This autumn and winter, the MGH are once again proud to present our programme of online and live lectures. We invite you to join us for the following events: A lecture on Robert Holtzmann and his diary for the years 1941-1946 in the online series „Vorträge zur Geschichte der Mittelalterforschung“/„Lectures on the history of medieval studies“, an online lecture in the series „Back to the sources“ presenting new charter finds in the context of work on the edition of the charters of Emperor Frederick II, two book presentations of two highly different, multi-volume MGH editions on the occasion of their completion, and the presentation of the MGH digital edition of the letters of Ernst Kantorowicz. (For registration details please see the information at the end of this blog).
Thursday, 24.10.2024, 6 p.m.: Tabuthemen, Subtext und Selbstzensur. Robert Holtzmann und sein Tagebuch für die Jahre 1941 bis 1946 (Taboo Topics, Subtext and Self-Censorship: Robert Holtzmann and his diary for the years 1941 to 1946)
Online lecture (Zoom) by Prof. Dr Dr h.c. Martina Hartmann
Today, the name of Robert Holtzmann (1873-1946) is probably most commonly associated with the well-known „Wattenbach/Holtzmann“, i.e. the revised edition of Wilhelm Wattenbach’s source guide for the Ottonian and Salian era. Less well known is the fact that Robert Holtzmann was also a successful MGH editor and an influential historian of his day. Of the presumably numerous memoires and diaries that he must have written, only one still exists. At first glance, the diary might seem a rather dull and pedantic document of the life of an old scholar, but decoding the subtexts reveals a wealth of interesting information, including taboo topics such as the Jewish descent of Holtzmann’s wife. By reconstructing entries that Holtzmann partially cut out for fear of reprisals through the Nazi regime, the diary can be made to reveal unexpected aspects of the life of a scholar during and directly after the Second World War.
Martina Hartmann is president of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica since 2018. Her research focuses include the Early and High Middle Ages, gender studies, and most recently, inspired by the 200th anniversary of the founding of the MGH, the history of scholarship (in 2023 she published a monograph on the married scholars Hildegund and Ottokar Menzel 1910-1945; her present edition project is the diary of Robert Holtzmann 1941-1946).
Monday 2.12.2024, 6 p.m.: Edition von Joachim von Fiores Trilogie abgeschlossen (Completion of the Edition of Joachim von Fiore‘s Work Trilogy)
Live Lecture by Prof. Dr Alexander Patschovsky in the MGH institute / Ludwigstr. 16 / 80539 Munich (with Zoom streaming)
Volume 35 in the MGH series „Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters“ presents the Apocalypse Commentary of the Calabrian abbot Joachim of Fiore († 1202), a verse-for-verse interpretation of the Book of Revelations of John as God’s road-map for the progression of world history. To this day, Joachim of Fiore is best-known for his theory of the three ages of the world, which he developed in analogy to the Holy Trinity. Ending with the age of the Holy Ghost, which was to bring peaceful coexistence to mankind, the theory is generally considered to offer a positive vision of life. A closer reading of the Apocalypse Commentary, however, reveals that the author was less concerned with attaining an ideal form of life in this world than with offering mankind a painful cure for Original Sin in order to earn a place at God’s throne in the afterlife.
With Alexander Patschovsky’s critical edition, the MGH edition of Joachim of Fiore’s trilogy is now complete. The series of works, consisting of Joachim’s Psalterium decem cordarum, which lays the hermeneutical groundwork for his interpretation, his Concordia Novi ac Veteris Testamenti as an historical analysis, and his Apocalypse Commentary as a socially critical application of his philosophy, was previously only available in poorly legible early Venetian printed editions. The critical edition of the trilogy was published by the MGH in cooperation with the Italian Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, which is responsible for editing Joachim’s complete opera. Alexander Patschovsky, who has worked on the South-Italian visionary, theologian, and founder of the Order of Floria, Joachim of Fiore, for the past 20 years, will present his new edition and the opera omnia project.
Alexander Patschovsky studied history, Germanistik, and Latin at the Universities of Göttingen, Vienna, and Munich, attaining his Ph.D. with a thesis on the so-called „Passauer Anonymous“ (a collection of works on Jews, the Antichrist, and heretics) under MGH president Herbert Grundmann in 1968 (Rigorosum examination 1966). In 1966, he began work for the MGH and was encouraged by Horst Fuhrmann to write his post-doctoral Habilitation thesis on sources on the Bohemian Inquisition in the 14th century (Quellen zur böhmischen Inquisition im 14. Jh.), which he completed at the LMU in Munich in the winter semester 1977/78. In 1988, he succeeded Arno Borst as professor of the chair for medieval history at the University of Constance. On his retirement in 2005, he dedicated himself to editing the works of Joachim of Fiore as part of the project founded in 1990 by the commission for the critical edition of the Opera Omnia of Joachim of Fiore, anchored in the Centro Internazionale di Studi Gioachimiti in S. Giovanni in Fiore. With the publication of the MGH edition of Joachim’s Apocalypse Commentary in September 2024, this project is now nearing completion.
Tuesday, 23.01.2025, 6 p.m.: Verborgene Schätze? Was uns kaputte Handschriften mitteilen können (Hidden Treasures? What dilapidated manuscripts can tell us)
Online lecture (Zoom) by Dr Katharina Gutermuth
Despite (in some cases decades of) meticulous preparatory work for the MGH Diplomata editions, our „Urkundionen“ still manage to come up with unexpected chance finds. Such discoveries may be new transmissions of previously-known charters, but also even completely new charters. One such find, for example, was the Innsbruck letter collection discovered in 2004 and edited by Josef Riedmann in the MGH series Epistolae in 2017. The discoveries made by Katharina Gutermuth in the course of her transmission research for volume 7 of the edition of the charters of Emperor Frederick II are not quite so monumental: three manuscript fragments with texts belonging to the Petrus de Vinea collection and similar letters. Nevertheless, the fragments do pose some new challenges for the editors. The poor state of conservation of the manuscripts made it impossible to identify the texts on the basis of digital copies; in some cases, there were reasons to suspect that the charters were in fact previously unknown. It was, thus, necessary to consult the fragments in situ in the archive in south-eastern Europe. The results were surprising!
Katharina Gutermuth studied Geschichtliche Hilfswissenschaften, classical archaeology, and art history in Munich and Rome. In 2019, she completed her Ph.D. with an edition of the copial book of the canonesses‘ monastery Obermünster in Regensburg. From 2004 until 2022, she worked in various capacities in the project editing the charters of Emperor Frederick II (Herausgabe der Urkunden Kaiser Friedrichs II.). Since 2022, she is a member of the MGH editorial staff.
Thursday 20.2.2025, 6 p.m.: Fenster in die MGH-Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts: Die digitale Briefausgabe Ernst Kantorowicz (A Window in the History of the MGH in the 20th century: The Digital Edition of the Letters of Ernst Kantorowicz)
Live lecture by Andreas Öffner M.A. and Prof. Dr Dr h.c. Martina Hartmann in the MGH institute / Ludwigstr. 16 / 80539 Munich (with streaming via Zoom)
Ernst H. Kantorowicz’s fame as a medieval historian is largely based on his two main publications, his biography of Emperor Frederick II (1927) and „The King’s Two Bodies“ (1957). The works represent completely divergent forms of historical research and writing: the former inspired by the intellectual circle of the poet Stefan George and to this day a subject of controversy, the latter an influential and widely read standard work in cultural studies. The two books also demark two important phases in Kantorowicz’s life prior to and after his forced emigration to the USA in 1938. The correspondence of Ernst Kantorowicz offers profound insights into his turbulent biography in the „Age of Extremes“ and sheds light on his scholarly activities and networks on both sides of the Atlantic. In August 2024, the MGH made a first selection of his letters available in digital edition. While the current MGH project, continuing a previous edition project (2010-2014) funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), aims at publishing complete edition of all of Kantorowicz’s estimated 1500 letters with commentaries, this first selection specially documents his relationship with the MGH and persons associated with the institute before and after his emigration.
Using exemplary material, the lecture will present the use of the database to access the letter editions and report on the state of work and future perspectives.
Andreas Öffner studied literature, modern history, and medieval history in Tübingen. His Ph.D. thesis presents a new edition of the episcopal „Rescriptum consultationis sive exhortationis“ of 829. Since 2022, Andreas Öffner works for the MGH in the field of Digital Humanities.
Tuesday, 8.4.2025, 6 p.m.: Was lange währt: Die Edition der Briefe des Erzbischofs Hinkmar von Reims (Good things take time: The edition of the Letters of Archbishop Hinkmar of Reims)
Live evening lecture on the occasion of the publication of the last volume of the critical edition of the letters of Hinkmar of Reims by Dr Isolde Schröder and Dr Matthias Schrör in the MGH institute / Ludwigstr. 16 / 80539 Munich (with streaming via Zoom).
Comprising around 600 letters to leading ecclesiastical and worldly dignitaries, the correspondence of Archbishop Hinkmar of Reims († 882) is certainly one of the most important sources for the history of the Frankish Empire in the 9th century. In his other writings, we know Hinkmar as a canonist, a theologian, and an influential political advisor of the Frankish rulers. The numerous, poorly datable letters in the third and final fascicle of MGH Epistolae volume 8 reveal him in new contours as a pastor increasingly occupied with liturgical, pastoral, disciplinary and even esoteric questions, while no less actively pursuing the welfare of his see and the preservation of the ecclesiastical goods of the church of Reims. The final volume includes indexes and concordances to all three fascicles of the edition of Hinkmar’s letters, providing scholars with new possibilities to access and analyse the author’s broad scope of activities.
After a brief introduction to the – in part tragic - history of this edition by Martina Hartmann, Matthias Schrör presents some of the most important sources cited by Hinkmar in his letters. He draws particular attention to the several known manuscripts that the Archbishop of Reims consulted to write his letters, some of which contain traces of his usage and hence provide insights into his way of working. In her lecture, Isolde Schröder summarises the heterogeneous transmission and content of Hinkmar’s letters and treatises and explores possible connections with their reception.
Isolde Schröder studied Romance philology and history at the universities of Aachen and Tübingen from 1967 to 1973, attaining her Ph.D. in Regensburg with a thesis on the synods of the Western Frankisch Empire in the 10th century (MGH Hilfsmittel 3). She worked in a school from 1977 to 2010. For the MGH, Schröder has contributed to the edition of MGH Concilia 5 and edited the volume Epistolae variorum 798–923 (MGH Epistolae 9).
Matthias Schrör studied medieval history, modern history, political sciences and philosophy at the Heinrich-Heine Universität Düsseldorf from 2000 to 2005, attaining his Ph.D. in 2007/2008 with a thesis on the „päpstgeschichtliche Wende“ (the turning point in papal history) in the 11th century. After working at the universities of Bochum and Düsseldorf and in state archives, he took up his current position as the director of the Emilie and Hans Stratmans-Stiftung in Geldern in 2017. For the MGH, Schrör has published an introduction and edition of the letters of Charles the Bald (MGH Studien und Texte 69).
To attend the lectures, please register in advance via e-mail to annette.marquard-mois@mgh.de. Please note that the number of seats for the live lectures is limited and also that the events (and Zoom lectures) will be held on various days and at various places, as indicated above. We will send the Zoom login data via e-mail one day prior to the event.