Rolf Sprandel

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Rolf Sprandel (born November 9, 1931 in Hamburg ; † February 17, 2018 in Reichenberg ) was a German historian .

From 1967 to 1973 he taught as a professor of medieval history at the University of Hamburg and from 1973 to 2000 as a professor of history with a special focus on medieval social and economic history at the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg . His main research interests were the areas of economy, society and mentalities in the Middle Ages. Sprandel was one of the few German medieval historians who put mentality research and historical anthropology at the center of their research.

Life

The family moved from Hamburg to the Uckermark during the war . He graduated from the Joachimsthal Gymnasium in Templin . After the war ended, the family returned to Hamburg. He passed the Abitur at the traditional scholarly school of the Johanneum . From 1951 he studied history in Freiburg , Göttingen and Bonn . Sprandel belonged to a group of young historians who, around Gerd Tellenbach, formed the so-called “Freiburg working group” for medieval personal research. In 1955 he received his doctorate in Freiburg with Gerd Tellenbach with a thesis on the Merovingian nobility and the areas east of the Rhine. In 1957 Sprandel went to Paris and was one of the first research assistants at the “Center Allemand de Recherches Historiques” founded in 1958 (since 1964 “ German Historical Institute Paris ”). There he familiarized himself with the methods of the Annales School . In 1961, he completed his habilitation in Freiburg with Gerd Tellenbach about Ivo von Chartres and his position in church history . At the same time he devoted himself to questions of economic history and historical anthropology. As a private lecturer, he began work on his monograph on the iron industry in the Middle Ages , which was published in 1968 and became a standard work on medieval economic history.

In 1967 he received a professorship at the University of Hamburg . There he concentrated on Hanseatic history and thus continued the focus of his predecessor Paul Johansen . Also in 1967 he joined the Hanseatic History Association . From 1970 to 1990 he was a member of its board. From 1971 to 1976 Sprandel was one of the editors of the Hansische Geschichtsblätter. At that time, medieval history was also represented by the newly appointed Ludwig Buisson in Hamburg, Sprandel had a focus on social and economic history. Although younger than his colleague Buisson, he was more hostile to the Hamburg reform university, which, according to Eckart Krause, was probably one of the reasons for his move to Würzburg. Sprandel had criticized in a television discussion that assistants, whose job it was to assist, pursued university politics. Sprandel's “professorial behavior” repeatedly provoked students to protest. In Hamburg he had positioned himself against all new developments in terms of university politics, but despite his relatively short service in Hamburg he created the basis for a modern understanding of Medieval Studies as a social history.

From the summer semester 1973 to the winter semester 1999/2000 he taught as a professor of history with a special focus on medieval social and economic history at the University of Würzburg . In 1977/78 he had a longer study visit to Paris. Gerrit Himmelsbach , Hans-Peter Baum , Rainer Leng and Peter Rückert were among his academic students in Hamburg and Würzburg .

Sprandel was married from 1958. His wife Lore Sprandel-Krafft was also a member of the “Freiburg Working Group” and received her doctorate from Tellenbach with a thesis on Bishop Ulrich von Augsburg . She wrote several studies on the Middle Ages. The marriage had three children. Sprandel died in Reichenberg near Würzburg.

Research priorities

His main research interests were the areas of economy, society and mentalities in the Middle Ages. At the beginning of his academic career he dealt with the nobility in the Franconian Empire and took into account the groups and classes of the nobility. Another focus was the investiture dispute and the related legal issues. A third focus was economic history. From 1968 he dealt with the European iron industry. In his work, Das Eisengewerbe im Mittelalter , published in 1968, he examined iron production and iron trade from 500 to 1500. In 1998 he published a book about the late medieval wine markets in Germany.

In Hamburg he devoted himself to Hanseatic studies since 1967. Sprandel researched the property and capital markets on the basis of the Hamburg pension books. He linked his preoccupation with the Hamburg bond market with socio-historical issues. In 1975 his book on the medieval payment system was published based on Hanso-Nordic sources from the 13th to 15th centuries. In cooperation with Jürgen Bohmbach and Jochen Goetze, he published the sources on Hanseatic history in 1982 . During his time in Würzburg, too, he published essays on Hanseatic history in the 1980s and 1990s, such as 1984 on trading techniques and the competitiveness of the Hanseatic League.

As a professor in Würzburg, he expanded his research on aristocracy for Lower Franconia into the late Middle Ages. He devoted himself to changing the aristocratic classes, especially the Frankish knighthood, which emerged from ministeriality . Working at the Institute for Historical Anthropology, to which he has been a member since it was founded in 1970, he wrote studies on the history of children, women and the elderly.

In Würzburg, chronicling became a focus of work. In his work he dealt with around 250 chronicles of the German late Middle Ages between 1347 and 1517. In 1994, the depiction of chroniclers appeared as contemporary witnesses . He presented an edition of the so-called Cologne World Chronicle. According to Sprandel, Cologne emerged as the place of origin “from the heavyweight that local historical events form in the chronicle”.

Sprandel has systematically evaluated the seven volumes of the Würzburg Council Protocol and processed them into a “middle thing” between edition and presentation in a publication published in 2003. He made the council minutes fruitful for research into the history of Würzburg. In a socio-historical study, he described Würzburg as a “foreign city” in the 15th century.

Fonts

A list of publications up to 2006 appeared in: Hans-Peter Baum, Rainer Leng, Joachim Schneider (eds.): Economy - Society - Mentalities in the Middle Ages. Festschrift for the 75th birthday of Rolf Sprandel (= contributions to economic and social history. No. 107). Steiner, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-515-08882-2 , pp. 739-751.

Monographs

  • The Würzburg Council Protocol of the 15th Century. A historical-systematic analysis (= publications of the Würzburg City Archives. Vol. 11). Schöningh, Würzburg 2003, ISBN 3-87717-789-1 .
  • Chroniclers as contemporary witnesses. Research on late medieval historiography in Germany (= collective attitudes and social change in the Middle Ages. NF Vol. 3). Böhlau, Cologne et al. 1994, ISBN 3-412-03694-3 .
  • The fate of old age and morality. The history of attitudes towards aging after the Paris Bible Exegesis of the 12th-16th centuries Century (= monographs on the history of the Middle Ages. Vol. 22). Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-7772-8101-8 .
  • Constitution and society in the Middle Ages (= UTB 461). Schoeningh, Paderborn 1975, ISBN 3-506-99175-2 .
  • The Hamburg pound customs book from 1418 (= sources and representations on Hanseatic history. NF vol. 18). Böhlau, Cologne et al. 1972, ISBN 3-412-96472-7 .
  • Ivo von Chartres and his position in church history (= Paris historical studies. Vol. 1, ISSN  0479-5997 ). Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1962, online .

Edition

  • The Cologne World Chronicle 1273 / 88–1376 (= Monumenta Germaniae historica. Scriptores. Vol. 15). Hahn, Hannover 1991, ISBN 3-88612-031-7 .

Editorships

  • Bilingual historiography in late medieval Germany (= knowledge literature in the Middle Ages. Vol. 14). Reichert, Wiesbaden 1993, ISBN 3-88226-458-6 .
  • Sources on the Hanseatic League. (= Selected sources on the German history of the Middle Ages. Freiherr-vom-Stein-Gedächtnisausgabe. Vol. 36). With contributions by Jürgen Bohmbach and Jochen Goetze. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1982, ISBN 3-534-06874-2 .

literature

  • Hans-Peter Baum, Rainer Leng, Joachim Schneider (eds.): Economy - Society - Mentalities in the Middle Ages. Festschrift for the 75th birthday of Rolf Sprandel (= contributions to economic and social history. No. 107). Steiner, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-515-08882-2 .
  • Hans-Peter Baum: Rolf Sprandel (November 9, 1931– February 17, 2018). In: Hansische Geschichtsblätter 135 (2017), SX – XII.
  • Peter Rückert : Rolf Sprandel (1931–2018) as a regional historian. In: sheets for German national history. 154 (2018), pp. 801-806.
  • Joachim Schneider: Rolf Sprandel (1931–2018). Obituary. In: Quarterly for social and economic history . 105 (2018), pp. 180-182.
  • Joachim Schneider: Obituary Rolf Sprandel. In: German Archive for Research into the Middle Ages . 74 (2018), pp. 217-219.
  • Joachim Schneider: Rolf Sprandel (1931–2018). In: Saeculum 68 (2018), pp. 3–5.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Karl Schmid: The Freiburg working group '. Gerd Tellenbach on his 70th birthday. In: Journal for the history of the Upper Rhine 122, 1974, pp. 331–347.
  2. ↑ See the review by Alfons Becker in: Historische Zeitschrift 202, 1966, pp. 633–635.
  3. ↑ See the review by Knut Schulz in: German Archive for Research into the Middle Ages. 26, 1970, p. 619 ( online )
  4. ↑ Eckart Krause: People who made "history". Attempt to study history for almost a century at Hamburg University. In: The historical seminar of the University of Hamburg. Research report [1 (2002-2004)]. Hamburg 2005, p. 268.
  5. ↑ Barbara Vogel : History in Hamburg since 1970. In: Rainer Nicolaysen , Axel Schildt (Hrsg.): 100 years of history in Hamburg. Berlin et al. 2011, pp. 295–330, here: p. 302.
  6. ↑ Barbara Vogel: History in Hamburg since 1970. In: Rainer Nicolaysen, Axel Schildt (Hrsg.): 100 years of history in Hamburg. Berlin et al. 2011, pp. 295–330, here: p. 314.
  7. ↑ Hans-Peter Baum: Rolf Sprandel (November 9, 1931– February 17, 2018). In: Hansische Geschichtsblätter 135, 2017, SX – XII, here: XII.
  8. ↑ See Rolf Sprandel: The long way to the right method and terminology. A self-assurance. In: Saeculum 65 (2015), pp. 349-379 ( online ).
  9. ↑ Rolf Sprandel: The urban bond market in northwest Germany in the late Middle Ages. In: Hermann Kellenbenz (Ed.): Public finances and private capital in the late Middle Ages and in the first half of the 19th century. Stuttgart 1971, pp. 14-23.
  10. ↑ Rolf Sprandel: The competitiveness of the Hanseatic League in the late Middle Ages. In: Hansische Geschichtsblätter 102 (1984), pp. 21-38.
  11. ↑ See the reviews by Hans-Werner Goetz in: Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire 74 (1996), pp. 571-572 ( online ); Wolfgang Eggert in: German Archive for Research into the Middle Ages. 53 (1997), pp. 272-273 ( online ).
  12. ↑ Cf. on this the reviews of Matthias Thumser in: Sources and research from Italian archives and libraries 73 (1993), p. 772 ( online ); Peter Engels: Another continuation of Martin von Troppau's chronicle from Cologne? In: History in Cologne. 33 (1993) pp. 97-104; Michel Pauly in: Francia 21 (1994), p. 360 ( online ).
  13. ^ Rolf Sprandel: The Cologne World Chronicle 1273 / 88-1376. Hanover 1991, p. 11.
  14. ↑ See the review by Dietrich Höroldt in: Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte. 91 (2004), pp. 48-49; Christina Deutsch in: Hessisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte. 54 (2004), pp. 439-441.
  15. ^ Rolf Sprandel: A foreign city: Würzburg in the mirror of the council minutes of the 15th century. In: Würzburg, the Great Lion Court and the German Literature of the Late Middle Ages / ed. by Horst Brunner Wiesbaden 2004, pp. 457-467.
personal data
SURNAME Sprandel, Rolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian
DATE OF BIRTH November 9, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH 17th February 2018
Place of death Reichenberg (Lower Franconia)