Michael Borgolte

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Michael Borgolte (born May 16, 1948 in Braunschweig ) is a German medieval historian .

Borgolte taught from 1991 until his retirement in 2016 as Professor of Medieval History at the Humboldt University in Berlin . For decades he researched foundations and presented groundbreaking findings or gave important impulses, for example in the series of publications he founded, or in the interculturally comparative "Encyclopedia of Foundations in Medieval History" and has supported the DFG- funded "Working Group on Foundations" directed. He also initiated research on the comparative history of Europe in the Middle Ages.

Life

Michael Borgolte passed the Abitur in June 1967 in Braunschweig. Since the summer semester of 1969 he studied history, German and philosophy in Münster , where he passed the first state examination in November 1973. His two most important academic teachers were Otto Gerhard Oexle and Karl Schmid . With Schmid he was awarded a doctorate degree in 1975 with an investigation into the exchange of envoys between the Carolingians and the Abbasids and the Patriarchs of Jerusalem. phil. PhD. From 1975 to 1984 he was a research assistant to Johanne Autenrieth at the Department of Medieval Latin Philology at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg . There he completed his habilitation in 1981 with a work on personal and constitutional history on the Counts of Alemannia in the Merovingian and Carolingian times.

Subsequently, in the winter semester of 1981/82, Borgolte held a professorship for auxiliary historical sciences and Bavarian regional history at the University of Bamberg . In the summer semester of 1984 he took on a visiting professorship at the University of Basel . Borgolte was a substitute professor for medieval history at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main in 1984/85 and again in 1990/91 . In November 1987 he was appointed adjunct professor. As part of a Heisenberg grant from the German Research Foundation in 1984, the two monographs Succession to Peter and Imitation of the Emperor were created. The Tombs of the Popes, Their Genesis and Formation of Tradition (1989) and The Medieval Church (1992). In 1991, as part of the restructuring of the university after the fall of the Wall and reunification, Borgolte was appointed to the chair of Medieval History at the Humboldt University of Berlin (HU). He gave his inaugural lecture in June 1992 on "Total History" of the Middle Ages? The example of the foundations . In 1997, an appointment to the chair for Medieval History at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg was rejected by Borgolte. He has been co-editor of the Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft since 2007 . From 2004 summer semester to winter semester 2005/6 he was vice dean of the Philosophical Faculty I at the Humboldt University in Berlin. After his retirement, he has been working as a "Senior Researcher" at HU since October 2016. He taught at the HU Berlin until his retirement in 2016. As an academic teacher, Borgolte supervised 16 dissertations and four post-doctoral theses. Borgolte's academic students included Dirk Alvermann , Wolfgang Eric Wagner , Wolfgang Huschner , Frank Rexroth , Jan Rüdiger and Benjamin Scheller .

In 2013, he and his wife founded the “Michael and Claudia Borgolte Foundation for the Promotion of History at the Humboldt University in Berlin”. Every two years, the foundation awards the Otto Hintze Young Talent Prize, endowed with 3,000 euros, for postdocs and postdocs. In 2017 he became the founding commissioner of the Humboldt University for the Institute for Islamic Theology. Borgolte was founding director of the Berlin Institute for Islamic Theology in 2018.

Research priorities

Borgolte published more than 500 publications between 1975 and 2014, including 12 independent writings, 25 editorships and more than 170 articles. Borgolte's research focuses on medieval church, foundation, interdependence and global history, the history of German medieval research after 1945 and the comparative history of Europe in the Middle Ages. A selection of Borgolte's various European and global historical studies was made accessible in one volume in 2014.

Controversy over the early medieval county constitution

A controversy arose between Borgolte and Hans K. Schulze about the early medieval county. In 1973 Schulze published his account of the county constitution of the Carolingian era east of the Rhine. He took the position that the county constitution was "one of the most essential instruments of the king's rule over the empire and as a fundamental institution of the imperial organization with regard to the administration of justice, administration and the army". Schulze started from a uniform county constitution. According to Schulze, one of the most important institutions of the Frankish imperial constitution already existed in the Merovingian era with the county. Borgolte criticized Schulze for having returned to the older teaching, such as that represented by Georg von Below . In 1984 Borgolte's account of the Counts of Alemannia appeared in the Merovingian and Carolingian times. With his work, Borgolte pursued the goal of examining the counties of Alemannia from the beginning of tradition until 915 with the help of a source-critical and person-historical approach. He stated that the Carolingians had not succeeded in introducing the county constitution across the board. On the basis of prosopographical investigations, he tried to depict the gradual development and differentiation in the Alemannic region. The starting point is the Graf formulas (for Borgolte sub-comite ) in eschatocol the St. Gallen certificates. He noticed a sudden increase in the proportion in the St. Gallen documents with the formulaic counting from 50 percent to 95 percent at the beginning of the reign of Ludwig the Pious . Borgolte takes their increase as an indication that around 817 the county constitution was extended to almost the entire Alemannic area. Borgolte's account prompted Schulze to comment in detail on the criticism in “Critical Comments on a New Release”. According to Schulze, Borgolte's approach is methodologically questionable. With the help of the sub-comite formula, the territorial area of ​​responsibility of the counts can be recorded, but no count-free areas can be opened up due to their absence. Around 817 there was a chancellery reform, but no reform of the county constitution in Alemannia. Borgolte then criticized Schulze for not getting involved in fundamental questions of traditional criticism and personal history. A Frankfurt dispute between Borgolte and Schulze in December 1984 was inconclusive. A few years later, Thomas Zotz saw the main reason for the controversy in the different research approaches. Borgolte pursued a personal history and Schulze a constitutional history. The further debate remained without a consensual result.

Medieval foundation system

Borgolte has been researching foundations for over 30 years. Borgolte has been supervising a research project of the German Research Foundation on medieval foundations since 1997. In 2011 he received the European research award (ERC Advanced Grant 2011) endowed with 2.5 million euros over five years for his FOUNDMED project . Foundations in medieval societies. Cross-cultural comparisons . With this, Borgolte tries to research the different foundation cultures in a comparative way over the entire Middle Ages (around 500 to 1500 AD). The research program runs from June 2012 to the end of May 2017. The results of this research were entered into an encyclopedia. The first volume on this was published in summer 2014. The second volume appeared two years later. The third volume was published in 2017. In Berlin he founded the “Foundation Stories” series, in which ten volumes have already appeared. In a universal historical overview, Borgolte regards the “foundations for Sellenheil” as characteristic of the medieval millennium, which, however, were not “exclusively Latin-European Christian phenomena”. In 2016 he published the monograph World History as a foundation history, a quintessence of his own research. His presentation extends from the first found foundations in the Near East of the early 3rd millennium to the hospital and university foundations of the 16th century.

Research on a comparative history of Europe

In 2002 and 2006, Borgolte presented two representations of the European Middle Ages from a comparative perspective. In addition, Borgolte was one of the initiators and also one of the two speakers of the DFG Priority Program 1173 “Integration and Disintegration of Cultures in the European Middle Ages”, the aim of which is “to explore and to explore the European Middle Ages from its geographical borders and its cultural differences describe". The priority program was funded by the German Research Foundation from 2005 to 2011. After rejecting an appointment to Erlangen, he initiated the establishment of an institute for the comparative history of Europe in the Middle Ages and became its director in 1998. He became the editor of the Europe in the Middle Ages series. Treatises and contributions to historical comparative literature . So far, 20 volumes have been published.

migration

Borgolte dealt with the topic of migration in various articles. Borgolte is not concerned with assimilations , acculturations or integrations , as in older research , but always with "cultural interactions and exchange processes [...] in which new cultural formations arise with the participation of both sides". Rather, it is about “transcultural entanglements”. Borgolte understands “transculturality” as a culture as an open and changing structure. Borgolte was an associate editor of the five-volume Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration (2013) edited by the New York political scientist Immanuel Ness . With his contributions, Borgolte paved the way for historical migration research oriented towards global history.

Honors and memberships

Borgolte was awarded numerous scientific honors and memberships for his research. He has been a full member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences since 2005, a full member of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH) and a member of the central management of the MGH since 2006, a member of the Constance Working Group for Medieval History since 2008 and a full member of the Academia Europaea since 2013 .

For the Constance working group, he and Nikolas Jaspert initiated a conference on the island of Reichenau in autumn 2012 on the topic of “Maritime Middle Ages. Seas as communication spaces ”. This should give more emphasis to the endeavor to "expand maritime awareness" compared to the medieval studies, which were previously oriented towards "rule over land and people". Borgolte and Jaspert published the conference contributions in 2016 in an anthology.

In 2002, Borgolte received the “The Historical Book 2002” award in the Medieval History category of the Internet magazine H-Soz-Kult for the book Europe discovers its diversity 1050-1250 . In 2008 a commemorative publication was dedicated to his 60th birthday. An international colloquium was held in May 2013 to mark Borgolte's 65th birthday. The articles were published in 2014.

Fonts

A list of publications appeared in: Tillmann Lohse, Benjamin Scheller (ed.): Europe in the world of the Middle Ages. A colloquium for and with Michael Borgolte. De Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-035096-8 , pp. 267-302. [Status May 2013].

  • The exchange of envoys between the Carolingians and the Abbasids and the Patriarchs of Jerusalem (= Munich contributions to medieval studies and Renaissance research. Vol. 25). Arbeo-Gesellschaft, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-920128-27-3 .
  • The Counts of Alemannia in Merovingian and Carolingian times. A prosopography (= archeology and history. Freiburg research on the first millennium in southwest Germany. Vol. 2). Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1986, ISBN 3-7995-7351-8 .
  • History of the counties of Alemannia in Frankish times (= lectures and research. Special volume 31). Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1984 ( online ).
  • Succession to Peter and imitation of emperors. The tombs of the Popes, their genesis and tradition formation (= publications of the Max Planck Institute for History. Vol. 95). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1989, 2nd, through. 1997 edition, ISBN 3-525-35631-5 .
  • The medieval church (= encyclopedia of German history . Vol. 17). Oldenbourg, Munich 1992. 2nd edition 2004, ISBN 3-486-20026-7 .
  • “Total history” of the Middle Ages? - The example of the foundations (= Humboldt University of Berlin, public lectures. Vol. 4). Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin 1993 Text as a PDF file .
  • Social history of the Middle Ages. A research balance sheet after German reunification (= supplements to the historical journal, NF Vol. 22). Oldenbourg, Munich 1996 ISBN 3-486-64447-5 .
  • Europe discovers its diversity 1050–1250 (= Handbook of the History of Europe. Vol. 3). Ulmer Stuttgart 2002 ISBN 3-8252-2298-5 and ISBN 3-8001-2794-6 .
  • Christians, Jews, Muslims. The heirs of antiquity and the rise of the West 300 to 1400 AD (= settler history of Europe. Vol. 2). Siedler, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-88680-439-9 .

literature

  • Entry Michael Borgolte In: Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences [formerly Prussian Academy of Sciences], yearbook 2005, pp. 49–50.
  • Patrick Bahners : We historians are young migrants. Crossing the border: On the sixtieth birthday of medievalist Michael Borgolte. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . May 16, 2008, No. 113, p. 35.
  • Wolfgang Huschner , Frank Rexroth : Donated future in medieval Europe. Festschrift for Michael Borgolte on his 60th birthday. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-05-004475-0 . ( Review ).
  • Tillmann Lohse, Benjamin Scheller (Hrsg.): Europe in the world of the Middle Ages. A colloquium for and with Michael Borgolte. De Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-035096-8 .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Michael Borgolte: Foundation and Memoria. A mediaeval research concept from a universal historical perspective. In: Thomas Schilp, Caroline Horch: Memoria - culture of remembrance - historicism. In memory of Otto Gerhard Oexle (August 28, 1939– May 16, 2016). Turnhout 2019, pp. 75–92, here: p. 75.
  2. ( full text online ).
  3. ^ Directory of the habilitation theses and dissertations supervised by Michael Borgolte. In: Tillmann Lohse, Benjamin Scheller (ed.): Europe in the world of the Middle Ages. A colloquium for and with Michael Borgolte. Berlin et al. 2014, pp. 303-304.
  4. Michael-und-Claudia-Borgolte-Foundation for the promotion of the historical sciences .
  5. ^ Benjamin Scheller: Philosophical head and scientific entrepreneur. A characteristic of Michael Borgolte instead of an introduction. In: Tillmann Lohse, Benjamin Scheller (ed.): Europe in the world of the Middle Ages. A colloquium for and with Michael Borgolte. Berlin et al. 2014, pp. 1–9, here: p. 3.
  6. Michael Borgolte: Middle Ages in the larger world. Essays on historiography and contributions to research. Edited by Tillmann Lohse and Benjamin Scheller. Berlin 2014.
  7. Hans K. Schulze: The county constitution of the Carolingian era in the areas east of the Rhine. Berlin 1973, p. 347.
  8. See the review by Michael Borgolte in: Zeitschrift für Württembergische Landesgeschichte. 38, 1979, p. 301 f. Michael Borgolte: History of the counties of Alemannia in Franconian times. Sigmaringen 1984, p. 17 ( online ).
  9. Michael Borgolte: History of the counties of Alemannia in Franconian times. Sigmaringen 1984, p. 9 ( online ). Reviews by Ernst Tremp in: German Archives for Research into the Middle Ages 41, 1985, pp. 305–306 ( online ); Michel Parisse in: Francia 15, 1987, pp. 921-923 ( online ); Friedrich Lotter in: Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte 125 (1989), pp. 487-500 ( online ).
  10. Michael Borgolte: History of the counties of Alemannia in Franconian times. Sigmaringen 1984, p. 72 f. and 252 ( online ).
  11. ^ Hans K. Schulze: Basic problems of the county constitution. Critical comments on a new publication. In: Journal of Württemberg State History. 44, 1985, pp. 265-282, here: p. 280.
  12. ^ Hans K. Schulze: Basic problems of the county constitution. Critical comments on a new publication. In: Journal of Württemberg State History. 44, 1985, pp. 265-282, here: p. 275.
  13. Cf. protocol of the 145th Konstanz working group for medieval history e. V. Section Hessen; Michael Borgolte: Buchhorn and the Welfs. In: Journal for Württemberg State History. 47, 1988, pp. 39-69, here: pp. 47 f., Note 39.
  14. ^ Thomas Zotz: County constitution and personal history. In: Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins 136, 1988, pp. 1–16.
  15. ^ Werner Hechberger : Nobility in the Frankish-German Middle Ages. On the anatomy of a research problem. Ostfildern 2005, p. 197 ( online ).
  16. Ljiljana Nikolic: ERC Advanced Grant 2011 for Prof. Dr. Michael Borgolte. In: Press release of the Humboldt University of Berlin from November 21, 2011. ( online ); Jan Steeger: Today the focus is on the altruistic motive. Michael Borgolte researches foundation culture in the pre-modern era and receives the ERC Advanced Grant 2011 for this. In: Berliner Zeitung of December 29, 2011, p. 22.
  17. Michael Borgolte (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Foundation System in Medieval Societies. Vol. 1: Basics. Berlin et al. 2014.
  18. See the review by Klaus Herbers in: Historische Zeitschrift. 304, 2017, pp. 766-768.
  19. See the review by Klaus Herbers in: Historische Zeitschrift. 309, 2019, pp. 725-726.
  20. Michael Borgolte: Five Thousand Years of Foundations. A typology from Mesopotamia to the United States. In: Historical magazine. 301, 2015, pp. 593–625, here: p. 607.
  21. See the discussions by Christoph Mecking in: Das Historisch-Politische Buch. 66, 2018, pp. 450-451; Hans-Werner Goetz in: Francia-Recensio. 2019–31 ( online ); Arnoud-Jan Bijsterveld in: H-Soz-Kult. February 13, 2019, ( online ); Barbara Schlieben in: Historical magazine. 309, 2019, pp. 135-136.
  22. Michael Borgolte: Europe discovers its diversity 1050-1250. Stuttgart 2002; Michael Borgolte: Christians, Jews, Muslims. The heirs of antiquity and the rise of the West 300 to 1400 AD Munich 2006.
  23. Michael Borgolte, Juliane Schiel, Bernd Schneidmüller, Annette Seitz (eds.): Middle Ages in the Laboratory. Medieval Studies tests ways to a transcultural European science. Berlin 2008, p. 12.
  24. Michael Borgolte: Myth of the Great Migration. Migration or expansion at the "origins of Europe". In: Viator. Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 41, 2010, pp. 23-47; Michael Borgolte: A Longobard "wandering avalanche" from the year 568? On the critique of historiographical evidence of the migration period. In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft 61, 2013, pp. 293–310; Michael Borgolte: Migrations as transcultural entanglements in medieval Europe. A new plow for old research fields. In: Historische Zeitschrift 289, 2009, pp. 261–285.
  25. Michael Borgolte: For the introduction. In: Michael Borgolte (Ed.): Migrations in the Middle Ages. A manual. Berlin 2014, pp. 11–20, here: pp. 16 f.
  26. See the reviews of Kristjan Toomaspoeg in: H-Soz-Kult , November 23, 2016, ( online ); Kerstin Hitzbleck in: sehepunkte 17 (2017), No. 11 [15. November 2017], online .
  27. Wolfgang Huschner, Frank Rexroth: Donated Future in Medieval Europe. Festschrift for Michael Borgolte on his 60th birthday. Berlin 2008.
  28. Tillmann Lohse, Benjamin Scheller (ed.): Europe in the world of the Middle Ages. A colloquium for and with Michael Borgolte. Berlin et al. 2014.