Geoffrey Barraclough

Geoffrey Barraclough (born May 10, 1908 in Bradford , † December 26, 1984 in Burford ) was a British historian .

The son of a wealthy wool merchant was taught at the Bootham School (1921-1924) in York and the Bradford Grammar School (1924/25). A scholarship to Oriel College at the University of Oxford sparked interest in medieval history. In 1929 he left Oxford with an excellent degree. He spent the following two years with a Bryce Research Scholarship in Munich, where Karl Alexander von Müller was his academic teacher. In 1931 he went to Rome to the British School at Rome . The research stay formed the basis for his presentations Public notaries and the Papal Curia (1934) and Papal Provisions (1935) about the bestowal of benefices by the popes. Since 1934 he was a Fellow at Merton College and since 1936 at St John's College of the University of Cambridge worked. During that time he was working on his two-volume work Medieval Germany, 911–1250 (1938). During the Second World War, Barraclough was only active in the Foreign Office in London (1940) and served in the Royal Air Force voluntary reserve from 1942 to 1945 . With his knowledge of German he was able to help decipher the air force reports during the " Battle of Britain " and was part of the fact that the British won the Battle of El-Alamein .

A year after the end of the war, his epoch-spanning depiction The Origins of Modern Germany was published . From developments in the history of Germany he tried u. a. to explain how National Socialism could have come about. From 1945 to 1956 he was Professor of Medieval History in Liverpool. He then succeeded Arnold J. Toynbee and taught from 1956 to 1962 as a Stevenson Research Professor at the London School of Economics . In 1962 he returned to St. John's College in Cambridge. In 1964 his scientifically and publically most successful book, An Introduction to Contemporary History, was published . He moved to the United States in the mid-1960s . He taught at the University of California from 1965 to 1968. In 1968 he moved to Brandeis University . There he wrote books on the medieval history of Europe in the 9th and 10th centuries. He stayed in Brandeis until 1981. However, with a two-year break, which he spent as a Fellow at All Souls College and as holder of the Chichele Professorship in Oxford (1970 to 1972).

An atlas of world history published by Barraclough was translated into German by Werner Posselt and published by Weltbild Verlag .

Fonts

Monographs

• Public Notaries and the Papal Curia. A Calendar and a Study of a Formium Notarium Curie from the early Years of the Fourteenth Century. Macmillan, London 1934.
• Papal Commissions. Aspects of church history constitutional, legal and administrative in the later middle ages. Blackwell, Oxford 1935.
• The origins of modern Germany. Blackwell, Oxford 1946 (2nd, improved edition, ibid. 1947).
  • in German: The medieval foundations of modern Germany. German translation by Friedrich Baethgen . Böhlau, Weimar 1953 (2nd, revised edition, ibid 1955).
• An introduction to contemporary history. Watts, London 1964.
  • in German: Trends in history in the 20th century (= Beck'sche black series. Vol. 42, ISSN  0930-973X ). Translated from English by Herbert Thiele-Fredersdorf. Beck, Munich 1967.
• The medieval papacy. Thames & Hudson, London 1968 (in French: La papauté au moyen âge (= Histoire illustrée de l'Europe. Vol. 3). Flammarion, Paris 1970).
• The Crucible of Europe. The Ninth and Tenth Centuries in European History. Thames & Hudson, London 1976, ISBN 0-500-25044-8 .

Editorships

• as translator and editor: Mediaeval Germany 911–1250. Essays by Germann Historians (= Studies in Mediaeval History. Vol. 1–2). 2 volumes (Vol. 1: Introduction. Vol. 2: Essays. ). Blackwell, Oxford 1938 (4th reprint, ibid 1967).
• Eastern and western Europe in the Middle Ages. Thames & Hudson, London 1970, ISBN 0-500-32018-7 .

literature

• Benedikt Stuchtey : Geoffrey Barraclough. In: Heinz Duchhardt , Malgorzata Morawiec, Wolfgang Schmale (Hrsg.): Europa-Historiker. A biographical manual. Volume 1. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-525-30154-5 , pp. 241-268.
• Kenneth C. Dewar: Geoffrey Barraclough: From historicism to historical science. In: Historian. Vol. 56, No. 3, 1994, ISSN  0018-2370 , pp. 449-464, doi : 10.1111 / j.1540-6563.1994.tb01318.x .
• Ralf Henry Carles Davis: Geoffrey Barraclough and the lure of medievalcharters. In: Alan T. Thacker (Ed.): The Earldom of Chester and its Charters. A tribute to Geoffrey Barraclough (= Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society. Vol. 71). Chester Archaeological Society, Chester 1991, ISBN 0-9507074-3-0 , pp. 23-34.

Web links

• Literature by and about Geoffrey Barraclough in the catalog of the German National Library