William Mendel Newman

William Mendel Newman (born January 31, 1902 in Pierce City , Missouri , † April 27, 1977 in Bellingham , Washington ) was an American Medievalist .

Career

William Mendel Newman was the second son of Milton Newman (1872-1943) and Lenna Mendel (1874-1943) and was part of a family that operated department stores in Missouri, Iowa and Oklahoma . He completed his school education in Pierce City and at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts , before he began studying at Harvard University in the fall of 1921 . He passed his exams in 1925, but stayed at Harvard for another year, completing an MA in American History. This was followed by two years of teaching at the University of Iowa and Ohio State University . It is not known why he gave up his career in the chosen direction.

Because from 1928 he continued his studies in the field of medieval history. He went to Europe, received his doctorate in 1929 at the University of Toulouse (with Joseph Calmette ) and in 1937 at the University of Strasbourg (with Marc Bloch and Charles-Edmond Perrin ). He then returned to the USA and taught for a year at the University of Michigan , but also gave up his work there. From 1938 to 1942 he was in Cambridge (Massachusetts) , turned away from research, but his application to join the army was rejected for health reasons. He then worked in St. Louis , where his brother Joseph (1898-1967) was President of Emerson Electric from 1933 and later founded White-Rodgers. The death of his parents in 1943 made him financially independent.

After the war he lived in Seattle until 1950 and tried to gain a foothold in the private sector and make a career. When this failed, he turned back to science and went to Europe again. He worked in France from 1952 to 1963 , returned (again for health reasons) to the USA and then spent the last years of his life again in Washington State without doing any further research. He left his fortune of around $ 1.2 million mainly to the Phillips Academy in Andover.

Except for three years at three different institutions, Newman did not teach. He achieved his importance exclusively through his work, some of which were only published after his death, here he is one of the most important medievalists in the USA in the 20th century.

Works

• Le domaine royal sous les premiers Capétiens 987–1180. Paris 1937 (thesis).
• Catalog des actes de Robert II roi de France, Paris 1937 (Thesis)
• Les seigneurs de Nesle en Picardie (XIIe-XIIIe siècle). Leurs chartes et leur histoire (2 volumes), Paris 1971
• Le personnel de la cathédral d'Amiens : 1066-1306; avec une note sur la famille des seigneurs de Heilly, Paris 1972
• Charters of St-Fursy of Péronne , Cambridge Mass. 1977 (The Medieval Academy of America 85) online
• L'acte de Téulfe pour Saint-Crépin-le-Grand de Soissons (1135), in: Revue Mabillon 58 (1973) pp. 165-175
• The Cartulary and Charters of Notre-Dame de Homblières. Cambridge, Mass., Online 1990

literature

• Giles Constable : Biography of Newman in “The Cartulary and Charters of Notre-Dame of Homblieres” (1990), pp. 13ff

Web links

• Publications by and about William Mendel Newman in the Opac der Regesta Imperii