Carl Arnold Willemsen

Carl Arnold Willemsen (1975)

Carl Arnold Willemsen (born March 29, 1902 in Uerdingen ; † August 10, 1986 in Bonn ) was a German historian who is known in particular for his long-standing occupation with the architecture around Emperor Frederick II in southern Italy.

Life

Willemsen studied in Marburg, Munich and Freiburg, where he at Heinrich Finke in 1924 with a dissertation on Cardinal Napoleone Orsini (1263-1342) received his doctorate . In 1928 he completed his habilitation at the University of Freiburg with the book The History of the Kingdom of Mallorka and was initially there, from 1932 onwards at the University of Münster as a private lecturer . In 1935 he became an extraordinary, associate professor in Münster . Willemsen's research interests were based on Finke's research interests following his dissertation on the history of Aragon and its Mediterranean territories in the period before and after 1300, the results of which in 1935, 1937 and 1940 in the Spanish research of those close to him, which were banned by the National Socialists in 1941 Görres Society .

From November 1938 he taught as a regular associate professor at the State Academy in Braunsberg in East Prussia . In 1933, after the beginning of the Nazi era, it was considered a "Nazi stronghold", but changed in the following years after the papal revocation of the teaching license of the rector and another professor, both Catholic priests and theology professors, and the change in almost the entire teaching staff their structure.

Since 1937 Willemsen dealt with the Hohenstaufen emperors , especially with Friedrich II. In the same year he began to work on the first complete critical edition of the six books in Latin of the work of Emperor Friedrich II. De arte venandi cum avibus (“The art, hunting with birds ”). For this he used the oldest of the manuscripts in question, namely the one from the Biblioteca Universitaria of Bologna. The work was published in 1942 by Insel-Verlag, Leipzig in an edition of 600 copies. The Latin text edition was to be followed by a German translation and a commentary volume. The preparatory work was already well advanced when, in the spring of 1945, shortly before the German surrender, they were destroyed with all documents due to the war. Willemsen was only able to publish the German translation in two volumes in 1964 at Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, with the assistance of Dagmar Odenthal. Willemsen published a comprehensive commentary on the Latin and German translation in 1970. Willemsen then wrote the 1969 commentary and an explanatory description of the facsimile edition of King Manfred's original manuscript, richly illustrated in color, of the first two books of De arte venandi cum avibus by his father, Emperor Frederick II.

Willemsen was drafted into the Wehrmacht during the Second World War in May 1941 and mainly worked as a special leader in the army archives, the head of which was a friend of Willemsen and had requested him from General Friedrich von Rabenau, who was murdered by the Nazis in 1945 without trial . In 1944 Willemsen published his first rather art-historical contribution, the text and picture book Apulia - Land of the Normans, Land of the Staufers . This work was the first of a long series of thematically similar books and writings from the border area between art history and the history of the Middle Ages. In 1946 and 1947 two post-war publications were published that dealt with the circle of poets around Friedrich II.

After the war, Willemsen was classified in the denazification process as “exonerated” within the meaning of Article 13 of the Liberation Act. 1945 to 1950 he worked for the publisher Anton Kippenberg ( Insel Verlag Leipzig) and the Scherpe-Verlag Krefeld. In 1950 he became an honorary professor for middle and recent history at the University of Bonn, in 1955 an associate professor and in 1965 a full professor there. His retirement took place in 1969.

After receiving a professorship at the University of Bonn again in 1950, Willemsen reported back scientifically to the Staufer architecture in southern Italy in 1953 with a publication on the Capua Bridge Gate, followed in 1955 by Castel del Monte, the crown of Apulia , an art guide "Southern Italy and Sicily ”1957 and“ Calabria, fate of a land bridge ”1966. A large number of writings followed, some in Italian, including L'Enigma de Otranto 1980. The latter was also published posthumously in German in 1992 under the title“ Das Rätsel von Otranto - the floor mosaic in the cathedral - an inventory ”published. He published the results of the excavation campaigns he helped initiate in the various Staufer forts in southern Italy together with the excavation manager Franco Schettini (then head of the preservation of monuments in Bari).

honors and awards

• 1964 Grand Cross of the Italian Order of Merit
• 1972 Large Federal Cross of Merit
• 1977 honorary citizen of Foggia (Apulia)
• 1980 Honorary doctorate from the University of Bar (Apulia)
• 1982 honorary citizen of Andria / Apulia
• Vice director of the Centro di studi normanno-svevi in ​​Bari.

literature

• “In memoriam Carl Arnold Willemsen” speeches at the commemoration ceremony of the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Bonn on January 21, 1987. ALMA MATER, Contributions to the history of the University of Bonn 65, Bouvier Verlag Bonn 1987, ISBN 3-416-09160-4 .
• Hans Martin Schaller: "CA Willemsen 80 Grand Seigneur" in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 29, 1982.

Web links

• Literature by and about Carl Arnold Willemsen in the catalog of the German National Library