Armin Wolf (historian)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Armin Wolf (born May 12, 1935 in Berlin ) is a German medieval historian . He set up the theory of inheritance law for the formation of the Electoral College and researched the Homeric geography of the Odyssey .

Life

After graduating from high school in Frankfurt am Main, he studied in Tübingen, Frankfurt and Hamburg from 1955 and received his doctorate in 1961. phil. at Otto Brunner . He then worked as a research assistant with a teaching position at the Leibniz College at the University of Tübingen . In 1965 he became a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt am Main. 1974/75 he received a scholarship from the Volkswagen Foundation at the German Historical Institute in Rome . In 1983 he was visiting scholar at Pennsylvania State University . In 1985 he qualified as a professor at the University of Heidelberg for medieval history and historical auxiliary sciences , where he became a private lecturer and in 1993 an extraordinary professor. In 1987 he was a visiting professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and in 1992 at the University of Kyoto . Retired in 2000, he continued to work as a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History until 2006.

Work

He deals with medieval legal history, in particular the college of electors and the elections for kings in the Holy Roman Empire, with genealogy and historical cartography (for example the Ebstorf world map ).

Creation of the Electoral College

According to Wolf, the eligibility for the German king and the right to vote of the 23 secular imperial princes from 19 dynasties, first handed down as voters in 1198, should be declared under inheritance law. It was based on whether and how the royal voters (also in the female line) descended from the Ottonians , which had become extinct in the male line . He interprets these royal voters as "representatives of the royal daughter tribes". Wolf's thesis: "Those entitled to vote were entitled to vote." After the fall of the Staufer , the considerably smaller, seven-member Kurfürstenkolleg after Wolf was not, as previously assumed, constituted before 1257, but only in 1298. The famous spot in the Sachsenspiegel (Landrecht III 57), with its election by twice three (= six) princes (the clergy Mainz, Trier and Cologne and the secular Palatinate, Saxony, Brandenburg) and the exclusion of Bohemia, does not reflect an earlier choice, but rather precisely the election of Rudolf von Habsburg as king in 1273. It was therefore only added to the Sachsenspiegel at this time. Rudolf's secular voters had set the electoral condition to have daughters of the new king as wives. The representatives of the daughter tribes of King Rudolf that emerged from these marriages - and a later one of the King of Bohemia with a Rudolf daughter - united together with the three Rhenish archbishops as a traditional seven-member electoral college for the first time in 1298. This happened when Rudolf's son Albrecht I was elected for the second time . , about which the seven electors jointly issued a certificate for the first time and certified it with their seven seals. Wolf refers to Johann von Victring's testimony that the seven electors had never been together in one place in living memory . He also relies on the fact that the hereditary nature of the secular royal suffrage was codified in the Golden Bull of Emperor Charles IV in 1356. Here, too, applies again: “Those entitled to vote were entitled to the heir.” Wolf continues to defend his not undisputed theory of inheritance law .

Geography of the Odyssey

His theory on the geography of the Odyssey gained notoriety beyond specialist circles. According to Wolf, the land of the Phaeacians in “Homer's Journey in the Footsteps of Odysseus” corresponds to the isthmus in today's Calabria at the narrowest part of Italy, which is only 30 km narrow. There the shipwrecked "Odysseus" could have got from the Tyrrhenian to the Ionian Sea in the three-day walk mentioned by Homer. In the city of the Phaeacians, Odysseus “marveled” at the view of the two (port) bays ( liménas ) on both sides of the city. Because in Tiriolo on the watershed of the Calabrian isthmus the two bays of the Tyrrhenian and Ionian Seas can actually be seen from the same place at the same time, Wolf suspects the royal seat of the Homeric Phaeacians there - and not, as a post-Homeric tradition assumes, the Greek Corfu island . For Wolf, Homer's Phäakenland is the later Magna Graecia . This interpretation of the land between the two seas explains for the first time why the land of the Phaeacians at Homer lies both behind and in front of the Strait of Messina , which has been regarded as the Strait of Scylla and Charybdis since ancient times. According to Wolf, Homer uses over twelve features of these two terrible plagues to characterize earthquakes and seaquakes in the tectonically most restless zone of Europe.

Wolf has been an honorary citizen of the city of Tiriolo since 2015 . He accompanied the two-part television program on ZDF ( Cruise with Odysseus ) in the series terra-X. The reconstructed by Wolf route was also the six-part television documentary on the traces of Odysseus (broadcast on 3sat ) by Nina Mavis Brunner basis

Honors

In 1993 Wolf received the Prix ​​Brant IV de Koskull of the Confédération Internationale de Généalogie and in 1994 the Bardeleben medal “for his further research on nobility genealogy and in particular on the question of the royal elector and the electoral college”. Since 1998 he has been an honorary member of the Académie Internationale de Généalogie , since 2002 Académico correspondiente de la Academia de Heraldica y Genealogia in Madrid. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Personal History .

Fonts

  • The Ebstorf map of the world as a monument to a medieval world and history. In: History in Science and Education . Vol. 8, 1957, pp. 204-215.
  • The laws of the City of Frankfurt am Main 1373–1509 (= publications of the Historical Commission of the City of Frankfurt. Vol. 13). Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1969 (dissertation 1961).
  • Legislation in Europe 1100–1500: On the emergence of territorial states (= Helmut Coing (Hrsg.): Handbook of sources and literature of recent European history of private law. Vol. 1, 1973). Independently as 2nd edit. and extended edition. Beck, Munich 1996 (Habilitation 1985).
  • Suffrage and the right of inheritance in the realms of Alfonso the Wise. In: On the history of families and inheritance law ( = studies on European legal history. Vol. 32) 1987, pp. 1–37.
  • From the royal electors to the electoral college. Pictorial monuments as unrecognized documents of constitutional history. In: Elections and Voting in the Middle Ages ( lectures and research, vol. 37) 1990, pp. 15–78.
  • The Family of Dynasties in Medieval Europe: Dynasties, Kingdoms and Daughter Tribes. In: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History . Vol. 12, 1991, pp. 183-260.
  • King's candidacy and kingship . In: German Archives. Vol. 47, 1991, pp. 45-117.
  • Why was Rudolf von Habsburg (+ 1291) able to become king? In: Journal for Legal History, German Department. Vol. 109, 1992, pp. 48-94.
  • King for a day: Konrad von Teck. Elected, murdered (?) And forgotten (= series of publications by the Kirchheim unter Teck town archive . Vol. 17) 1993, 2nd edit. 1995 edition.
  • Origin of the Counts of Northeim from the House of Luxembourg and the murder of Ekkehard von Meißen 1002. In: Lower Saxony Yearbook for National History . Vol. 69, 1997, pp. 427-440.
  • The creation of the Kurfürstenkolleg 1198–1298. For the 700th anniversary of the first union of the seven electors (= historical seminar NF vol. 11 ). Schulz-Kirchner, Idstein 1998, 2nd edit. Edition 2000.
  • La Discendenza degli Svevi di Sicilia in Europe e la dominazione d´Italia fino all XIX secolo. In: XXIII Congresso internazionale di scienze genealogica e araldica, Torino 1998 (= Pubblicazioni degli Archivi di Stato. Saggi 64). Roma 2000, pp. 641-653.
  • Editor: Royal daughter tribes, royal voters and electors (= studies on European legal history. Vol. 152). Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2002, in it: Königswähler and Royal Daughter Tribes, pp. 1–77.
  • Were the Landgraves of Thuringia originally "French"? In: Généalogie & Héraldique. Actes du 24 e Congrès International des Sciences Généalogique & Héraldique , Besançon, 2. – 7. May 2000 (= La Vie Généalogique N o  29 ). Paris 2002, pp. 387-408 and in: Genealogisches Jahrbuch . Vol. 41, 2001, pp. 5-28.
  • The Golden Bull: King Wenceslas handwriting. Codex Vindobonensis 338 of the Austrian National Library. Commentary on the facsimile, Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, Graz 1977, 2nd edit. 2002 edition.
  • Electors and kings. To new theories about the king's election paragraph in the Sachsenspiegel and the formation of the electoral college. Review of the work by Franz-Reiner Erkens. In: Journal for Legal History, German Department. Vol. 120, 2003, pp. 535-548.
  • About Germany in historical atlases of the 19th century. In: Interpretation of history on old maps. (Wolfenbütteler Research. Vol. 101 ). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2003, pp. 255-286.
  • Homer's Journey: In the Footsteps of Odysseus. Completely revised new edition. With 176 illustrations in the text and 65 colored illustrations on boards. Böhlau, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2009 (1st edition together with Hans-Helmut Wolf 1968 as Der Weg des Odysseus , then edited and expanded several times under different titles).
  • Ancestors of German kings and queens. Alternatives to the work of Eduard Hlawitschka. In: Herold-Jahrbuch NF 15, 2010, pp. 77–198.
  • The Ebstorf Mappamundi and Gervasius of Tilbury. The Controversy Revisited. In: Imago Mundi. Vol. 64, 2012, pp. 1-27.
  • Relationship - inheritance law - royal elections. Seven new and 26 updated articles with 192 tables, synopses, maps and illustrations. 2 vols. (= Studies on European Legal History 283.1–2). Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2013.
  • Electors . In: Concise Dictionary of German Legal History, Volume 3, Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 2013, Sp. 328–341.
  • Electors (2014) . http://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/artikel/artikel_45780 -
  • On the royal descent of Empress Kunigunde, King Rudolf of Rheinfelden, Empress Mathilde and Emperor Lothar of Saxony as well as the royal candidates Hermann II of Swabia and Otto von Northeim. Again alternatives to the work of Eduard Hlawitschka. In: Herold-Jahrbuch NF 20, 2015, pp. 235–284.
  • The theory of inheritance law for the creation of the Kurfürstenkolleg . In: Journal for Legal History, German Department. Vol. 134, 2017, pp. 260-287.
  • Ulisse in Italia. Sicilia e Calabria negli tatting di Omero. Catanzaro 2017.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Franz-Reiner Erkens : Review on Royal Daughter Trunks , ed. by Armin Wolf, 2002 , in: Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte . Vol. 120, 2003, online with Gerhard Köbler .
  2. ↑ Armin Wolf: Homer's journey: in the footsteps of Odysseus. Completely revised new edition. Böhlau, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2009 (preview) .
  3. ↑ Uwe Walter : Armin Wolf: Homer's journey. You have to know how to unravel seaman's yarn. Meeting. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 18, 2010; Fabio Flepp: The odyssey - where was Odysseus actually? In: SRF.ch , Reisegeschichten, accessed on January 16, 2016.
  4. ↑ Honor for Armin Wolf. Message. In: Max Planck Institute for European Legal History. July 21, 2015.
  5. ↑ Sulamith Ehrensperger: In the footsteps of Odysseus: Episodes 1 - 6. In: 3sat , travel stories, December 10, 2015.
  6. ^ Eckart Henning : Genealogy and legal history. To award the Bardeleben medal to Armin Wolf. In: ders .: Auxilia Historica. Contributions to the historical auxiliary sciences and their interrelations. Neustadt an der Aisch 2000, pp. 131-137 (previously in: Genealogisches Jahrbuch . Vol. 35, 1995, pp. 5-9).
  7. ↑ Prof. Dr. Armin Wolf. ( Memento from February 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Short CV and list of publications. In: Institute for the history of persons. Retrieved January 16, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Wolf, Armin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German medieval historian and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin