseburg, Magdeburg and Lüneburg. Munich 1983.
  10. ↑ On the debate about the method: Johannes Fried: On the method of Nekrologausbildung: Comments on a new book. In: Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins , Vol. 135 (1987), pp. 87-99. Gerd Althoff: “Insurmountable difficulties?” A reply. In: Journal for the history of the Upper Rhine , Vol. 135 (1987), pp. 100-103. Hartmut Hoffmann: Notes on the Libri Memoriales. In: German Archive for Research into the Middle Ages , Vol. 53 (1997), pp. 415–459 ( digitized version ). Gerd Althoff, Joachim Wollasch: Will the Libri Memoriales remain silent? A reply to H. Hoffmann. In: German Archive for Research into the Middle Ages , Vol. 56 (2000) pp. 33–53. ( Digitized version )
  11. ^ The article appeared in Karl Schmid, Joachim Wollasch: Societas et Fraternitas. Justification of an annotated source work to research the people and groups of people of the Middle Ages. In: Frühmittelalterliche Studien , Vol. 9 (1975), pp. 1-48 and as a separate print Berlin et al. 1975 ( online )
  12. ^ Karl Schmid, Joachim Wollasch: Societas et Fraternitas. Justification of an annotated source work to research the people and groups of people of the Middle Ages. In: Frühmittelalterliche Studien , Vol. 9 (1975), pp. 1-48, here: p. 1.
  13. ^ Karl Schmid, Joachim Wollasch: Societas et Fraternitas. Justification of an annotated source work to research the people and groups of people of the Middle Ages. In: Frühmittelalterliche Studien , Vol. 9 (1975), pp. 1–48, here: p. 11, note 31.
  14. ^ Societas et Fraternitas. Publications of medieval memorial sources
  15. ^ Andreas son: His Cluny. On the death of the historian Joachim Wollasch. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , August 18, 2015, No. 190, p. 12.
  16. ↑ Christel Meier : 50 Years of Early Medieval Studies. In: Frühmittelalterliche Studien , Vol. 50 (2016), pp. 1–13, here: pp. 12 f.
  17. ↑ Joachim Wollasch: Words on the occasion of the award of the Fürstabt-Gerbert-Preis by the city of St. Blasien on October 25, 2009. In: Andreas Sohn (Ed.): Ways of remembrance in and to the Middle Ages. Festschrift for Joachim Wollasch on his 80th birthday. Bochum 2011, pp. 653-662.
personal data
SURNAME Wollasch, Joachim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 1, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Freiburg in Breisgau
DATE OF DEATH August 8, 2015
Place of death Illingen (Württemberg)