Theodor Schieffer

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Theodor Schieffer (born June 11 or July 11, 1910 in Bad Godesberg ; † April 9, 1992 ibid) was a German historian and diplomat who researched the history of the early and high Middle Ages . He held chairs for Medieval History at the Universities of Mainz (1951–1954) and Cologne (1954–1975). As a document editor, Schieffer was one of the most important diplomats in the second half of the 20th century.

Live and act

Theodor Schieffer, son of an elementary school principal and later city school councilor, studied history, Romance studies and classical philology in Bonn , Berlin and Paris from 1929 to 1935 . In Bonn he became a member of the K.St.V Arminia and in Berlin of the K.St.V. Semnonia in the cartel association . He then received his doctorate in 1934 under Wilhelm Levison on the subject: "The papal legates in France from the Treaty of Meersen (870) to the schism of 1130". In 1935 he became an employee of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH). Its president Paul Fridolin Kehr and his successor Edmund E. Stengel entrusted him with the independent editing of the Diplomata of Lothars I, Lothars II, Zwentibolds, Ludwigs des Kind and the Burgundian kings; from this occupation in 1942 his habilitation thesis "The document system of the kings of Burgundy" emerged. He switched to the archives service because he was critical of National Socialism. In order to achieve an accelerated civil service after the end of the archivist training, Schieffer bowed and joined the NSDAP on December 1, 1939 (membership number: 7 280 318). In 1939 he passed the archives examination and became State Archives Assessor at the Secret State Archives, and in 1942 State Archives Councilor there. From the summer of 1940 to the beginning of 1942 he was a member of the archive protection commission in Paris and led extensive filming measures in archives in northern France and Belgium. Schieffer married in Berlin in 1942. There were two daughters and one son from the marriage. His son Rudolf Schieffer , born in 1947, was President of Monumenta Germaniae Historica from 1994 to 2012.

After the war nothing stood in the way of a university career and so in 1946 he first became a lecturer with the title of unscheduled professor at the newly founded University of Mainz, where he became a full professor in 1951. He refused a temporary call to the Munich chair from Rudolf von Heckel . As the successor to Gerhard Kallen , he switched to the Chair of Medieval and Modern History and Historical Auxiliary Sciences in Cologne in 1954. He taught there until his retirement in 1975. He declined an appointment to Vienna. Schieffer's academic students included Egon Boshof , Ludwig Falkenstein , Hermann Jakobs , Hans Heinrich Kaminsky and Josef Semmler .

From 1952 to 1955 he was president of the Society for Middle Rhine Church History . In 1956 he became a member of the Central Directorate of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica in Munich, also in 1957 in the historical commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and in 1964 then also in the Rheinisch-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften and in 1964 as a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and since 1969 as a full member. Schieffer was co-editor of the historical magazine from 1968 to 1974 . According to his own request, Schieffer did not receive a Festschrift. Schieffer died on April 9, 1992 in his native Bad Godesberg. After his death a small memorial published by the MGH appeared. After the death of his son, his scientific legacy was handed over to the MGH archive.

In 1954, on the 1200th anniversary of Boniface's remembrance, Schieffer published the groundbreaking study Winfrid-Bonifatius and the Christian Foundation of Europe . In doing so, Schieffer avoided heroizing the Anglo-Saxon missionary and stated soberly: "The pagan preacher, the founder of the diocese and monastery, the martyr cannot be separated from the authoritarian, apparently lively, fearful, petty, dependent, even narrow-minded representative of the Roman official church". At a lecture at the Boniface celebrations in Mainz in June 1954, Schieffer drew a straightforward picture of the missionary. For Boniface Schieffer rejected the title "Apostle of the Germans". Rather, Boniface was reinterpreted as the architect of Christian Europe in the sense of the West. But for Schieffer, too, Bonifatius was “a pioneering co-founder of our culture”. Schieffer wrote the article on "The Age of the Salians 1024–1125" for the presentation "German History at a Glance" published by Peter Rassow .

Fonts (selection)

  • Winfrid-Boniface and the Christian foundation of Europe. Herder, Freiburg 1954.
  • Anglo-Saxons and Franks. Two studies on the church history of the 8th century (= treatises of the Academy of Sciences and Literature. Humanities and social science class. Born 1950, Volume 20). Verlag der Wissenschaft und der Literatur in Mainz (commissioned by Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden), Wiesbaden 1951.

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Konrad Fuchs:  Schieffer, Theodor. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 16, Bautz, Herzberg 1999, ISBN 3-88309-079-4 , Sp. 1420-1426.
  2. Employee site at Monumenta Germaniae Historica .
  3. ^ Wolfgang Löhr: Theodor Schieffer. In: Siegfried Koß, Wolfgang Löhr (Hrsg.): Biographisches Lexikon des KV. 3rd part (= Revocatio historiae. Volume 4). SH-Verlag, Schernfeld 1994, ISBN 3-89498-014-1 , p. 91 f.
  4. ^ Ulrich Pfeil: Eugen Ewig - "Créer un ordre transnational". From a mediator between Germany and France. In: Ulrich Pfeil (Ed.): The German Historical Institute Paris and its founding fathers. A personal history approach. Munich 2007, pp. 293–322, here: p. 298.
  5. ^ The documents of the Burgundian Rudolfinger. Edited by Theodor Schieffer with the assistance of Hans Eberhard Mayer. Munich 1977 (Monumenta Germaniae historica. Diplomata. 2. Regum Burgundiae e stirpe Rudolfina diplomata et acta), p. VIII f.
  6. ^ Rolf Große: Theodor Schieffer. A Rhenish historian and his "encounter with the Romansh-French world". In: Ulrich Pfeil (Ed.): The German Historical Institute Paris and its founding fathers . Munich 2007, pp. 119–137, here: p. 120.
  7. ^ Theodor Schieffer: Winfrid-Bonifatius and the Christian foundation of Europe. Freiburg 1954, p. 286.
  8. ^ Theodor Schieffer: Des Winfrid-Bonifatius historical broadcast (lecture at the Bonifatius celebrations in Mainz on June 21, 1954). In: Archive for Middle Rhine Church History 6 (1954), pp. 9–23. Cf. Matthias Pape: The Bonifatius Year of Remembrance 1954 in a general political and church-wide context. In: Franz Felten (ed.): Bonifatius - life and aftermath. The shaping of Christian Europe in the early Middle Ages. Mainz 2007, pp. 375-410, here: p. 378.