Maximilian Weltin

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Maximilian Weltin , or Max Weltin for short (born July 1, 1940 in Linz ; † January 4, 2016 ), was an Austrian archivist and historian . Through his research, Weltin significantly shaped the constitutional development of Austria.

Live and act

Maximilian Weltin, born in 1940, lost his father at an early age. This fell off Leningrad in the winter of 1941 during World War II . Weltin attended elementary and secondary school in Linz. From an early age he was enthusiastic about the castles around his native Linz. From 1954 to 1958 he learned the profession of typesetter. From 1959 to 1964 he attended the workers' secondary school in Linz, an evening school. Weltin passed the school leaving examination in 1964. From the winter semester 1964/65 he studied history and German at the University of Vienna . His most important teachers were Alphons Lhotsky and Heinrich Fichtenau . Weltin completed the 52nd course at the Institute for Austrian Historical Research from 1968 to 1971 . In his state examination he worked on a little-known collection of letters from the 1260s. In 1975 he was able to publish a revised and expanded version of this work under the title Die Laaer Briefsammlung . He received his doctorate in 1970 at the University of Vienna with the work suggested by Othmar Hageneder and supervised by Heinrich Appelt , investigating the activities of the captain of the land above the Enns from its beginnings to 1400. The following work also had a constitutional and legal historical focus.

In March 1971 he found a job as archivist in the Lower Austrian Provincial Archives and established close contacts with the retired Karl Lechner . Weltin was editor of the magazine Unser Heimat (1973–1978) and the yearbook for regional studies of Lower Austria (1976–1985). The three volumes "Babenberger-Forschungen" (1976), "Ottokar-Forschungen" (1978/79) and "Kuenringer-Forschungen" (1980/81), which were published as a yearbook, received great attention. In 1994 the University of Vienna made him an honorary professor for Austrian history. He retired in April 2005.

At a meeting of the Constance Working Group for Medieval History , he gave a lecture in 1975 on the emergence of Austrian land law. He corrected the previously held view that the oldest land rights record was created under the last Babenberger . The time of writing should rather be set in the years after Rudolf von Habsburg's victory over the Bohemian King Ottokar . He gained scientific recognition with essays that appeared from 1976 to 1979. In a contribution published in 1976, he examined the emergence of the Lower Austrian regional courts and dated them to the middle of the 13th century.

In the 1980s he published several special studies on various high medieval noble families. Above all, he dealt with the concept of the country and with the work of Otto Brunner . He came to the realization that “the country [...] is an association of persons, that is, the community of interests of a number of aristocratic local rulers with the authority of the sovereign, recognized by them as the superior authority.” Studies carried out by Weltins are characteristic of Weltin's work From a local or regional starting point, repeatedly referring to general questions of medieval constitutional history. From the mid-1990s onwards, he refrained from publishing essays and concentrated on the two large-scale joint projects “Defense buildings and noble seats” and the Lower Austrian document book . In the project “Defense buildings and aristocratic seats”, individual castles and palaces in Lower Austria were extensively researched by castle archaeologists, art historians and historians. The first three volumes of the series "Wehrbauten und Arelssitze Niederösterreichs" were published in 1998, 2003 and 2014.

From 2001 his work focused on the Lower Austrian document book. This is a project that has been repeatedly requested since the middle of the 19th century, but never implemented. In 2004 the “preliminary volume” of the Lower Austrian document book was published. Weltin presented the documents of the Lower Austrian Provincial Archives from 1109 to 1314. The first volume was published in 2008 with all documents relating to Lower Austria from 777 to 1076. In autumn 2013, the second volume, conceived as a double volume, was published with documents from 1078 to 1158. Weltin died in early 2016 at the age of 76. Until shortly before his death he worked on an edition of the Göttweiger tradition books.

In February 2017, a conference was held at the University of Vienna in memory of Weltin. The contributions were published in 2018 under the title “Nobility and Constitution in the High and Late Medieval Empire”.

Fonts

Editorships

  • Maximilian Weltin (Hrsg.): Babenberger-Forschungen (= yearbook for regional studies of Lower Austria. New series 42). Association for regional studies of Lower Austria and Vienna, Vienna 1976 ( PDF on noel.gv.at; article on ZOBODAT ).
  • Maximilian Weltin, Andreas Kusternig (ed.): Ottokar research (= yearbook for regional studies of Lower Austria. New series 44/45). Association for regional studies of Lower Austria and Vienna, Vienna 1978/79 ( PDF on noel.gv.at; article on ZOBODAT ).
  • Andreas Kusternig, Maximilian Weltin (ed.): Kuenringer research (= yearbook for regional studies of Lower Austria. New series 46/47). Association for regional studies of Lower Austria, Vienna 1980/81 ( PDF on noel.gv.at; article on ZOBODAT ).
  • Maximilian Weltin (Ed.): Document and history: Lower Austria's regional history as reflected in the documents of its regional archive. Lower Austrian Provincial Archives, St. Pölten 2004, ISBN 3-85028-378-X .

Source edition

  • with Roman Zehetmayer: Lower Austrian document book. First volume. 777 to 1076 (= publications of the Institute for Austrian Historical Research. Series VIII, Volume 1). St. Pölten 2008, ISBN 978-3-85028-465-3 .
  • with Roman Zehetmayer, Dagmar Weltin: Lower Austrian document book. Second volume. (1078–1158) (= publications of the Institute for Austrian Historical Research. Series VIII, Volume 2). St. Pölten 2013, ISBN 978-3-85028-623-7 .

Collection of articles

  • Folker Reichert , Winfried Stelzer : The country and its law. Selected contributions to the constitutional history of Austria in the Middle Ages (= communications from the Institute for Austrian Historical Research. Supplementary volume . Volume 49). Oldenbourg, Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-7029-0543-X (19 research articles by Weltin, published for the first time between 1973 and 2003; additional list of publications pp. 565-569).

literature

  • Christina Mochty-Weltin, Roman Zehetmayer (ed.): Nobility and constitution in the high and late medieval empire. The lectures at the conference in memory of Maximilian Weltin, February 23 and 24, 2017, lecture hall of the Institute for Austrian Historical Research, University of Vienna (= messages from the Lower Austrian Provincial Archives. Volume 18). Lower Austrian Institute for Regional Studies, St. Pölten 2018, ISBN 3-903127-12-4 .
  • Winfried Stelzer: Maximilian Weltin †. In: Communications from the Institute for Austrian Historical Research . 124, 2016, pp. 567-572 (available from De Gruyter Online).
  • Roman Zehetmayer: The scientific work of Maximilian Weltin. In: NÖLA. Messages from the Lower Austrian Provincial Archives. 17, 2016, pp. 11-27.
  • Roman Zehetmayer: Maximilian Weltin (1940-2016). In: Scrinium. Journal of the Association of Austrian Archivists. Volume 70, 2016, pp. 199–202 ( online at voea.at).

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Roman Zehetmayer: Maximilian Weltin and the regional historical research of his time. In: Christina Mochty-Weltin, Roman Zehetmayer (Ed.): Nobility and Constitution in the High and Late Medieval Empire. The lectures at the conference in memory of Maximilian Weltin, February 23 and 24, 2017, lecture hall of the Institute for Austrian Historical Research, University of Vienna. St. Pölten 2018, pp. 9–29, here: p. 9.
  2. ↑ See the reviews of Winfried Stelzer in: Mitteilungen des Österreichisches Staatsarchivs 30, 1977, pp. 485–489; Folker Reichert in: Unser Heimat 47, 1976, pp. 244–248.
  3. ^ Maximilian Weltin: Contributions to the history of the Hauptmannschaft ob der Enns in the 13th and 14th centuries. Vienna 1970.
  4. ^ Maximilian Weltin: The Austrian land law of the 13th century as reflected in the development of the constitution In: Peter Classen (Hrsg.): Law and writing in the Middle Ages. Sigmaringen 1977, pp. 381-424 ( online at uni-heidelberg.de).
  5. ↑ Maximilian Weltin: On the emergence of the Lower Austrian regional courts. In: Yearbook for Regional Studies of Lower Austria NF 42, 1976, 276–315.
  6. ↑ Maximilian Weltin: The concept of the country in Otto Brunner and its reception through constitutional research. In: Journal of the Savigny Foundation for Legal History, German Department 107, 1990, pp. 339–376.
  7. ↑ Winfried Stelzer: Maximilian Weltin †. In: Communications from the Institute for Austrian Historical Research. 124, 2016, pp. 567-572, here: p. 570.
personal data
SURNAME Weltin, Maximilian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weltin, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian archivist and historian
DATE OF BIRTH July 1, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Linz
DATE OF DEATH 4th January 2016