Odilo Engels

Odilo Engels (born April 24, 1928 in Rheydt ; † February 26, 2012 in Erftstadt-Lechenich ) was a German historian .

Odilo Engels came from a Catholic family. In 1946 he passed his Abitur in Mönchengladbach and studied history and theology in Bonn and Münster from 1947 to 1949. In 1954 he did his doctorate in Bonn under Walther Holtzmann with the work Johannes von Gaeta as a hagiographer . As a scholarship holder of the Görres Society , a longer research stay in Barcelona and an intensive occupation with the Spanish history of the Middle Ages, in particular the Spanish mark, followed . In Freiburg he was the editor of the Lexicon for Theology and Church . At the University of Munich , he received his habilitation in 1969 with the thesis Protection Thought and Regional Authority in the Eastern Pyrenees: (9th – 13th centuries) . Engels taught as a private lecturer in Munich, then from 1971 until his retirement in 1993 as a professor for medieval history at the University of Cologne . He declined an appointment to the University of Freiburg . Engels held the Otto von Freising guest professorship at the Catholic University of Eichstätt in the 1989 summer semester . His academic students included Georg Gresser , Manfred Groten , Rolf Große , Johannes Laudage , Gerhard Lubich , Sebastian Scholz , Ludwig Vones and Stefan Weinfurter . Tilman Struve succeeded him in Cologne as professor of medieval history in 1995.

Engels researched the history of the Catalan region from the Carolingian era to the 13th century. 1989 appeared the basic volume Reconquista und Landesherrschaft. Studies on the legal and constitutional history of Spain in the Middle Ages . Engels became editor of the Spanish Researches of the Görres Society and supervised the Regestenwerk of Hispania Pontificia founded by Paul Fridolin Kehr . In doing so, Engels sifted through and collected all contacts between the Church on the Iberian Peninsula and the Roman papacy up to 1198, paying particular attention to the church provinces of Santiago de Compostela and Toledo . Another focus was the Hohenstaufen dynasty. His work Die Staufer , first published in 1972, is considered the standard work of the Staufer era and has been published nine times to date. The overview was the starting point for several series of paperback books on medieval ruling dynasties. Numerous essays have appeared in the “Staufer Studies” (1988, 1996). In 2002 he was awarded the Science Prize of the Staufer Foundation Göppingen for his life's work and his work on the Staufers . Engels also researched the medieval history of the city of Cologne. Engels was a member of the scientific commission of the Historical Atlas of the Rhineland for the entire duration of the project from 1981 to 2008 .

Fonts

• Reconquista and sovereignty. Studies on the legal and constitutional history of Spain in the Middle Ages (= legal and political publications of the Görres Society. NF Vol. 53). Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 1989, ISBN 3-506-73353-2 .
• Staufer studies. Contributions to the history of the Hohenstaufen in the 12th century. Celebration for his 60th birthday. Edited by Erich Meuthen and Stefan Weinfurter . Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1988, ISBN 3-7995-7060-8 (2nd modified and expanded edition, ibid 1996).
• The Staufer (= Urban pocket books. 154 history, political science ). Kohlhammer, Stuttgart a. a. 1972, ISBN 3-17-232141-X (9th supplemented edition. Ibid 2010, ISBN 978-3-17-021363-0 ).
• Protection concept and sovereignty in the eastern Pyrenees. (9th – 13th century) (= Görres Society for the Care of Science. Spanish Research by the Görres Society. Series 2, Vol. 14, ISSN  0081-3494 ). Aschendorff, Münster 1970 (habilitation paper, Univ. Munich).
• John of Gaeta as a hagiographer. A contribution to the history of the Montecassino style school. Bonn 1954 (Bonn, Univ., Dissertation February 10, 1954).

literature

• Hanna Vollrath , Stefan Weinfurter: Cologne - city and diocese in church and empire of the Middle Ages. Festschrift for Odilo Engels on his 65th birthday (= Cologne historical treatises. 39). Böhlau, Cologne et al. 1993, ISBN 3-412-12492-3 .
• Oliver Junge: Kaiser Friedrich II is still overrated. He speaks fluent Spanish and Staufer: the Cologne medievalist Odilo Engels on his eightieth birthday. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , April 24, 2008, No. 96, p. 35.
• Ursula Vones-Liebenstein: Odilo Engels (1928–2012). In: Francia , Vol. 40, 2013, pp. 475–476 ( digitized version )
• Ludwig Vones: Odilo Engels (1928–2012). In: Historisches Jahrbuch , Vol. 132 (2012), pp. 381–383.
• Stefan Weinfurter: The new image of the Staufer. For the presentation of the Science Prize of the Staufer Foundation 2002 to Prof. Dr. Odilo Engels. In: The crusade of Emperor Friedrich II. Editor Karl-Heinz Rueß (= writings on Hohenstaufen history and art. Vol. 22). Society for Staufer History, Göppingen 2004, pp. 93–99.

Web links

• Literature by and about Odilo Engels in the catalog of the German National Library
• Engels, Odilo .  Publications in the bibliographic database of the Regesta Imperii .
• Ludwig Vones: Obituary for Professor Dr. Odilo Engels (PDF; 13 kB)

Remarks

1. ^ Otto von Freising guest professorship
2. ↑ Michael Borgolte : Social history of the Middle Ages. A research balance sheet after German reunification (= historical journal . Supplement NF Vol. 22). Oldenbourg, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-486-64447-5 , p. 140.