Engelbert Mühlbacher

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Engelbert Mühlbacher

Engelbert Mühlbacher (born October 4, 1843 in Gresten , Lower Austria , † July 17, 1903 in Vienna ) was an Austrian historian and diplomat .

Life

Mühlbacher was born in the Lower Austrian town of Gresten, the son of a blacksmith, but his parents originally came from Traunkirchen in Upper Austria , where the old family property - an iron hammer - was, and so Mühlbacher always felt himself to be Upper Austrian with his strong sense of home. Mühlbacher attended grammar school in Linz until 1862, only to enter the St. Florian monastery in Linz as a novice that same year . During his theological training there, he dealt intensively with historical studies, which were also published in the Theological-Practical Quarterly Publication ( On the oldest church history of the Land ob der Enns , 1868; On the criticism of the legends of St. Florian , 1868). On July 28, 1867, Mühlbacher was ordained a priest and worked in pastoral care for the next few years.

In 1872 Mühlbacher began studying history in Innsbruck , where Julius von Ficker became his most important teacher. As early as 1874, Mühlbacher received his doctorate with a dissertation on the “controversial election of the Pope in 1130” (printed in 1876), because the church political struggles of the 12th century attracted his interest most at that time. Mühlbacher then turned to diplomacy and trained from 1874 to 1876 with Theodor von Sickel in Vienna. Based on work on "the dating of the documents of Lothar I " and on "the documents of Charles III. “(Printed in the meeting reports of the Vienna Academy 85/1877 and 92/1879) he completed his habilitation in Innsbruck in 1878. Then in 1879 he was the editor of the newly founded "Mitteilungen des Institut für Österreichische Geschichtskunde" (hereinafter referred to as MIÖG). Mühlbacher carried out this task until his death and made MIÖG the most important historical journal in Austria.

In 1881 Mühlbacher became associate professor for medieval history and historical auxiliary sciences in Vienna. Because of his unclear spiritual position - Mühlbacher had never formally resigned from the Linz Canons' Monastery, but had not visited it since the 1870s and had also appeared as a critic of the infallibility dogma of 1870 - he had to wait until 1896 for his appointment as full professor. In the same year Mühlbacher was also appointed director of the Institute for Austrian Historical Research.

In 1891 Mühlbacher was elected to the central management of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH). The edition of the Carolingian documents, which the MGH had initially postponed in 1875, was taken over by Mühlbacher in 1892 and energetically promoted with his colleagues Alfons Dopsch and Michael Tangl . Even if the original plan of editing all Carolingian rulers in the entire empire up to 840 and then in Eastern Franconia up to 911 within ten years turned out to be far too optimistic, at the time of Mühlbacher's death the almost finished manuscript of the documents of Pippin , Karlmann and Karl des lay Great before.

In July 1903, at the age of 59, he succumbed to heart failure as a result of delayed pneumonia, which he had taken no account of in his zeal for work.

Engelbert Mühlbacher rests in an honorary grave in the Döblinger Friedhof (group 30, row 4, number 10) in Vienna. In 1930 the Mühlbachergasse in Vienna- Hietzing was named after him.

plant

Mühlbacher's main work is made up of three important scientific works:

  • The regests of the empire under the Carolingians 751-918 (Regesta Imperii I. 1st edition 1889, 2nd supplemented edition 1908; digitized ) record documents, itineraries and other acts of rule ( capitularies , imperial assemblies, etc.) of the Carolingian kings from Pippin to Conrad I . , taking into account the earlier Arnulfinger already from Arnulf von Metz . With this fundamental work, Mühlbacher not only captured the relevant material almost completely, but also achieved important things in its critical development (e.g. in his judgment on the authenticity or inauthenticity of documents). As part of the Regesta Imperii series founded by Johann Friedrich Böhmer , this work is cited with the short title "Böhmer-Mühlbacher".
  • Mühlbacher's German history under the Carolingians (Stuttgart 1896, reprints 1959, 1972, 1980, 1999) is still used today because of her mastery of the subject matter, the clear presentation and the courage to make pronounced judgments.
  • With the documents of Pippin, Karlmann and Charlemagne (MGH Diplomata Karolinorum I), published posthumously in 1906 ( digitized version ), Mühlbacher presented the first scientific and still authoritative edition of the documents of the three Franconian kings mentioned. In view of this achievement, minor deficiencies in the edition, which were already criticized at that time, also within the MGH, are of less importance: namely that Mühlbacher had renounced to identify the dictators (i.e. the notaries formulating the text) for the individual documents, and that he did not print the original documents verbatim, but sometimes emended the text and then banned the reading of the original in a note in the text-critical apparatus (while it is otherwise a fixed rule of diplomacy to print originals unchanged).

Other works (selection)

  • Un diplôme faux de Saint Martin de Tours. In: Mélanges Julien Havet. 1895, pp. 131-148.
  • The Constantinian donation in the German Reich Chancellery. In: MIÖG. 2, 1881, p. 115.
  • The duty of loyalty in the deeds of Charlemagne. In: MIÖG. Supplementary Volume 6, 1901, pp. 871-883.
  • Two more forgeries from Passau. [to DD Ludwig the child 9 and † 84]. In: MIÖG. 24, 1903, pp. 424-432.

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Engelbert Mühlbacher  - Sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Mühlbacher, Engelbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian historian
DATE OF BIRTH October 4, 1843
PLACE OF BIRTH Gresten , Lower Austria
DATE OF DEATH July 17, 1903
Place of death Vienna