Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand

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Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand (* January 1, 1926 as Ruth Wiegand in Berlin ; † December 12, 2014 in Marburg ) was a German German scholar and legal historian .

Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand studied history, German, philosophy and Protestant theology at the University of Greifswald from 1946 to 1950 . She received her doctorate there in 1951 with a thesis on the Lex Salica supervised by Adolf Hofmeister . Schmidt-Wiegand then worked as a research assistant, senior assistant and lecturer at the Institute for German Philology in Greifswald. From 1952 until his death in 2011 she was married to the historian Roderich Schmidt . Both were affiliated with the evangelical church and refused to teach and research on the basis of Marxism-Leninism . They were therefore released from university service in 1958. The family went to the Federal Republic and settled in Marburg. From 1958 to 1961 she was a research assistant to the legal historian Franz Beyerle . For Beyerle's MGH edition of Lex Ribuaria from 1954, she created the word and subject index. From 1961 to 1964 Schmidt-Wiegand worked as an assistant and lecturer at the German Department of the University of Bonn . In 1970 she came to the German Studies Department at the Westphalian Wilhelms University as an academic adviser . In the same year there followed her habilitation with the thesis Studies on historical legal word geography . From 1971 until her retirement in 1991 she taught in Münster in the department of German studies as a professor.

Schmidt-Wiegand became important through research, especially on legal language. She published relevant editions and studies on the Sachsenspiegel and, above all, on the indexing of the illuminated manuscripts of the Sachsenspiegel. In 1993 she was able to make the Wolfenbütteler Illuminated Manuscript available in a three-volume edition (facsimile, text, commentaries). Two years later, the Oldenburg Illuminated Manuscript, which had only been accessible since 1991, followed. She also devoted herself to researching the Germanic Leges , especially the Lex Salica . She also authored several studies on various aspects of the work and life of Jacob Grimm .

Schmidt-Wiegand was co-editor of the Early Medieval Studies (1978-2010), the Münster Medieval Writings , the work on early medieval research , the yearbook of the Brothers Grimm Society and editor of the series of German studies on language and cultural history . Until 2009, she was also co-editor of the new edition of the Concise Dictionary of German Legal History (HRG), the first edition of which she had already advised on philological issues at the request of the editors Adalbert Erler and Ekkehard Kaufmann . From 1972 to 1986 she was a member of the Collaborative Research Center 7 Early Medieval Research in Münster. From 1986 to the end of 1998, Schmidt-Wiegand worked in the Collaborative Research Center for Carriers, Fields and Forms of Pragmatic Writing in the Middle Ages as head of the project Legal books as an expression of pragmatic writing .

Even without any programs to promote women, she managed to attract numerous young women to science. They took on important tasks in their projects and publications. They include above all Gabriele von Olberg and Dagmar Hüpper.

In 1989, Schmidt-Wiegand was the first woman to be awarded the Brothers Grimm Prize of the Philipps University of Marburg , which was donated by the State of Hesse . In 1991 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Marburg . In 2000 she was awarded the Eike von Repgow Prize by the City of Magdeburg and the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg .

Fonts

Editorships

  • The Wolfenbüttel illuminated manuscript of the Sachsenspiegel. Essays and Investigations. Commentary volume on the facsimile edition. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-05-002359-7 .
  • The Oldenburg illuminated manuscript of the Sachsenspiegel (= Patrimonia. Vol. 50). Kulturstiftung der Länder, Berlin 1993.
  • Concise dictionary on German legal history , 2nd, completely revised and expanded edition, Vol. I: Aachen-Geistliche Bank, Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-503-07912-4 .

literature

  • Gerhard Dilcher : In memoriam. Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand in commemoration (1.1.1926–12.12.2014). In: Journal of the Savigny Foundation for Legal History, German Department 134 (2017), pp. 570–574.
  • Hans Höfinghoff, Werner Peters, Wolfgang Schild and Timothy Sodmann (eds.): Everything was right. Legal literature and literary law. Festschrift for Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand on her 70th birthday (= Item Medieval Studies. Vol. 3). Item-Verlag Reichart, Essen 1996, ISBN 3-929151-12-X .
  • Karl Hauck : Language and Law. Contributions to the cultural history of the Middle Ages. Festschrift for Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand on her 60th birthday. 2 volumes. De Gruyter, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-11-010893-3 .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Gerhard Dilcher: In memoriam. Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand in commemoration (1.1.1926–12.12.2014). In: Journal of the Savigny Foundation for Legal History, German Department 134 (2017), pp. 570–574, here: p. 570.
  2. ↑ Christel Meier: 50 Years of Early Medieval Studies. In: Frühmittelalterliche Studien , Vol. 50 (2016), pp. 1–13, here: p. 13.
  3. ^ Gerhard Dilcher: In memoriam. Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand in commemoration (1.1.1926–12.12.2014). In: Journal of the Savigny Foundation for Legal History, German Department 134 (2017), pp. 570–574, here: p. 572.
personal data
SURNAME Schmidt-Wiegand, Ruth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Germanist and legal historian
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH December 12, 2014
Place of death Marburg