Jean-Berthold Mahn

Jean-Berthold Mahn (born October 18, 1911 in Paris , † April 23, 1944 in Castelforte ) was a French historian and Cistercian researcher .

life and work

Education, conversion and marriage

Jean-Berthold Mahn was the son of the draftsman and painter Berthold Mahn (1881–1975), who belonged to a circle of Parisian intellectuals, including the writer Georges Duhamel , who helped with Mahn's birth. Mahn attended the Lycée Louis-le-Grand , studied history at the Sorbonne and passed the entrance examination to the École nationale des chartes . The topic chosen there from the Medieval Cistercian research ( L'exemption et le gouvernement de l'Ordre cistercien aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles 1119–1265 ), which he completed in 1935 (only a printed summary exists, but the later habilitation thesis is allowed to revise this text apply), brought the hitherto irreligious admonition into contact with Christian literature and brought about a conversion to faith. In addition, his fellow student and fiancée Marianne Lot (1913–2005), daughter of the historian Ferdinand Lot , also experienced a conversion and pushed him in the same direction. After his (1934) and his (1935) baptism , they married in October 1936.

Scientist and soldier against Hitler

After graduating from the École des chartes as the best of his year, he went to the École française de Rome . In 1938 he passed the Agrégation and was a high school teacher in Reims and Lille (with a teaching position at the University of Lille ) until the outbreak of war . At the same time he was working on his Grande Thèse ( habilitation thesis ), supervised by Louis Halphen , which will only appear after his death. Mahn experienced the short war as a soldier. Then he retired with his wife to Boisséjour (today: Ceyrat ) in the Auvergne and gave correspondence courses. In January 1942 the couple went to the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid . After his brother-in-law Boris Vildé (husband of another Lot daughter) had been shot as a resident in February 1942 , Mahn decided to take an active part in the liberation of France and went to Rabat in September 1943 . As a volunteer in an infantry regiment, he took part in the liberation of Corsica , then from March 1944 in the Forces françaises libres in the liberation of Italy. He was wounded on patrol on April 22nd and died the following day.

Posthumous publications

Mahn's manuscripts were completed and published by his widow, the thesis in 1945, the additional thesis in 1949, and in June 1947 in the Mercure de France the essay "La résurrection du monastère cistercien de Poblet". His name is in the Panthéon on the list of 36 writers killed in the war against Hitler Germany.

Works

• (Staff) Louis Halphen: Initiation aux études d'histoire du Moyen Age . PUF, Paris 1940, 1973.
• L'ordre cistercien et son gouvernement des origines au milieu du XIIIe siècle (1098–1265) . De Boccard, Paris 1945; 2nd edition 1951, 1982 (foreword by Louis Halphen, award-winning in 1946 by the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres).
• Le Pape Benoît XII et les Cisterciens . Champion, Paris 1949.

literature

• Pierre Breillat: Jean-Berthold Mahn (1911-1944) . In: Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des chartes 105, 1944, pp. 350–357.
• Jean Chazelas: Marianne Mahn-Lot (1913-2005) . In: Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des chartes 164, 2006, 681–684.

Web links

• Literature by and about Jean-Berthold Mahn in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)
• Information on Jean-Berthold Mahn in the database of the Bibliothèque nationale de France .