Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges

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Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges

Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges (born March 18, 1830 in Paris , † September 12, 1889 in Massy ) was a French historian . His name is inextricably linked with the main work La Cité Antique (1864; "The ancient state").

Life

Fustel came from a Parisian family with Breton roots. The father, a naval lieutenant, died shortly after the son was born. Grandfather then took Fustel in and, thanks to good connections with the director of the Lycée Charlemagne in Paris, brought him to this school. Although a fairly average student, he was admitted to the École normal supérieure after graduating . Even as a high school student , he enthusiastically read Guizot's Civilization en France , a book that made him decide to become a historian.

Since 1853 Fustel was at the École française d'Athènes , on whose behalf he supervised excavations in Chios . In 1858 he received his doctorate with a thesis on the Greek historian Polybios ( Polybe, ou la Grèce conquise par les Romains ) and another on the Vesta cult ( Quid Vestae cultus in institutis veterum privatis publicisque valuerit ). These early texts already showed his profound knowledge of ancient languages ​​and the disdain for established academic doctrines. The time of his graduation was marked by the discussion of the theses about the Indo-European language family .

In 1860 Fustel was appointed professor of history at the University of Strasbourg . From 1860 to 1870 he was also the director of the Lycée in Strasbourg, established by Louis XIV in 1685 and bearing his name since 1919. In the early years of Strasbourg he worked on the book La Cité Antique , published in 1864. He held the professorship until the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine in 1870. In the same year he became maître de conférences at the École normal supérieure , whose directorate he took over in 1880. In 1878 he became professor of medieval history at the Sorbonne . At that time he changed his field of interest: away from antiquity - especially from the ancient concept of property - towards the Middle Ages .

This change can be partly explained by the previous Franco-German War : The invasion of France drew Fustel's attention to the Germanic raids on the ancient Roman Empire. His theses stated that these raids were not as bloody and destructive as previously generally assumed. Instead, the conquest of Gaul by the Teutons was a slow process. The invaders were already under Roman rule and the Merovingian political institutions were based more on Roman law than on their own customs. According to Fustel, Gaul was never conquered in the concrete sense of the word. He published these theses in Recherches sur quelquesproblemèmes d'histoire , the first volume of the Histoire des institutions politiques de l'ancienne France , a series originally laid out in four volumes. Only after his death did the sequel, Nouvelles recherches sur quelquesproblemèmes d'histoire (edited by Camille Jullian, 1891) appear. Since the book was massively attacked in both France and Germany, Fustel's writings from then on assumed a rather apologetic character.

In 1875 Fustel became a member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques .

After his death in 1889, his students, including Camille Jullian , gradually published his estate. Fustel had a significant influence on historical science, particularly in terms of evaluating religion in its role in society. The sociologist Émile Durkheim dedicated his doctoral thesis to him.

La Cité Antique

The first lecture notes, which later formed the basis of the book La Cité Antique (Eng: “The Ancient State”), were made during Fustel's stay in Strasbourg. The book was published in 1864 and became a bestseller during the author's lifetime. He tries to understand the political institutions and concepts of property in Rome and Greece from the religious ideas of the respective societies. The subtitle of the introduction is characteristic: "In order to understand the institutions of the ancients, one must examine their earliest beliefs."

Fustel describes the history of the development of ancient society. The main concepts and developmental steps of this process are the family, the “ gens ”, the curia and the tribe. From here the line runs from the city-state, the polis , to the empire. According to Fustel, the experience of death forms the starting point, since it is "the first mystery" that man encounters. The entire structure of private and public life is built on the cult of the dead and ancestors in the early days. According to Fustel, religious ties characterize the family as well as fundamental legal figures, especially those of landed property and private property, but also all moral concepts.

Fustel's construction has been criticized and questioned again and again for various aspects, but it is still a fundamental book to this day. The American historian Larry Siedentop claims that Fustel succeeded in making the leap into the imagination of ancient people best, and that his book is the most influential modern work on the ancient state. Fustel relies resolutely on the evidence that this epoch has left us.

Works

  • La Cité Antique. Etude sur le culte, le droit, les institutions de la Grèce et de Rome. Hachette, Paris 1864. - Ger. The ancient state. Cult, Law and Institutions of Greece and Rome. With an introduction by Karl Christ , Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1981. New edition: dtv, Munich 1988., Athenaion-Verlag 1996,
  • Histoire des institutions de la France. Hachette, Paris 1874. New ed. In several volumes. in Histoire des anciennes institutions françaises. Hachette, Paris 1901–1914.
  • Research on quelquesproblemèmes d'histoire. Hachette, Paris 1885.
  • La Monarchy Franque. Hachette, Paris 1888.
  • L'Alleu et le Domaine rural pendant la période mérovingienne. Hachette, Paris 1889.
  • Questions historiques. Edited by Camille Jullian. Hachette, Paris 1893.
  • Nouvelles Recherches sur quelquesproblemèmes d'histoire. Edited by Camille Jullian. Hachette, Paris 1891.
  • Questions contemporaines. Hachette, Paris 1919.

literature

  • Christophe Charle: Fustel de Coulanges. In: Dictionnaire biographique des universitaires aux XIXe et XXe siècles. 1. La Faculté des lettres de Paris (1809–1908). Editions du CNRS, Paris 1985, pp. 76-77.
  • Karl Christ : ND Fustel de Coulanges and the ancient society. In: Fustel de Coulanges: The ancient state. Cult, Law and Institutions of Greece and Rome. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1981, pp. 9-20 (there further German-language literature).
  • Moses I. Finley : La Cité Antique. De Fustel de Coulanges à Max Weber et au-delà. In: Mythe, Mémoire, Histoire. Flammarion, Paris 1981, pp. 89-120.
  • Alain Guerreau: Fustel de Coulanges médiéviste. In: Revue historique. 111, 558 (1986), pp. 381-406.
  • Paul Guiraud: Fustel de Coulanges. Hachette, Paris 1896.
  • François Hartog: Le XIXe siècle et l'histoire. Le cas Fustel de Coulanges. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1988.
  • Camille Jullian: Fustel de Coulanges. In: Revue des deux mondes. Volume 100 (1930), No. 56, pp. 241-266.
  • Camille Jullian: Le cinquantenaire de La cité antique. In: La revue de Paris. Volume 23 (1916), No. 1, pp. 852-865.
  • Françoise Mayeur: Fustel de Coulanges et les questions d'enseignement supérieur. In: Revue historique. Volume 110 (1985), No. 556, pp. 387-408.
  • Arnaldo Momigliano: La Cité antique de Fustel de Coulanges. In: Problèmes d'historiographie ancienne et moderne. Gallimard, Paris 1983, pp. 402-423.
  • Gabriel Monod : Fustel de Coulanges. In: Portraits et souvenirs. Calmann Lévy, Paris 1897, pp. 135–154.
  • Claude Nicolet: 1889, Réflexions sur Fustel de Coulanges. In: Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Volume 133 (1989), No. 3, pp. 721-726.
  • Jean Médéric Tourneur-Aumont: Fustel de Coulanges (1830-1889). Préface de Charles Seignobos. Boivin et Cie, Paris 1931.

Web links

Commons : Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Larry Siedentop: The Invention of the Individual. Liberalism and the Western World. Kletta Cotta, Stuttgart 2015, p. 20.
personal data
SURNAME Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French ancient historian
DATE OF BIRTH March 18, 1830
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH September 12, 1889
Place of death Paris