August Franzen

August Franzen (born February 12, 1912 in Barmen ; † March 30, 1972 in Freiburg ) was a Catholic church historian and priest of the Archdiocese of Cologne . He attended high school in Wuppertal and studied theology in Bonn from 1931 to 1935. In 1937 he was ordained a priest, after which he worked as a chaplain in Eitorf / Sieg, Bad Godesberg, Königswinter and Cologne. In 1939 he received his doctorate in church history in theology with Wilhelm Neuss . In his dissertation he dealt with the Archbishop of Cologne, Ferdinand of Bavaria . After the Second World War he continued his studies in Rome, where he examined the Cologne nunciature reports in the Vatican library. In 1951 he completed his habilitation with Hubert Jedin with a thesis on the Cologne Archdeaconate , which he later published on. From 1960 onwards he taught church history at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg .

In 1940 he became a board member of the Corpus Catholicorum Society, which is dedicated to researching the history of the Reformation and Catholic reform in the 16th and 17th centuries. In 1966 he became its chairman.

He is still known today due to his Little Church History , which was last published in 2008 in its 26th edition (expanded and revised by Roland Fröhlich ).

Web links

• Literature by and about August Franzen in the catalog of the German National Library
• Bibliography , on the website of the University of Freiburg

Remarks

1. ^ August Franzen: The Cologne archdeaconate in pre- and post-Tridentine times. A church and church historical study of the nature of the archdeaconates and the reasons for their continued existence before and after the Council of Trent. Münster 1953 (= Reformation history studies and texts. Volume 78/79).